GC: n
S: NSF – https://goo.gl/kgqv3P (last access: 17 November 2016); NCBI – https://goo.gl/6yn5eM (last access: 17 November 2016).
N: 1. Borrowing from French somnambulisme. From Latin somnus which means “sleep”, and ambulare, which means “to walk”.
2. Somnambulism is a behavioral disorder of sleep in which a person sits up and performs various motor actions, such as standing, walking about, talking, eating, screaming, dressing, going to the bathroom, or even leaving the house. The episode usually ends with the sleepwalker’s returning to sleep, with no subsequent memory of the episode.
3. The nineteenth-century physician Alexandre Bertrand assigned somnambulism to four causes:
- A particular nervous temperament that predisposes individuals otherwise in good health to paroxysm of somnambulism during their ordinary sleep.
- It is sometimes produced in the course of certain diseases of which it may be considered a symptom of a crisis.
- It is often seen in the course of the proceedings necessary to bring on the condition known as animal magnetism.
- It may result as a consequence of a high degree of mental exaltation. Accordingly, he distinguished four kinds of somnambulism: the natural, the symptomatic, the artificial, and ecstatic. Hypnotism would fall under the artificial category, and trance under the ecstatic.
4. The term “somanmbulism” is commonly known as “sleepwalking”. But “somnambulism” can also be called “noctambulation” or “somnambulance”, derivated from French.
5. Derivation of the noun “somnambulism”:
- noun: somnambule
- noun: somnambulist
- adjective: somnambulic.
S: 1. TFD – http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/somnambulism – Mosby’s Medical Dictionary (last access: 17 November 2016). 2. EncBrit – https://global.britannica.com/science/sleepwalking (last access: 17 November 2016). 3. Enc.com – https://goo.gl/bttVvv (last access:17 November 2016). 4. TFD – http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/somnambulism – Mosby’s Medical Dictionary (last access: 17 November 2016). 5. GDT – http://www.granddictionnaire.com/ficheOqlf.aspx?Id_Fiche=8877150 (last access: 17 November 2016)
SYN: somnambulance
S: COSNAUTAS (last access: 15 November 2016)
CR: amnesia, disorder, hypnosis, somnolence.
