Scientific Significance of Sleep Talking

Abstract

In the present article, we will explore what is known about the production of overt speech during the night. We suggest that the study of sleep-talking may be just as interesting and informative as the study of wakeful speech.

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April 2014 | Volume 2 | Article 9 | 1
Neuroscience
Published: 24 April 2014
doi:10.3389/frym.2014.00009
Reviewed by:
Empress
8 years old
Maya
10 years old
Mika
12 years old
Scientic signicance
of sleep talking
David Peeters1,2 and Martin Dresler2
1 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
2 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
WHAT IS SLEEP TALKING?
Sleep talking (or somniloquy) can be considered as a
part of a larger family of types of “sleep utterances,”
such as mumbling, laughing, groaning, and whistling
during sleep. e ancient Greek philosopher
Heraclitus of Ephesus already observed someone sleep
talking about 2,500years ago, so it is not a very recent
discovery. It happens at all ages (provided that one is
capable of speaking!) and may occur during all parts
of the night. Sleep talking is said to be more common
in children than in adults. However, it might also
be the case that sleeping kids are simply more oen
overheard (for instance, by their parents) than adults.
Sometimes, sleep talking is placed among involuntary
behaviors that may happen during sleep (called
“parasomnias”), such as sleepwalking, teeth grinding,
and even types of sleep behavior disorders in which
patients may injure themselves or their bed partner
when involuntarily making dangerous movements
during sleep. However, sleep talking is oen very
innocent and generally does not require any treatment.
An exception is the sleep talking that may start to
occur aer a traumatic experience, as in the case of
soldiers who fought in a war.
WHEN DO WE SLEEP TALK?
Human sleep consists of dierent stages (see the
article Why sleep? by Manoach and Stickgold for
Did one of your parents, siblings, or friends ever tell you that you were talking in your sleep?
Nothing to be ashamed of! A recent study found that more than half of all people have
had the experience of speaking out loud while being asleep [1]. This might even be under-
estimated, because often people do not notice that they are sleep talking, unless some-
body wakes them up or tells them the next day. Most neuroscientists, linguists, and
psychologists studying language are interested in our language production and language
comprehension skills during the day. In this study, we will explore what is known about the
production of overt speech during the night. We suggest that the study of sleep talking may
be just as interesting and informative as the study of wakeful speech.

Scientic signicance of sleep talkingPeeters and Dresler
April 2014 | Volume 2 | Article 9 | 2
a nice overview) which can be distinguished by
inspecting the recordings of electrical activity from
sensors placed on someone’s scalp, a method called
electroencephalography (EEG; see Figure1). While
dreams can occur during all sleep stages, we are
dreaming most vividly in a sleep stage known as
“REM sleep” because of the occurrence of Rapid Eye
Movements. During REM sleep, all body muscles
(with the exception of the eye muscles, obviously) are
paralyzed by neural structures in the brain stem, which
prevent us from acting out our dreams. Accordingly,
complex movements like sleepwalking normally occur
only during non-REM sleep stages. In such cases, a
small part of the brain appears to be awake while the
rest of the brain is asleep [2]. is seems to be true for
sleep talking as well: producing speech requires the
planning and execution of rapid sequences of muscle
movements, hence it will most likely occur in non-
paralyzed, non-REM sleep stages [3]. is suggests
that the speech we say out loud while sleeping (“sleep
talk”) is not necessarily just the overt counterpart
of the things we may silently say in our dreams or
nightmares (“dream speech”). However, overt sleep
talking during REM sleep has also been reported
– which might happen when the brain stem briey
fails to paralyze the body muscles [4]. Anyway, the
existence of sleep talking and of dreams shows that our
brain is not completely “switched o” during sleep.
WHAT DO PEOPLE SAY DURING SLEEP?
e popular view, as encountered in pop songs
and novels, is that people sometimes betray their
innermost secrets during sleep because they have no
control over what they say. A nice example is the song
Nightmares by Josh Ritter. Research has shown that
the disclosure of personal secrets during sleep is very
rare and uncommon [5], although it is not unusual to
allude in sleep talk to things and people encountered
during the day. Sleep talking may reect someone’s
feelings, but not necessarily any “secret” feelings. Let’s
have a look at what people actually say while sleep
talking and compare this to the wakeful speech we
produce during the day. Here are some examples of
sleep talk, taken from a large database [5]:
Example A: “Mm, hm – yes, yes”
Example B: “Peacock tree?! ere’s a tree full of
peacocks and swallows and other
colorations, aabsolutely, aaaabsolutely
g-o-o-or-geous – get my camera, Larry,
and don’t forget to turn the lm or I’ll have
ts when it gets back – come on! God! –
you should see it.” [is was uttered with
an air of brisk alert enthusiasm.]
Example C: “I wanna take a net – a note – a note”
At rst sight, these utterances do not look that
dierent from the things we say during the day. And
indeed, in linguistic terms, the similarities between
sleep talk and wakeful speech are striking. Utterances
can be very simple and short such as in Example A,
which is not very dierent from a short backchannel
response in an everyday conversation. Example B, on
the other hand, shows how complex sleep talk can
FIGURE 1 - Electrical brain activity as recorded by five electrodes placed on someone’s scalp, measured in microvolts (μV).
Small deflections in the waves depicted here show that this person is becoming a bit sleepy. Similarly, the inspection of such waves while someone is sleeping
allows us to distinguish different sleep stages.

Scientic signicance of sleep talkingPeeters and Dresler
April 2014 | Volume 2 | Article 9 | 3
a largely automatic process, which may take place
without the need for a speaker to pay to much
attention to it. In turn, this allows the speaker to
focus more on the content of the message [6]. is is
one example of how the study of sleep talk can have
implications for our understanding of wakeful speech
production as well. Box 1 summarizes some fun facts
about sleep talking.
BOX 1 - Some fun facts about sleep talking.
• Sleep talking happens at all ages and may
occur during all parts of the night.
• Sleep talking is said to be more common in
kids than in adults.
• e brain is not completely “switched o”
during the night; otherwise sleep talking
would not be possible.
• ere are many songs about sleep talking and
dreaming, for instance Talking In Your Sleep
by e Romantics.
• Sleep talk is sometimes more creative than
speech produced during the day!
CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK
In summary, there are many striking similarities
between wakeful speech and sleep talk, but also
some dierences. Surprisingly, the study of sleep
talking has not received much attention from
scientists over the last 30years. Many questions
remain unanswered, and there is still a lot that
needs to be discovered. Particularly, a good
neurobiological account of the dierences between
sleep talk and wakeful speech in terms of the
activation levels of brain networks involved in
speech production is still lacking. Sleep talking
may therefore be a great topic of study for a new
generation of young minds.
GLOSSARY
Electroencephalography (EEG): A method that
allows researchers and doctors to observe and
be. It includes dierent types of speech act including
a question, a description of a visual scene, and an
imperative (“get my camera”) directed at a specic
addressee (“Larry”), with varying intonation patterns.
Such speech production abilities during the night, as
reected in the above examples, suggest that brain
networks involved in speech production may become
activated while a person is asleep. Based on research
of awake participants, we know that these networks
reside for the greater part in the frontal and temporal
lobes of the brain, mainly in the le hemisphere.
Like everyday colloquial speech, sleep talk may
contain speech errors. Example C shows a putative
speech error that is immediately corrected by the
sleeping speaker. Problems in word nding and
in the correct encoding of sounds that make up a
word seem a bit more common in sleep talk than
in everyday speech. Sometimes, they even resemble
the word nding diculties of people suering
from specic types of aphasia, a language disorder
that is caused by dysfunction of (parts of) the brain.
Another characteristic of some instances of sleep
talk is the apparent lack of thematic coherence of
subsequent utterances. One possibility is that such
utterances are related to dream content, in which
thematically dierent and apparently unrelated
scenes may rapidly follow one another. In contrast
with such decreased abilities during sleep, there are
some anecdotal reports of people being more creative
or eloquent in sleep talk than in wakeful speech, for
instance when speaking a second language. Another
important dierence between sleep talk and everyday
speech is that people oen do not remember the next
day that they have overtly produced speech in their
sleep, let alone what they have said while sleeping.
In contrast to word nding problems and incidental
lack of coherence, the grammatical structure of sleep-
talk sentences is oen perfectly correct. Apparently,
our brains are capable of producing grammatically
correct sentences while we are asleep. is suggests
that building the grammatical structure of a sentence
in speech production (including wakeful speech) is

Scientic signicance of sleep talkingPeeters and Dresler
April 2014 | Volume 2 | Article 9 | 4
2. Bassetti, C., Vella, S., Donati, F., Wielepp, P., and Weder, B. 2000.
SPECT during sleepwalking. Lancet 356:484–485. doi: 10.1016/
S0140-6736(00)02561-7
3. Arkin, A. M., Toth, M. F., Baker, J., and Hastey, J. M. 1970. The
frequency of sleep talking in the laboratory among chronic sleep talkers
and good dream recallers. J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. 151:369–374. doi:
10.1097/00005053-197012000-00002
4. Uguccioni, G., Pallanca, O., Golmard, J. L., Dodet, P., Herlin, B., Leu-
Semenescu, S., etal. 2013. Sleep-related declarative memory consolidation
and verbal replay during sleep talking in patients with REM sleep behavior
disorder. PLoS One 8:e83352. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0083352
5. Arkin, A. N. 1981. Sleep Talking. Psychology and Psychophysiology.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
6. Kempen, G. 1981. De architectuur van het spreken. Interdisciplinair
Tijdschrift voor Taal Tekstwetenschap 1:110–123.
Submitted: 24 February 2014; Accepted: 24 March 2014; Published online:
24 April 2014.
Citation: Peeters, D., and Dresler, M. (2014). Scientic signicance of sleep
talking. Front. Young Minds. 2:9. doi: 10.3389/frym.2014.00009
Copyright © 2014 Peeters and Dresler. This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted,
provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original
publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic
practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not
comply with these terms.
analyze brain activity by placing small sensors
(“electrodes”) on a person’s scalp.
Frontal lobe: e part of the brain located at the
front of the head, behind the forehead.
Hemisphere: e brain can be divided into a le
part and a right part, which are separated by a large
ssure. e two parts, which are connected, are
called the le hemisphere and the right hemisphere.
Linguist: A person who studies language or dierent
languages. Some linguists, for instance, describe
languages that are only spoken by a small group of
people. Others try to understand why a language
changes over time. Unfortunately, not many linguists
study sleep talking.
Neuroscientist: A person who studies the brain
(and some other parts of the nervous system). Some
neuroscientists, for instance, try to understand what
happens in our brains when we are sleeping.
Temporal lobe: e part of the brain globally located
above and behind the ears, in both hemispheres.
REFERENCES
1. Bjorvatn, B., Grønli, J., and Pallesen, S. 2010. Prevalence of different
parasomnias in the general population. Sleep Med. 11:1031–1034.
doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2010.07.011

Empress, 8 years old
Mika, 12 years old
I am crazy. I love chicken, gymnastics, soccer, and
swimming. I like to talk with a British accent.
I love watching TV (Glee). I play basketball and soccer.
Later, I like to be a professional videogame player. I like
to cook. I am interested in sports medicine. I like to play
drums and saxophone. I like to sing in front of a mirror.
Maya, 10 years old
I like cardiology. I like rock music, sci-
movies, Game of rones, and to read adult books.
Iwant to learn guitar.
REVIEWED BY: AUTHORS
David Peeters
Martin Dresler
As a cognitive neuroscientist, I study the human brain and
all the fun things we can do with it. I am particularly inter-
ested in how we learn and how we can improve our memory.
In addition, I like to explore what happens in our brain when
we sleep and dream.
Lives in e Netherlands. He studies how our brain allows
us to use one or more languages and hand gestures to com-
municate. He likes running, cycling, sunshine, blueberries,
and reading novels.