Both nightmares and night terrors can be terrifying. Both may disturb sleeping patterns and cause insomnia in children and adults. Since nightmares and night terrors have a lot of similarities, it might be difficult to determine which you are experiencing; however, there are differences between the two. No matter what they are defined as, if they are intense or disturbing sleeping patterns you should seek the advice of a physician or psychologist.
Duration
Night terrors do not last very long, anywhere between five to 25 minutes. There is no specific time range that a nightmare lasts. Nightmares could technically go on as long as the REM sleep cycle lasts.
Sleep Stages
Nightmares occur at the same time dreams do. Nightmares are technically the same thing as dreaming. They can only occur in the REM sleep stage, or rapid eye movement stage. Rapid eye movement happens when people are in their deepest stage of sleep, and occurs approximately 90 minutes after they fall asleep. Night terrors occur before the REM sleep stage, usually around the fourth sleep stage, which is the stage transitioning from the deepest sleep of a non-REM stage to the REM stage. This stage of transitioning usually occurs within the first hour of sleep but can occur as late as three hours into sleeping.
Symptoms
Night terrors usually cause sudden awakening. During a night terror the sufferer may experience screaming, thrashing, sweating, confusion and rapid heart rate. Conversely, during a nightmare there is not much movement besides slight whimpering and tearing up. Upon waking, a person who experienced a night terror will usually not remember what happened but will feel fear and confusion. If the person does remember the night terror, it will only be a memory of brief or startling images. Nightmares are usually remembered in the morning upon natural waking. The memories of the nightmare are usually vivid and may be remembered as a movie-length story.
Sufferers
Anyone can experience nightmares and almost everyone does. Night terrors, on the other hand, are generally experienced more often by children, males, those suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and by those who also experience sleep walking and sleep talking. Children who get night terrors usually stop having them after puberty and adults who have them usually are suffering from stress.
Causes
There is not much known about what causes either nightmares or night terrors. Nightmares can be caused by a variety of things as simple as what movies were watched or what was read before sleep. Possible causes of night terrors include PTSD, stress, being unable to make a smooth transition to REM, an overactive central nervous system during sleep, medication and possibly genetics.
Tags: night terrors, Night terrors, night terror, nightmares night, nightmares night terrors