ABSTRACT
A typical feature of night terror and daytime hypersomnia episodes, sequellae of experimental sleep deprivation, and frequently of REM narcolepsy-cataplexy events is the occurrence of spontaneous vocalization with and without speech, which appears to reflect internal experience rather than external stimuli, and for which there are strong amnestic tendencies. It is therefore of interest to relate such phenomena to the typical somniloquy of more or less normal people under normal circumstances. Altered states of consciousness of a spontaneous pathological nature have been exemplified in Stage 3–4 night-terrors, narcolepsy, cataplexy, nonspecific hypersomnia, and sleep-apnea attacks. R. Broughton noted that similarly impaired cognition may occur with nonsleep-disorder subjects under conditions of precipitate intense stress, which generates sudden huge increments of arousal. Broughton has characterized Stage 4 night-terrors, along with enuresis and somnambulism, as “disorders of arousal”. Dr. Charles Fisher et al. tentatively concluded that diazepam ameliorated night-terror syndromes by reducing Stage 4 sleep—the “somatic matrix” of the night-terror.
