The Funny and Revealing New Sleep Talking Study

Everyone Sleep Talks
At some point in time, everyone has had a funny sleep talking story. It might not be about you, but everyone has witnessed some sleep talking. Did you know, though, that we still don’t fully understand why we sleep talk? Luckily, there’s a new French study taking place, in order to learn what happens to our brains when we talk in our sleep.

First Study of its Kind
The European Sleep Research Laboratories, located in Paris, France, gathered a group of 242 people at the direction of Dr. Isabelle Arnulf and her team of fellow researchers. The selected group of volunteers was very diverse, including an even number of men and women ranged in age from 20 to 49, and volunteers suffering from various sleep disorders like rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, sleepwalking/sleep terrors, and sleep apnea. As a matter of fact, out of the 242 volunteers, only 15 had a healthy sleep schedule

The Funny and Interesting Results
After the research was completed, surprising patterns began to pop up in the results. It seemed, for the most part, the sleep talking the volunteers engaged in was grammatically correct. Not only that, but the volunteers, more often than not, paused between talking, as if giving a partner in a conversation time to respond to them.

The actual content of what was said shared patterns as well. For example, the most spoken word during sleep talking was ‘no’, which was said in 21.4% of the ‘conversations’. In fact, most of what was said during the study was negative, or even downright combative, and was almost always laced with profanity of all kinds.

The study also revealed that even during sleep Wernicke’s area ( language meaning) and Broca’s area (speech production) are both still active and connected. The scans and research did not, however, reveal why the sleep talk consisted of so much hostile language. However, Dr. Arnulf did suggest it had to do with the negativity of most dreams.

This really is groundbreaking work in the realm of sleep study, and researchers have still just scratched the surface of sleep talking, but don’t get mad at your partner the next time the insult you in their sleep. Everyone does it.