What is sleep talking? We look at the science

Published

2 years ago

February 20, 2023

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Nearly everyone has a story about people talking in their sleep. Though it tends to be more common in children, it can happen at any age: A 2010 study in the journal Sleep Medicine (opens in new tab) suggested that around two-thirds of people have at least one episode of sleep talking in adulthood.

Sleep talking is not considered a sleep disorder but a normal variation of human sleep behavior. The International Classification of Sleep Disorders (opens in new tab) lists sleep talking under “isolated symptoms, apparently normal variants and unresolved issues,” along with things like snoring and sleep starts — the sudden jerking motion some people have when falling asleep, also known as hypnagogic jerks.

However, although sleep talking isn’t a disorder, it can have unwanted impacts on a person’s sleep and on the sleep of someone sharing a room or bed with them. Here, we look at the science behind sleep talking.What is sleep talking?

Sleep talking, or somniloquy, is when a person makes vocalizations while asleep. These vocalizations can be full words and phrases, or they can be mumblings, shouts or even laughter.

Children commonly talk in their sleep, with half of all kids talking in their sleep once a year or more, and around a quarter sleep talking at least once a week, according to a 1980 paper in the journal Brain & Development (opens in new tab) . Most children grow out of these episodes of nighttime babble, though sleep talking can recur later in life, brought on by stress or sleep deprivation, Dr. Jennifer Martin (opens in new tab) , a professor of medicine and the president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, told Live Science.

Around half of sleep talking is incomprehensible, audio recordings from a 2017 study published in the journal Sleep (opens in new tab) suggested. The same study found that, out of 3,349 understandable recordings, the word that most sleep talkers said was “no.”

As to whether people tell the truth while sleep talking, that’s mostly a myth, Martin said. “It doesn’t seem to be the case that [people say their] deep dark inner secrets,” she said. Dr. Jennifer L. Martin Social Links Navigation

Dr. Jennifer L. Martin serves as president of the board of directors for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and is board-certified in behavioral sleep medicine by the American Board of Sleep Medicine (ABSM). She is a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Martin received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, San Diego, as part of the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program.

Some people sleep talk in their dreams, saying phrases that align with what they later remember dreaming about, a 2009 study in the Sleep (opens in new tab) journal found. But most sleep talking is unrelated to dreaming, as it happens while people are in a stage of sleep with fewer dreams, Martin said.

“Sleep talking tends to occur in a stage of sleep that we call non-rapid eye movement, or non-REM sleep,” she said. “During this stage our brain is relatively quiet, compared to what we see during rapid eye movement sleep [where we dream].”

During REM sleep, the body is effectively paralyzed to prevent the acting out of dreams, said Martin, and this paralysis should stop people from talking. If sleep talking does occur during REM sleep, then it could be a sign of something more serious.

“There is a sleep condition called REM behavior disorder where the system that paralyzes your muscles — really so you can’t hurt yourself during your sleep — is not working properly,” Martin said.

If this is the case, an early diagnosis is important, said Dr. Erik K. St. Louis (opens in new tab) , the head of the Division of Sleep Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. “REM behavior disorder often evolves into violent sleep behaviors like screaming, shouting, punching and arm flailing, which may lead to injury to the patient or their bed partner,” he told Live Science. “It may also be the initial presentation of disease in older adults, usually Parkinson’s disease or dementia with Lewy bodies.” What causes sleep talking?

Researchers still don’t know what causes sleep talking, but studies that measure brain activity can offer some insight.

Recent analyses show similarities between sleep talking and normal awake speech, St Louis said. Linguistic studies, like the 2017 paper in the journal Sleep, have also shown that the properties of sleep talk — the language, patterns, syntax and semantics — follow the same rules as people’s day-to-day conversations and are therefore comprehensible.

These discoveries further neurologists’ understanding of the sleeping brain and the purpose of sleep itself, which remains understudied, St. Louis said.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Sleep talking could be linked to memory consolidation, when the sleeping brain revisits experiences to commit the important ones to long-term memory. A 2018 review published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews (opens in new tab) suggested sleep talking could sometimes be a verbal replay of the memories the brain is sifting through at the time.

The cause of sleep talking could be different in children and adults, Martin told Live Science. Sleep talking and other unusual sleep behaviors are much more common in kids, and this could simply be the child’s brain “learning what not to do while it’s asleep,” Martin said. It could also be related to the phases of brain development during childhood, she said.

In adults, however, certain conditions and circumstances make sleep talking more likely. For one, sleep talking can have a genetic component: it runs in families, according to a 2001 study published in the journal Psychiatric Genetics (opens in new tab) . It has also been linked with obstructive sleep apnea — a condition in which people experience pauses in breathing, or shallow breathing during sleep — according to the Cleveland Clinic (opens in new tab) .Can you stop sleep talking?

Sleep talking is usually considered a harmless trait, but it can be unpleasant for anyone in earshot — nearly 10% of sleep talking in the 2017 Sleep study contained profanities and swearing.

“Sleep talking has also been associated with sleep disturbance and shallower sleep, so may not be quite as benign as we presume,” St Louis said.

To stop a person talking in their sleep, Martin advises giving them a little nudge. This gentle interruption can stop the behavior, she said.

Sleep talking, along with other sleep behaviors like sleep walking and snoring, tend to get worse when people are sleep deprived, Martin told Live Science. A 2013 study in the Journal of Sleep Research (opens in new tab) showed sleep deprivation increased disturbance in slow-wave, non-REM sleep, which can lead to sleep talking and sleepwalking.

“So, making sure that you’re getting good healthy sleep tends to decrease how often it happens,” Martin said. This means that staying up late to let a partner fall asleep first might actually make sleep talking worse.

This article is for informational purposes only, and is not meant to offer medical advice.

Sports

CFP Anger Index: Better call Paul — the committee is disrespecting the SEC

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2 hours ago

November 13, 2024

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CFP Anger Index: Better call Paul -- the committee is disrespecting the SEC

David Hale, ESPN Staff WriterNov 12, 2024, 09:05 PM ET
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- College football reporter.
- Joined ESPN in 2012.
- Graduate of the University of Delaware.

The committee has released its second crack at the top 25, and it’s (almost) all Big Ten at the top.

That might seem a bit strange to the conference that boasts the most playoff-caliber teams and the most nonconference wins against other Power 4 leagues, and also has Paul Finebaum there to remind everyone just how angry they should be at this affront to good judgment.

With that, we’ll handle much of Finebaum’s homework for him. Here’s this week’s Anger Index.

1. The SEC

Eleven weeks into the 2024 season, and one thing seems abundantly clear: The SEC is the best conference in college football. Take a look at Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings, for example, where nine of the top 17 teams are from the SEC. Or use ESPN’s FPI metric, where the SEC has spots 1, 2, 4, 5 and 9. Consider that the team currently ninth in the SEC standings, South Carolina, has three wins over SP+ top-40 teams and losses to the committee’s No. 10 and 22 teams by a combined total of five points.

Yes, the SEC’s dominance and depth seem obvious.

So, of course, four of the top five teams in the committee’s rankings this week are from the SEC.

Wait, no, sorry about that. We’re getting late word here that, in fact, it’s the Big Ten with teams No. 1, 2, 4 and 5 in this week’s rankings.

It’s not that those four Big Ten teams aren’t any good. Oregon (No. 1) has chewed up and spit out nearly all comers this season. Ohio State (No. 2) is the best squad the gross domestic product of Estonia can buy. Penn State (No. 4), well, the Nittany Lions still haven’t beaten Ohio State, but we assume the rest of the résumé is OK. Indiana (No. 5) is blowing the doors off people.

But that’s it. The rest of the Big Ten is a mess. You need a magnifying glass to find Michigan‘s QB production. Iowa finally learned how to score and somehow has gotten worse. Minnesota looked like the next-best team in the conference, and the Gophers have losses to North Carolina and Rutgers.

A lack of depth does not inherently mean the teams at the top are not elite. Indeed, the other teams in any conference remain independent variables when addressing the ceiling for any one team. If the Kansas City Chiefs joined the Sun Belt, Patrick Mahomes would still be a magician and Andy Reid would still be saying “Bundle-a-rooskie-doo” in your nightmares.

But the cold, hard facts are these: Indiana’s best win came last week against Michigan (No. 40 in SP+) by 3. Penn State’s best win (by SP+) came by 3 against a below-.500 USC team that just benched its QB. Ohio State is absolutely elite on paper, but on the field, the Buckeyes’ success is entirely buoyed by a 20-13 win at Penn State, a team we also know very little about.

The SEC gets flack for boasting of its greatness routinely, and to be sure, that narrative has often bolstered less-than-elite teams. But this year, every reasonable metric suggests the SEC’s production actually matches its ego, and when Ole Miss (No. 11), Georgia (No. 12), Alabama (No. 10) and Texas A&M (No. 15) — all with two losses — are dogged as a result of playing in a league where every other team warrants a spot in the top 25, it undermines the entire point of having a committee that can use its judgment rather than simply look at the standings.

Let’s compare two teams with blind résumés.

Team A: 8-1 record, No. 14 in ESPN’s strength of record. Best win came vs. SP+ No. 20, loss came to a top-10 team by 3. Has four wins vs. Power 4 teams with a winning record, by an average of 14 points.

Team B: 8-1 record, No. 11 in ESPN’s strength of record. Best win came vs. SP+ No. 28, loss came to a top-15 team by 15. Has one win vs. a Power 4 team with a winning record, by 3.

So, which team has the better résumé?

This shouldn’t take too long to figure out. Team A looks better by almost every metric, right?

Well, Team A is SMU, who checks in at No. 14 in this week’s ranking.

Team B, though? That’d be the Mustangs’ old friends from the Southwest Conference, the Texas Longhorns. Texas checks in at No. 3.

Perhaps you’ve watched enough of both Texas and SMU to think the eye test favors the Longhorns. That’s fair. But should the eye test account for 11 spots in the rankings? At some point, the results have to matter more.

Or, perhaps it’s the brand that matters to the committee. If that same résumé belonged to a school that hadn’t just bought its way into the Power 4 this year, it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t be in the top 10 with ease.

Let’s dig into three different teams still hoping for a playoff bid, even if the odds are against them at this point.

Team A: 7-2, 1 win over SP+ top 40. No. 28 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 18 points.

Team B: 7-2, 1 win over SP+ top 40. No. 25 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 13 points.

Team C: 7-2, no wins over SP+ top 40. No. 24 in ESPN’s strength of record. Losses by a combined 21 points.

You could split hairs here, but the bottom line is none has a particularly compelling résumé, and they’re all pretty similar.

So, who are they?

Team B is Iowa State, which plummeted from the rankings after losing two straight. But the committee isn’t supposed to care when you lost your games. Losing in September is not better than losing in November. At least that’s what they say.

Team A is Arizona State. Its 10-point loss to Cincinnati came without starting QB Sam Leavitt and was due, at least in part, to a kicking game so traumatic head coach Kenny Dillingham held an open tryout afterward. The Sun Devils and Cyclones are two of three two-loss Power 4 teams unranked this week (alongside Pitt), but unlike Iowa State and Pitt, Arizona State isn’t coming off back-to-back losses. The Sun Devils’ absence seems entirely correlated to the fact that no one believed this team would be any good entering the season, and so few people have looked closely enough to change their minds that the committee feels comfortable ignoring them.

The team the committee can’t ignore, however, is Team C. That would be Colorado. Coach Prime has convinced the world the Buffaloes are for real, even if nothing on their résumé — a No. 77 strength of schedule, worse than 7-2 Western Kentucky‘s — suggests that’s anything close to a certainty.

The Big 12 remains wide open, but it’s to the committee’s detriment that it has so eagerly dismissed two of the better teams just because they’re not as fun to talk about.

Has Missouri played with fire this year? You betcha. Just last week, the Tigers were on the verge of falling to Oklahoma before the Sooners’ woeful QB situation reared its ugly head again and the game ended in a 30-23 Tigers win.

But here’s the thing about playing with fire: So long as you don’t turn your living room into an inferno, it’s actually pretty impressive.

Missouri is 7-2 with wins against SP+ Nos. 26 and 28, and its only losses are to the committee’s No. 10 and No. 15 teams. SP+ has Missouri at No. 17, though we can chalk that up to Connelly’s hometown bias. But No. 23? After a top-10 season in 2023, don’t the Tigers deserve a little benefit of the doubt? They currently trail three three-loss teams (Louisville, South Carolina and LSU) and are behind Boise State, Colorado, Washington State and Clemson, who, combined, have exactly one win over SP+ top-40 teams.

There’s a good chance that, should Brady Cook not return to the lineup, Missouri will get waxed at South Carolina on Saturday, and then the argument is moot. But the committee isn’t supposed to look ahead and take guesses at what it believes might happen (Florida State’s snub last year notwithstanding). It’s supposed to judge based on what’s on the books so far, and putting Missouri this far down the rankings seems more than a tad harsh.

The committee threw a nice bone to the non-Power 4 schools this week, with four teams ranked, including No. 25 Tulane Green Wave. That seems deserved, given Tulane’s recent run. But what is it, exactly, that puts the Green Wave ahead of UNLV?

UNLV has the No. 31 strength of record. Tulane is No. 32.

UNLV has the No. 98 strength of schedule played. Tulane is No. 96.

Tulane has a one-possession loss to a top-20 team. UNLV has a one-possession loss to a top-20 team.

The key difference between the two is UNLV has wins against two Power 4 opponents — Houston and Kansas. Houston, by the way, just knocked off Kansas State, a team that beat Tulane.

So perhaps the committee should spread a bit more love outside the Power 4.

Also Angry: Pittsburgh Panthers (7-2, unranked), Duke Blue Devils (7-3, unranked), Georgia Bulldogs (7-2, No. 12), Utah Utes AD Mark Harlan (the Utes would be ranked if Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark hadn’t rigged the system!) and UConn Huskies (7-3, unranked and thus prohibiting us from Jim Mora Jr. giving a “You wanna talk about playoffs?!?” rant).

Environment

Elon Musk Tapped to Lead New ‘DOGE’ Department—Despite the Government Already Having One for Efficiency

Published

2 hours ago

November 13, 2024

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Elon Musk Tapped to Lead New ‘DOGE’ Department—Despite the Government Already Having One for Efficiency

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is to officially join Trump’s administration as the co-head of the new US Department of Government Efficiency – a second federal department with the goal of making government spending more efficient.

You can’t get more ironic than that.

Throughout the elections, Musk, who is already CEO of Tesla, and SpaceX, a well as the defacto head of X, xAI, Neuralink, and the Boring Company, has been floating the idea to add to his workload by joining the Trump’s administration to lead a new department aimed at making the federal government more efficient.

He has been calling it the “Department of Government Efficiency”, which spells out ‘DOGE’, a meme that Musk appears to enjoy.

Well, now Trump appears to want to be going through with this idea.

He announced the new department and Musk as head, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, in a statement today:

I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” stated Mr. Musk.

What’s most ironic is that there’s already a federal department with the goal of cutting government waste and ensuring efficiency: the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO’s main objectives are:

auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively;
investigating allegations of illegal and improper activities;
reporting on how well government programs and policies are meeting their objectives;
performing policy analyses and outlining options for congressional consideration;
issuing legal decisions and opinions;
advising Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient and effective

It sounds similar to what Musk described when talking about his DOGE, but Trump hasn’t gone into many details other than it will “cut waste.”

He also has a confusing message as he compares the initiative, which is supposed to cut government spending, to “The Manhattan project”, a massive and expensive government project.

Trump said that DOGE will help the government “drive large scale structural reform”:

It will become, potentially, “The Manhattan Project” of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of “DOGE” for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.

The statement also noted that DOGE will only operate until July 4, 2026.

Musk has previously claimed that he could cut at least $2 trillion dollars of the $6.5 trillion dollar US federal budget.

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Environment

Oil could plunge to $40 in 2025 if OPEC unwinds voluntary production cuts, analysts say

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3 hours ago

November 13, 2024

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Oil could plunge to in 2025 if OPEC unwinds voluntary production cuts, analysts say

A pump jack in Midland, Texas, US, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024.

Anthony Prieto | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oil prices may see a drastic fall in the event that oil alliance OPEC+ unwinds its existing output cuts, said market watchers who are predicting a bearish year ahead for crude.

“There is more fear about 2025’s oil prices than there has been since years — any year I can remember, since the Arab Spring,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at OPIS, an oil price reporting agency.

“You could get down to $30 or $40 a barrel if OPEC unwound and didn’t have any kind of real agreement to rein in production. They’ve seen their market share really dwindle through the years,” Kloza added.

A decline to $40 a barrel would mean around a 40% erasure of current crude prices. Global benchmark Brent is currently trading at $72 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures are around $68 per barrel.

Oil prices year-to-date

Given that oil demand growth next year probably won’t be much more than 1 million barrels a day, a full unwinding of OPEC+ supply cuts in 2025 would “undoubtedly see a very steep slide in crude prices, possibly toward $40 a barrel,” Henning Gloystein, head of energy, climate and resources at Eurasia Group, told CNBC.

Similarly, MST Marquee’s senior energy analyst Saul Kavonic posited that should OPEC+ unwind cuts without regard to demand, it would “effectively amount to a price war over market share that could send oil to lows not seen since Covid.”

However, the alliance is more likely to opt for a gradual unwinding early next year, compared to a full scale and immediate one, the analysts said.

Should the producers group proceed with their production plan, the market surplus could nearly double.

Martoccia Francesco

Energy strategist at Citi

The oil cartel has been exercising discipline in maintaining its voluntary output cuts, to the point of extending them.

In September, OPEC+ postponed plans to begin gradually rolling back on the 2.2 million barrels per day of voluntary cuts by two months in an effort to stem the slide of oil prices. The 2.2 million bpd cut, which was implemented over the second and third quarters, had been due to expire at the end of September.

At the start of this month, the oil cartel again decided to delay the planned oil output increase by another month to the end of December.

Oil prices have been weighed by a sluggish post-Covid recovery in demand from China, the world’s second-largest economy and leading crude oil importer. In its monthly report released Tuesday, OPEC lowered its 2025 global oil demand growth forecast from 1.6 million barrels per day to 1.5 million barrels per day.

The pressured prices were also conflagrated by a perceivably oversupplied market, especially as key oil producers outside the OPEC alliance like the U.S., Canada, Guyana and Brazil are also planning to add supply, Gloystein highlighted.

Bearish year ahead for oil

The market consensus is that there’ll be a “substantial” oil stock build next year, said Citibank energy strategist Martoccia Francesco.

“Should the producers group proceed with their production plan, the market surplus could nearly double… reaching as much as 1.6 million barrels per day,” said Francesco.

Even if OPEC+ doesn’t unwind the cuts, the future ofl prices is still looking break. Citi analysts expect Brent price to average $60 per barrel next year.

Further fueling the bearish outlook is the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, whose return is associated by some with a potential trade war, said analysts who spoke to CNBC.

“If we do get a trade war — and a lot of economists think that a trade war is possible, and particularly against China — we could see much, much lower prices,” said OPIS’ Kloza.

Trump has also touted a “drill baby drill” policy for U.S. producers, vowing to cut energy prices in half.

For that to happen to retail gasoline prices, oil would need to drop to “below $40” per barrel, said Matt Smith, Kpler’s lead oil analyst.

Right now, retail gasoline prices are at a “sweet spot” at $3 per gallon, where consumers do not feel the pinch and input prices are still sufficiently high for producers, Smith added.