Scientists Studying Sleep Disorder Dubbed 'Sexsomnia'

Recent studies have shed light on sex-related sleep disorders.

LiveScience reports, that according to researchers, there are eleven different types of sex-related disorders, the prominent of them being a disorder named "sexsomnia" which affects perfectly psychologically sound people. Sexsomnia, also referred to as "sleepsex," is the disorder where people that are asleep engage in sexual activities without knowing it. Often times, they have no recollection of the past night's events.

Carlos Schenck of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center told LiveScience that basic instincts of the human psyche can reveal themselves during the course of sleep. This includes the animal instinct of sexual interaction embedded deep in the human mind.

What Schenck found was that people, a significant majority of whom are men, occasionally masturbate during sleep. Even more astounding, is that in the course of masturbation, they can sometimes initiate sex with a partner and reach orgasm during sleep. With no remembrance of the night's events, people with the disorders usually find out about this disorder through their partner or roommate. The legal ramifications of this can be daunting, as if someone with this disorder initiates sex without the bed partner's consent.

According to Schneck, people that already suffer from various sleep disorders are more likely to develop sex-related sleep disorders. When people that already have sleep disorders such as sleepwalking or sleep terrors, sexsomnia branches off from those disorders and adds on to their list of sleep ailments.

Sufferers of sex-related sleep disorders might feel ashamed at having this ailment, but people should know that it is not an indicator of their daytime behavior. They are all perfectly normal people with psychologically stable minds. In no way does their unorthodox behavior during sleep reflect their overall personality.