Awake or sleeping? See how narcolepsy works

"The night is dark and full of terrors, " said Melisandre, the red witch of Game of Thrones . For many people, however, these terrors do not come in the form of sword fighting and fleeing: it is called narcolepsy.

This neurological disorder plays a very scary role in our brains: it diminishes the clear line between being awake and sleeping, causing people who have it to experience symptoms that can be quite terrible.

Narcolepsy manifests mainly in four ways, although symptoms are usually isolated. The first of these is sudden sleep attacks in individuals who consider they have had enough sleep but feel tired and drowsy nonetheless.

The second is catalepsy, which leads to a kind of faintness when the body - or part of it - simply shuts off and one surrenders. The body goes out, but the mind remains awake.

Sleep paralysis is another serious symptom of narcolepsy; The person with sleep paralysis is awake but cannot move. It just seems like a bad dream, with hallucinations and very clear thoughts, but the subject is awake.

Finally, hallucinations are a fourth symptom - being at this borderline between sleeping and waking up, one cannot distinguish between what is the fruit of one's mind and what is real. But, after all, what causes all this?

It's pure chemistry

Like so many other operations that the human brain performs, narcolepsy is the result of chemical bonds or lack thereof.

According to research conducted at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1999, the key word for the development of narcolepsy is a substance called hypocretin (or orexin). It is responsible for various functions in the body, including the regulation of appetite, arousal and, look: wakefulness.

Stanford researchers analyzed dogs with narcolepsy and found that they had a mutation that affected the hypocretin receptor gene.

It turns out that hypocretin is only transmitted by a small bundle of neurons located in the hypothalamus. When these neurons are damaged, failure to transmit hypocretin leads to narcolepsy.

The cause of these defects may be genetic, autoimmune disease or some head trauma and unfortunately there is still no cure. However, medicine can help narcoleptic people stay awake during the day and sleep better at night with some medications.

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