Just pondering something here (science related)

I have been with the wife over 10 years, and I know her voice really well. With her Parkinson's I have noticed a change over the years - both from her general tiredness and tremors.

A few nights ago we were sleeping in bed and she woke me up talking about a show we like to watch (Trailer Park Boys from Canada, which you can find on YouTube). After a few minutes of me mumbling to her to go back to sleep and that I was tired I realized that she was not talking to me at all, but once again talking in her sleep.

I nudged her and she woke up and said something, her voice raspy and very tired, and then went back to sleep.

What I am wondering: While talking in her sleep she was clear as day, no tremors, no tiredness, etc that I am used to.

It was like I was hearing her from 10 years ago, I could even tell she was smiling without even looking at her.

I dunno, just seemed weird to me.

Be good to her

Thank you for that article, will pass it along to the wife!

I won't go into the whole thing here, but the upshot is that in a normal dream sleep the central nervous system shunts motor pathways to "harmless" linkages, e.g. to the eye muscles, so that neural pathways can be exercised without negative adaptive consequences, such as hurting yourself thrashing or giving away your position to predators. Occasionally those shunts don't happen correctly, for example, when you have that falling sensation just before dropping off to sleep, or, fairly obviously, when talking in your sleep or sleep walking.

I wonder whether sometimes when those shunts don't work properly they engage neural pathways that are not the ones usually used during waking consciousness. In this case motor pathways that are less damaged, or perhaps during sleep the "correct" pathways are not receiving as much stimulus from Parkinsons damaged associated neurons.

"There is a transient restored motor control during RBD in patients with Parkinson's disease. Indeed, all patients improve (and sometimes ‘much better’) their movements, speech or facial expression during REM sleep, compared with movements performed awake and during arousals. This improvement is confirmed both by bed partners and by direct observation of night-time video in a large group of patients. REM sleep movements are faster, smoother, coordinated and become symmetrical while asymmetrical (due to parkinsonism) awake. Patients move their disabled side more often."

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/130/2/450

Thanks!

My Dad has PD. This article looks very interesting. Thanks for posting it.

for example I smoke cigs in my conscious life but I don't smoke in my dreams.
Another example......My Grandmother was on her death bed. mostly unconscious for weeks. Her breathing was very labored. All of the sudden she propped herself up in the bed and said somethings with great lucidity and ease. She had a gleam in her eye and I could tell she had one part of her right here on earth and another part in whatever comes next. Weird

She was out of it, talking smack as we say. It was upsetting to me as I was not prepared for it and I was supposed to stay the night there with her.

She saw me there and looked at my dad and told him to send me home because I could not handle it and she did not want me there, then a few minutes later when back to making little sense. Dad sent me home and stayed with her. She knew where she was and what was going on for about 5 minutes, and after dad told ok and I was walking out she reverted back to whatever place she was in.

Strange indeed.

His symptoms largely disappear when he is sleeping, no tremors, etc. A couple of times he's had a bad dream and leaped out of bed - something he couldn't do awake. He has trouble just getting in and out of bed usually. IIRC, the body uses different parts of the brain when asleep than when awake. It's possible the areas of the brain most affected by PD/dopamine-receptor loss are cut out of the loop, so to speak, so that symptoms disappear during sleep. I'm going to take a closer look at the article posted above as it addresses this.