Winn 1

Andrew Winn

Dr. Colombo

UWRT 1104

2/1/17

Am I the Same Person when Im Asleep?

Every night, we all dream. Our dreams take us to wild, unknown places where anything is

possible. Some people claim that they do not, but they simply do not remember their dreams.

Sometimes we have happy, lighthearted dreams about the pleasures of life. Other times we may

have violent, horrible dreams of unspeakable things. When we have these dreams, it is common

just to ignore them and move on with our lives, but does what we dream have a deeper meaning?

Our subconscious is active all day, creating our thoughts and making us who we are.

When we are asleep, our subconscious can think freely, and without any outside influences. It

may take what we have seen throughout the day and replay it to us, or it could create completely

new ideas and thoughts without any influence of the outside world. Our brains are free to do

whatever they like when we are asleep. So, I pose the question, am I the same person when Im

asleep.

I sleep walk. My friends and family think that it happens when I am sleeping in a new

place and my body isnt used to the bed that I am in. I have been told stories of the things I do

when Im asleep and they are quite diverse. The first time that I was discovered sleepwalking I

was around seven years old. My mother found me downstairs brushing my teeth and asked me

what I was doing. I responded, I forgot to brush my teeth and said nothing else. My mother

could tell I was asleep because at this age I had a bed time and would never defy my mother

rules. Over the next several years all the other times I was seen sleep walking I just walked
 Winn 2

around for a short time and then returned to bed. There was a period of several years I was not

seen sleep walking. I saw not seen because there is a possibility I was and no one saw me.

Now that I am in college and have a roommate, I have been caught sleepwalking again. The first

time that it happened my roommate said that I got up, sprinted out of the room in my boxers, and

yelled god damnit. I ran around my hall and woke up when I ran into a door on the opposite

side of the hall. A few months later my roommate was awake doing work while I was asleep. He

told me the next morning that I got out of bed and tried to leave the room. When he stopped me, I

tried to convince him that I was not asleep, in my sleep. I even used a phrase we came up with so

I could let him know I was awake. The phrase was people like grapes. He realized that I was

asleep and asked me to wait for him to pull out his phone. I complied. That was the most recent

sleepwalking incident I have had.

What I am getting at with those stories is this. I am acting in a way that are not normal to

who I am, and acting with my active thought. My claim is that we are not the same people when

we are asleep and I want to research about what causes sleepwalking, our subconscious vs active

thought, dreaming and genetics.

I believe that we sleepwalk because of restless sleep. Most of the times I have sleep

walked, it has been when I was in someplace new or having a hard time falling asleep. I know

that when we sleep, our bodies are supposed to become paralyzed so that we dont get up and act

out or dreams. This mechanic of our brain causes some people experience sleep paralysis. Sleep

paralysis is where your body becomes paralyzed when you are still awake. I wonder about how

this brain mechanic works and why it only works some of the time.

I am going to gather research about sleep walking by looking for sleep studies that have

been conducted by reliable sources. I know that NASA has conducted sleep experiments related
 Winn 3

to space travel and this information could prove useful. I know that there have been large

amounts of testing has been completed because sleep is an interesting topic for other people too.

A common question is why do we sleep? Researchers still do not know why we need to sleep. I

hope through my research that I will have more of an understanding of sleep. This is important to

know because if I want to make an argument about who we are when we sleep, I need to

understand sleep generally.

I do not know very much about the difference between our subconscious and our active

thoughts. I do not know what is considered thinking actively versus thinking passively. I believe

that our subconscious is the voice that we have in our heads, that lets us read and takes us off on

day dreams. I believe that active thought is when we are using our minds to do tasks, such as

typing. I want to find out how the two levels of thinking work together to make our brains

function. I am going to research about this by looking for psychology reports to help myself

understand the basics of the human mind. These will also help me understand the differences

between how people think and give me a range of personalities to compare.

This is important to know because I am claiming that our subconscious is different than

our active thinking minds so therefore I need to understand how both work.

I dont know if there is a link between sleep walking and genetics. Sleep walking itself

being a mental disorder makes me believe that it could be a genetic trait. I would like to know if

it is possibly that sleepwalking can be passed down through generations. I also want to know if

our ancestry could determine how we will dream. I think these are important to know because if

sleepwalking is genetic, that could mean the we are predetermined to sleepwalk, and that we are

bound to let our subconscious act out its desires. It is also important because if our ancestry

could influence our dreams now, it could possibly mean that our dreams have deeper, human
 Winn 4

nature related meanings. Maybe our dreams express what is in our nature, but our society will

not allow. I will research this by studying sleep experiments and trying to follow family trees of

sleep disorders.

This is a researchable topic because of the extensive studies that have already be

performed relating to sleep and its origins. This topic matters because we study why people

behave the way that they do, and it would change the way we see ill behavior if we knew that we

were not in control of a part of our minds. This could help lead to a deeper understanding of

human nature and how it plays a role in our everyday lives. Maybe humans have not completely

evolved past our violent ways; we have just suppressed our urges to be violent.

I expect to see difficulties finding evidence of odd behavior of people sleepwalking. I

anticipate this because it might not be something that people have paid attention to throughout

studies and experiments. I also feel that it may be difficult to fully express my argument. I am

afraid that my personal experiences will make my ability to explain skewed. I hope to find this

not to be true, because I am very interested in this topic and I want other to see why I am

interested in this.

I want this argument to make people think more about how we might not be as

sophisticated as we think we are. I hope this argument makes people think about the possibility

that our human nature could be triggered without our control. I believe that there could be a link

between sleepwalking, our subconscious and active thought, and genetics in sleeping. This link

could show how the nature of our subconscious is linked to human nature.