Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 152-169). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Sleep paralysis is a condition in which the REM sleep in an individual fails to disengage after they awaken. This leads to full body paralysis, during which vivid and often terrifying hallucinations occur. I myself suffer from sleep paralysis. That being said, I have always been intrigued by the concept of exploring serious topics through the use of comedy. In essence, that is what my project is about. I wanted to make light of sleep paralysis. By doing so, I hoped to deescalate the terror in the mind of the sufferer. Comedy is possibly the most effective method I have in my arsenal, as I have found that it has helped me to overcome my own issues with the condition. I have attempted to create a source of information for my fellow sufferers that is both informative and non-threateningly simple in its delivery of the information. To summarize, this project was to give people like me something that I never had access to when I first developed the condition and was severely unprepared for dealing with it. I aim to be an artist that is both humorous and helpful in everything that I do, and it is my hope that I was able to succeed in this task.

Sömnparalys innebär att man vaknar upp men inte kan röra sig, och ofta har man skrämmande sinnesupplevelser. Tolkningen och upplevelsen under en sömnparalys kan leda till rädsla att berätta om paralysen, och även om man berättar kan det leda till social stigmatisering och feldiagnostisering.En enkätinsamling gjordes med 100 studenter. Huvudfrågan var om upplevarna av sömnparalys var oroliga för att berätta om det, för att de är rädda att ses som psykiskt sjuka. De som haft sömnparalys berättade för andra, men hellre för någon de känner väl. De och dem som inte upplevt sömnparalys såg det som ett fysiskt problem snarare än ett psykiskt. Risken för stigmatisering och psykisk feldiagnostisering är reducerad, men mer forskning och utbildning i ämnet behövs. / Sleep paralysis means waking up and being unable to move, and are often accompanied with frightening perceptual experiences. The interpretation and experience perceived during sleep paralysis, may lead to fear of telling others about the paralysis, because of the risk for social stigma and misdiagnosis. A survey was conducted with a group of hundred students. The main question was if experiencers are afraid to tell others with the fear of risking been perceived as mentally ill. The experiencers did tell others, but rather to those they knew well. They as well as the non-experiencers viewed it as a physical problem rather than a psychological one. The risk of social stigma and misdiagnosis are reduced, but more research and education in the subject is needed.

ZUGZWANG is a proof-of-concept short horror film following Ian Sepela, a man being haunted by the Shadow Man, a sleep paralysis demon. He must confront his past to save himself and his mother from the Shadow Man’s clutches or lose their lives just like he’d lost his father’s to the Shadow Man twenty years prior.

The bidirectional link between insufficient sleep and the distress related to a parasomnia known as isolated sleep paralysis (ISP) might lead to chronic health effects. The impact of fear-ridden hallucinations related to this REM sleep disorder can be both distressful and embarrassing for individuals often resulting in a reticence to seek help. This quantitative study was guided by a biopsychosocial approach with an integrated theoretical framework. One aim of the study was to determine if fear parameters of ISP (low and high) differ when considering psychosocial factors and sleep quality, based on the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes About Sleep Scale, the Social Phobia Inventory, the Locus of Control (LOC) subscales, and the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Inventory. Predictive associations between psychosocial factors and subjective sleep quality (SSQ) were also investigated. Retrospective online data from a sample of 159 participants ages 18 and over were analyzed via MANOVA, multiple regression, and independent samples t-tests. Findings from the MANOVA were significant and showed that participants who experience ISP with more fear scored higher on two measures, external other LOC and social phobia. The MANOVA regarding differences in SSQ in relation to psychosocial variables were not significant, and independent sample t-tests did not differentiate fear parameters for DBAS and SSQ (poor sleep was found for both parameters). Providers of therapeutic treatments should take factors of social phobia and external other LOC into account with regards to poor sleep quality for those distressed by ISP. Sleep quality assessments might benefit those who are afraid to disclose about ISP sleep distress, as long term poor sleep can place some at risk for negative health outcomes.

Genom spatial närvaro i en experimentell medieteknisk filminstallation siktar arbetet på att ge kännedom om det naturliga fenomenet sömnparalys (SP). Det här görs genom en medieteknisk undersökning som blandar mytologi, som tros ha uppstått på grund utav SP, med verkliga fakta om SP. Arbetet resulterade i en animerad film i 3D som presenterades i en filminstallation. Upplevelsen av installationen ska simulera hur det känns att drabbas av fenomenet. Tanken är att deltagarna ska kunna identifiera SP i deras dåtid och framtid och få veta att det är en naturlig process och ej är farligt. Arbetet togs fram genom designperspektiven x for change och edutainment som låg till grund för filminstallationen. / Through immersion in an experimental media technological video installation this work aims to give awareness of the natural phenomenon sleep paralysis (SP). This was done through a research in media technologies that mixes mythology, that is believed to be based on SP, with real facts about SP. The work resulted in a 3D animated movie that was presented in a video installation. The experience is supposed to simulate how it feels to be affected by the phenomenon. The idea was that the participant will be able to identify SP in their past and future and to know that it is a natural process that is not dangerous. The work was done through the design perspectives x for change and edutainment that was the foundation for the video installation.

Nos objets de recherche sont des paroles. De l'acte linguistique à la parole narrative, ce travail explore les patrimoines narratifs d'expérience de milieux alpins, depuis les Alpes francophones jusqu'aux territoires himalayens du Népal. Les documents narratifs de la collecte de Charles Joisten et les enquêtes que nous avons conduites dans les Alpes valdôtaines et chez les groupes Bahun-Chhetri et Newar du Népal nous ont emmené sur les traces des ontologies fantastiques qui hantent les imaginaires narratifs de ces populations alpines. A partir de ces documents, nous avons développé une analyse transculturelle d'anthropologie neurocognitive comparée, basée sur une approche qui permet de faire le pont entre le domaine de l'ethnographie de la narration (la folkloristique) et les neurosciences cognitives. Par une prise en compte des liens entre les systèmes neurocognitifs des êtres humains producteurs d'imaginaire et leurs inspirations émanant du milieu culturel, nous sommes parvenu à pouvoir dire quelque chose du sensorium cérébral, de ses sources spécifiques (a priori contre-intuitives), auxquelles puise la création de telles ontologies imaginaires. Nous avons inséré notre travail dans le cadre du modèle transculturel d'anthropologie neuro-cognitive BRAINCUBUS (depuis Cathiard et al., 2011). Ajoutée à notre intention, une modalité autre que l'intuition de psychologie intuitive et la contre-intuition scientifique : une sur-intuition limitée aux expériences contre-intuitives non-délusionnelles.En tant qu'interface entre le folklore du surnaturel et les récentes avancées de la neurophysiologie du sommeil, ce modèle nous a permis de construire notre recherche à partir des ontologies imaginaires repérées par la folkloristique internationale, pour la plupart générées dans l'état dissocié du cerveau qu'est la paralysie du sommeil. A partir de ce quatrième état du cerveau, il est possible de dégager l'origine des différentes phénoménologies donnant naissance à l'anthropodiversité des ontologies surnaturelles. Ces corps dits « fantômes » étant neuralement bien réels, notre objectif visait l'unification de tels corps-fantômes de l'imaginaire narratif humain avec les corps physiques par leurs cartographies corticales. Nous avons focalisé notre attention sur les deux types principaux de corps-fantômes issus des deux composantes fondamentales de la paralysie du sommeil : OBE (Out-of-Body Experience) et AP3S (Alien Presence Sensed from Self Shadowing). En partant de la matrice sémantique de cette paralysie, nous avons différencié les fondements corticaux des deux phénoménologies universelles de l'âme-partie-visiter et du dormeur-visité, celles-ci se produisant, latéralisées respectivement à droite (OBE) et à gauche (AP3S), dans la jonction temporo-pariétale (TPJ).En examinant les déplacements hors-du-corps, nous avons pu mettre en évidence le rôle nodal d'une inquiétude partagée transculturellement. Il s'agit de la précaution de ne pas remuer le corps inanimé du sujet en paralysie, pour que le corps-animé s'y réintroduise. Cette sur-intuition physiologique – mémorisée et transmissible en motif narratif – devient un savoir-faire vital : l'action de retourner sur la bouche une personne en paralysie du sommeil reviendrait à la mettre en danger de mourir par suffocation, car elle ne peut reprendre le contrôle de sa respiration volontaire à cause de la paralysie des muscles intercostaux externes. La paralysie du sommeil, dont la prévalence est plutôt importante, nous a permis d'ancrer les récits dans des expériences neuralement indéniables de corps-fantômes. En intégrant ces données dans une forme neurocompatible, nous avons pu unifier les matrices narratives universelles en partant des corps-fantômes fondamentaux OBE et AP3S, dans un modèle de création neurale pour ces ontologies fantastiques, lesquelles, présentes depuis plus de 50.000 ans au moins, vont continuer à hanter nos imaginaires enrichissant le m/patrimoine narratif de l'Humanité. / Dedicated to spoken memories, this work explore experience-centered narrative heritage in faraway alpine environments: from French-speaking Alps to the Himalayan Nepal. Starting from the largest French collection of belief narratives by Charles Joisten, we focussed on Valdostan reports, and the same during several consecutive field investigations in Nepal, inside Bahun-Chhetri and Newar groups. Hence we strolled on the trails of fantastic ontologies, the ones that haunt the narrative imaginary of such distant alpine communities. On processing these documents, we developed a cross-cultural analysis in comparative neurocognitive anthropology, elaborating a framework that allowed to bridge field folkloristics and cognitive neuroscience. By taking into account the relationships between the neurocognitive systems of human brains as ontology engines, be they physical or imaginary ontologies, and their inspirations from the cultural environments, we were enabled to tell something about the cerebral sensorium, with its specific sources (a priori counterintuitive), from which the creation of such imaginary ontologies has drawn. For this purpose, we evaluated more explicitly our working hypotheses in the frame of the cross-cultural neurocognitive anthropological model BRAINCUBUS (since 2011 by Cathiard et al.). Notably we had the opportunity to benefit from the last significant improvements concerning psychological modalities of intuition within this framework.As an interface between folklore studies of the supernatural and the latest advances in the neurophysiology of sleep, this model has allowed us to build our research on imaginary ontologies (as landmarked long ago by international folkloristics), by considering that virtually all of which originated in the dissociated brain state called sleep paralysis. Starting from this 4th state of the brain, it was possible to identify the origin of different phenomenologies which spawn the anthropodiversity we meet for supernatural ontologies. Establishing that these so-called “phantom” bodies are clearly neurally real, our purpose was to achieve the unification of main phantom-bodies with physical bodies from their cortical mapping. We focussed mainly on the two main types of phantom-bodies generated by the two fundamental components of sleep paralysis: OBE (Out-of-Body Experience) and AP3S (Alien Sensed Presence from Self Shadowing). In the narrative documents we elicited the semantic matrix of paralysis and we became able to differentiate the cortical sources of the two universal narratives of the “soul leaving the body for visiting” and of “sleeper visited”, both generated in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and lateralized respectively to the right (OBE) and to the left (AP3S).An examination of OBE journeys allowed us to highlight the nodal role played by a cross-culturally shared anxiety. This is an injonctive precaution: do not move the inanimate body of a person in sleep paralysis, to allow the animate body to re-enter. This physiological over-intuition – stored and shared in narrative motifs – became an anti-lethal sapiential care. Actually rolling face down a sleep paralyzed person is at high risk of suffocating to death because s/he can not recover control of voluntary breathing, since external intercostal muscles are paralyzed. This sleep paralysis phenomenology is widespread enough to fuel transmissibility of narratives grounded in neurally undeniable experiences of phantom bodies. When framing these explicanda in a neurocompatible format, we were able to unify narrative matrices, elaborated from universally experienced OBE or AP3S phantom bodies within BRAINCUBUS as a model capable of neural creativity for such fantastic ontologies. Formulated by human wisdom along more than 50,000 years at least, they will continue to haunt our imaginary and enrich the narrative heritage of Humanity.

An interwoven fiction piece representing four perspectives and its effects on self-awareness. The most effective way to blur the line of self in this structure is to braid the minds, voices, and stories, of each perspective. With a focal point where all the voices eventually drift to being the frame of the story, there will be a unique distance between the stories. This thesis explores the effects of different types of mental and physiological illnesses through fiction, highlighting the effect of perception on fact and the perspective of the mentally ill.