When I was young, I had a lot of sleep issues like sleep walking, falling off the bed due to perhaps some dream I would never recall in the morning, and moving a lot as if I were dancing or something. I had sleep talking too, but that is one issue I have never managed to completely outgrow.

Story Time

A few months ago, my roommate who would always stay awake late at night because her girlfriend was in the other side of the world heard me talking in my sleep. She thought I was talking to someone on the phone, but she soon realized that it wasn't really what it was when she saw my phone placed in her bed. She said that it was so creepy, because she claimed she heard actual French words coming out of mouth, yet we both knew of course that I didn't and still don't know how to speak French. When she told me all about it in the morning, I thought she was just bluffing. I confirmed if she really heard French words, and she said "Yes, you even had the accent although I didn't get to Google Translate because I was so spooked and how do you even spell French words?!"

After a few months, I started getting really curious about my whole sleep talking thing and that one odd incidence, especially that I still sleep talk until now, so I started researching about it.

What I Found out about Sleep Talking

Sleep talking, also known in the sleep studies field as somniloquy is considered as a type of parasomnia or abnormal sleep behavior that is more common in males and children (well I guess I'm part of the minority). Also, this sleep activity is caused by the following:

• Depression
• Stress
• Anxiety
• Drugs/Alcohol
• Fever
• Sleep Deprivation
  

Now, brain activities cause sleep talking, and the mentioned causes for sleep talking all lead to certain brain activities that could be considered harmful or simply unhealthy for our brains. Therefore sleep talking is like a blackout that results from a power interruption, and our brain is the body and all its activities' source of power.

So What Exactly Happens to the Brain When We Sleep Talk?

When we hear someone talk in their sleep, we immediately conclude that the person might be dreaming. However, as a person who is a regular in the sleep talking event, when the morning comes and someone would tell me about my sleep talking during the night and ask me what I was dreaming about, I would always say "I don't think I had a dream last night." This is because sleep talking is not always associated with dreaming.

Sleep talking, like sleep walking and other odd movements occurring in our sleep is actually our reaction to a little escape from the control of glycine and GABA released by our brains in our sleep to prevent us from moving or basically to avoid us from acting the things we do in our dreams. Boy, imagine jumping off your window just because you were dreaming of being Superman jumping off a bridge to save kids on a falling bus. Now, when we slip off the effects of glycine and GABA, movement becomes possible like our mouths allowing us to speak not just the way we do in our dreams, but also to sort of narrate what is going on in our heads like perhaps a subconscious memory.

However, scientists still do not have certain explanations for sleep talking. They only have theories so far I hope could progress in the years to come.

Connecting the Dots

At the time I spoke French in my sleep, I was actually in a stage of excessive drinking--we even drank that night and I had been drinking consistently the past few months before that, so there goes the alcohol factor. Alcohol is really known for causing sleep problems, and we know how well it could affect our brain considering the fact that at some point you probably had some trouble remembering things you did at a night of tequila shots with friends the day after.

About speaking French, I had watched a French film called Blue is the Warmest Color just about a week before that. As a French language fan, I really listened to how they spoke, how they pronounced words, and focused on what the words meant in English based on the subtitles provided, though I know I never really remembered all of those things. Now, it is possible that since our subconscious is really good in storing memory, I might have simply orally played what I had watched in my sleep. It is not fiction, we all know how the subconscious works--in mysterious ways.

FUN FACT

A research published in a journal by the Swiss National Science Foundation claims that listening to a newly-learned language while sleeping can help boost our memory of the words. Check it out here!

References:

• Sleep Talking - National Sleep Foundation
• Facts About Talking in Your Sleep - National Sleep Foundation
• Dreaming in Language You Don't Know - Psychology Today

jpg sources used for edited photo and self-made gifs:

• First Photo
• Beer
• Sleeping Man
• Brain