History – Features, Factors, and Characteristics of Parasomnias

Since antiquity, the mystery around sleep and its disorders, particularly parasomnias, has fostered superstitions, myths, and tales. In modern times, physicians attempted to explain these phenomena as neuropsychiatric and organic diseases. The definitive acknowledgment of parasomnias as organic disorders occurred only during the twentieth century when sleep medicine became a scientific discipline. Recently, the development of the modern polysomnography has allowed improved but incomplete understanding regarding the pathophysiology of the parasomnias.