night horror

Also known as night terror, sleep terror

disorder that causes feelings of anxiety, stress and dread

Key facts

Other names: Sleep terror, pavor nocturnus
Specialty: Psychiatry , sleep medicine , clinical psychology
Symptoms: Feelings of panic or dread, sudden motor activity, thrashing, sweating, rapid breathing, increased heart rate
Usual onset: Early childhood; symptoms tend to decrease with age
Duration: 1 to 10 minutes
Differential diagnosis: Epileptic seizure , nightmares

via Wikipedia infobox

Research

13 papers

Epilepsy is Dancing.Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · 2015
Dead of night.The Psychoanalytic quarterly · 2010
From burlesque to horror: a century of sleepwalking on the silver screen.

~16 min read

Article

Night terror, also called sleep terror, is a sleep disorder causing feelings of panic or dread and typically occurring during the first hours of stage 3–4 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and lasting for 1 to 10 minutes. It can last longer, especially in children. Sleep terror is classified in the category of NREM-related parasomnias in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders. There are two other categories: REM-related parasomnias and other parasomnias. Parasomnias are qualified as undesirable physical events or experiences that occur during entry into sleep, during sleep, or during arousal from sleep.

Sleep terrors usually begin in childhood and usually decrease as age increases. Factors that may lead to sleep terrors are young age, sleep deprivation, medications, stress, fever, and intrinsic sleep disorders. The frequency and severity differ among individuals; the interval between episodes can be as long as weeks and as short as minutes or hours. As a result, any type of nocturnal attack or nightmare may be confused with and reported as a night terror.