Abstract Mkid 54

We evaluated the recordings of 22 patients between 11 and 42 years of age who presented with the complaint of sleepwalking (SW) accompanied by other nocturnal behaviors ranging from mumbling, talking or screaming to more complex automatisms. None of the patients had a history of epileptic seizures. All patients had a history of another parasomnia; seven (33 %) reported family members with a history of parasomnia. More than one third of the patients started sleepwalking after age 10 years and almost two thirds had been sleepwalking for at least 15 years. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) indicated psychopathology in nine patients; but there was usually no close association between SW and any psychopathology, and the treatment of one condition did not improve the other condition. In 12 patients, all-night polysomnographic investigations showed epileptiform abnormalities mostly recorded from temporal areas; four of them also had abnormal clinical EEGs. None of the parasomnia episodes in the sleep laboratory was associated with abnormal EEG activity. Anticonvulsant therapy reduced or completely eliminated the episodes in 11 patients with abnormal EEGs. Most of the patients in this study were either adolescents or young adults, but they exhibited the clinical characteristics of both classic (childhood) and adulthood somnambulism. There were also similarities with "episodic nocturnal wanderings" first described by Pedley and Guilleminault in 1977.