Arousal disorders

Abstract

Arousal disorders, which belong to parasomnias in ICSD, have some disfunction in the process from sleep to awakenings. And the undesirable behaviors, such as wandering and screaming, are observed in the middle of awakening. Arousal disorders contain 1) confusional arousal, 2) sleepwalking, and 3) sleep terrors. Their common characteristics are the following items. 1) these symptoms frequently can be observable in infants, 2) these symptoms appear after awakenings especially from slow wave sleep, 3) the organic change has not been proven, 4) patients lose memory about the episode in the next morning, 5) natural improvement of symptoms can be expected after puberty. Confusional arousal is considered as a partial episode of sleepwalking and sleep terrors.