Sleep Medicine Program Stanford University Medical School
*Address for correspondence: C. Guilleminault, Stanford University, Sleep Disorders Clinic, 401 Quarry Road, 3rd Floor, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. E-mail: cguil@stanford.edu
Sleep walking, or somnambulism, is an arousal parasomnia affecting people during slow wave sleep, primarily during the first half or third of the night that results in large, coordinated, complex behaviors that commonly occurs in children reaching a peak at age 12 years, and decreasing afterwards. It has been described as an incomplete arousal from sleep that has been recently shown to be associated with NREM sleep instability, often caused by sleep disordered breathing.
