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Why Do People Talk in Their Sleep?

Newer research seeks to explain the altered brain activity that triggers sleep talking and why it only sometimes mirrors our dreams.

By Allison Whitten
May 15, 2021 5:00 PM
man sleeping with mouth open - shutterstock 1623832186
(Credit: Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock)

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If you’ve ever talked in your sleep, you likely only know about it because someone else was awake to hear you. And when that person told you, a sudden, profound feeling of panic may have led you to wonder: Did I reveal my deepest secrets — just like in the 1983 “Talking in Your Sleep” song by The Romantics? 

Probably not. Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist and long-time dream researcher at Harvard Medical School, says that sleep talkers might describe an intense, important thing from their lives once in a while, but it’s often mixed in with gibberish that makes it difficult to tell fantasy from reality. 

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