Does Recurrent Isolated Sleep Paralysis Involve More than Cognitive Neurosciences? By Jean-Christophe Terrillon and Sirley Marques Bonham

 Fuseli: L'incubo abbandona il giaciglio di due fanciulle dormienti, 1793, Zurigo, Muraltengut

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2a. in August 1999, Dr. Mignot et al. from the Stanford University Sleep Research Center in California announced that they had identified the gene that causes narcolepsy in dogs (Discover, February 2000, pp. 76-81). More recently, Dr. Yanagisawa et al. from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center announced that they had found a closely associated gene in mice. Quoting Dr. Mignot, "Pinpointing the narcolepsy gene in dogs could open the gate to understanding human sleep disorders." More details can be found in the February 2000 issue of "Discover" Magazine.

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19. http://bisleep.medsch.ucla.edu/discussions/basic/msgs.html. The initial message was posted on 23 January 1996 and in it the words "sleep paralysis" were mentioned for the fist time since the establishment of that site.

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21. A good example of psychological study is the survey on sleep paralysis established on the web site of the department of psychology of the university of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, at : http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/spquest01.htm(or http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P.html).

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26g. Dr. G. Buzzi is an Italian neurologist practising in Ravenna, Italy, and who specializes in sleep disorders. His E-mail address is : gbuzzi@MAIL.LINKNET.IT. Just as the first author of this paper, he is a member of an electronic mailing list specifically devoted to patients affected with various forms of periodic paralysis (HypoKPP, HyperKPP, HypoKTPP, NormoKPP, etc...), where both are scientific observers. The address of the list is HKPP@maelstrom.stjohns.edu. To subscribe to the list, one should contact calexeditor@NUCLEUS.COM. Access to the list is strictly reserved to patients diagnosed with or suspected of being affected with one of the different types of periodic paralysis, and to scientists interested in the PPs. The mailing list is associated with the Periodic Paralysis Association (PPA), a not-for-profit organization established and officially registered in the United States in 1998 that is devoted not only to an understanding of the different aspects of the PPs, but also to possible connections with other disorders, including sleep disorders. the URL address of the PPA is http://www.periodicparalysis.org. The first author of this paper is also a scientific advisor to the PPA, for sleep disorders.

26h. As mentioned in 26f, the electronic address of the list is HKPP@maelstrom.stjohns.edu.

26i. The full results of the survey were posted on the list (HKPP@maelstrom.stjohns.edu) by Dr. G. Buzzi on 19 January 2000 and they can be retrieved from the archives of the list or obtained by contacting calexeditor@NUCLEUS.COM

27. The first author of this paper has a mild anxiety disorder with agoraphobia in addition to RISP.

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30. The first author of this paper has been having permament tinnitus since childhood. The intensity of the tinnitus increases significantly at the beginning of his RISP episodes.

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51. An excellent explanation of sleep paralysis that includes the original text of de Maupassant's "Le Horla" describing a sleep paralysis episode can be found at: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/LeHorla.html. See also the recently published journal paper : Cheyne J.A., Newbyclark I.R., Rueffer S.D. " Relations among hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences associated with sleep paralysis," J. Sleep. Res. 8 (4): 313-317 (1999).

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57. M. Simon Sherwood is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of psychology of the university of Edinburgh in the U.K. whose thesis will be a study of the parapsychological aspects of sleep paralysis. His email is: sherwood@holyrood.ed.ac.uk

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65. ASP-mailing list ("Awareness during Sleep Paralysis" mailing list), (September 1998). To subscribe click on: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASP-L/join. [Or you may enter it directly from the site http://www.trionica.com.] Warning: This is not a professional list. It simply contains personal accounts of individuals having RISP episodes.

65a. The first author of this paper once saw a popular Japanese television program entitled "Unbiribabo" (meaning "Unbelievable"), animated by the famous television celebrity and Japanese actor Takeshi, where jokes about RISP where added to serious discussions on the subject : in a whimsical sketch, Mr. Takeshi was bound by large metal chains (hence referring to the paralysis), while sitting on a chair , and was frantically shouting for help (aired on 8 August 1998, Kansai-TV, channel 8, Japan).

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67. The television program entitled "sleep files" was aired on the Discovery Channel (Discovery Signature Series) on 21 June 1998, at 10:00 p.m. (EST) and on June 22, at 1:00 a.m., as well as on June 28, from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.e of the episode that covered sleep paralysis and Dr. David Hufford [48a] is titled "Altered States" (http://www.discovery.com).

Jean-Christophe Terrillon was born in 1961 in Germany and has dual canadian/french citizenship. He is presently an invited researcher in the Human Information Processing Research Laboratories (HIP) of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) in Kyoto, Japan. He received in B.Sc. in physics from the university of Ottawa, his M.Sc. in plasma physics and biophysics from the university of Montreal, and his Ph.D. in physics (optics) from Laval university, Canada. He was awarded graduate scholarships by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and a post-doctoral fellowship by the Science and Technology Agency of Japan (STA). He is an alumnus of the International Space University (ISU). He has a large variety of research interests and his current research at ATR involves the development of biologically plausible computational models for human face detection in complex scene images by use of color and shape information. He has had RISP since over ten years, with almost all the components that are described in this paper and since three years he has been actively involved in personal research on the phenomenon of sleep paralysis and its possible connections with other poorly understood disorders as well as with OBEs and lucid dreaming.

His motto is: "To challenge the known and embrace the unknown, rationally but with an open mind."

Her motto is: "To look at any puzzling events in life from different points of views, without prejudice."

Web-page: http://www.TheConsciousDreamer.org

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