What Sleep Crime Tells Us About Consciousness (preview)

August 20, 2012, 8:00 am by Scientific American: Mind and Brain

There was nothing outwardly unusual about the man who showed up at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center on June 27, 2005. Like thousands of other clinic patients, Benjamin Adoyo (not his real name) was a sleepwalker. A 26-year-old college student, originally from Kenya, Adoyo had been wandering at night since childhood. Lately, though, the behavior had been getting worse. Adoyo had gotten married in February, and his wife would wake to him shaking her while looming over their bed and babbling unintelligibly. Scared, she would simply do her best to rouse Adoyo, who, once awakened, never remembered a thing. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis, and the sleepwalking was straining their young marriage. The referral form from Adoyo's primary care doctor noted that the patient's wife was “sometimes startled by his behavior, but no injury, per se.” [More]

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