Read more: "The night: The nocturnal journey of body and mind"
THE camera is trained on a man in the grip of an agitated sleep. He has thrown off the covers. Now he hoists himself into a kneeling position. His mouth slack with sleep, he starts punching desperately and repeatedly. Suddenly he flings his arms over his head, gripping what seems to be an invisible sword. He plunges it into the bed, over and over, his fists making deep impressions in the mattress next to him, where another sleeper might be.
Like many sleep-clinic recordings, this one is "really creepy", says John Peever, a neurologist who studies sleep disorders at the University of Toronto in Canada. And bizarre, too: this man's brain is asleep, and yet his body moves with vigour and violence. People come to these clinics to seek help. Perhaps they have eaten things asleep that they'd ...
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