Somewhere in the murky space that divides alert from dormant — an enigmatic realm through which we all drift in the course of a good night’s sleep — the human body sometimes behaves as though it belongs to both worlds at once.
It rises from bed, ambling aimlessly. Perhaps it fiddles with household objects, cleans the kitchen or rearranges the furniture. At a glance, it seems to see, to feel, to register its surroundings. But look closer: The eyes are glassy, the movements clumsy. “These people are stuck in the nether regions between asleep and awake,” says Nathaniel Watson, co-director of the University of Washington Medicine Sleep Center.
