Zolpidem is a widely prescribed nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic medication available in the United States since 1992. Attention has been drawn recently to its potential to cause sleep-related, complex behaviors such as sleepwalking and sleep driving. These automatic behaviors have led to a deluge of legal claims. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first review in the forensic literature of the l...

SOMNAMBULISM (SLEEPWALKING) IS A PARASOMNIA CHARACTERIZED BY BEHAVIORAL MANIFESTATIONS OF VARIOUS DEGREES OF COMPLEXITY AND duration occurring during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.1 Somnambulistic episodes generally arise from sudden but incomplete arousal from slow-wave sleep (SWS; stage 3 and 4 sleep) during the first third of the night2-4 but may also occur out of stage 2 sleep or late...

Consciousness is a state so essentially entwined with human experience, yet so difficult to conceptually define and measure. In this article, we explore how a bidimensional model of consciousness involving both level of arousal and subjective awareness of the contents of consciousness can be used to differentiate a range of healthy and altered conscious states. These include the different sleep...

Editorial The far side of sleep: Towards a deeper understanding of parasomnias and nocturnal seizures Nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy/ NFLE Polysomnography Sleepwalking NREM sleep parasomnias REM sleep behavior disorder/RBD Dissociated states This issue of Sleep Science contains an article by Yeh and Schenck about behavioral dyscontrol during sleep emerging with sporadic (non-familial) nocturna...