REM Sleep and Dreams

In Dement’s article The relation of eye movements During Sleep to Dream Activity the participants in the study or “Ss” included seven adult males and two adult females with five of them studied thoroughly and the other four used as confirmation of the former. The “Ss” had electrodes placed on various parts of their head and face and were then sent off to bed with the electrodes plugged in using a single cord allowing them full range of motion while they slept. The experimenters or “E” would wake the “Ss” up during certain duration of the periods where the participant was either in REM sleep or NREM sleep, they were first asked if they had been dreaming and then asked to describe in detail what their dream was about if possible. The experimenters did this over the course of 43 nights I believe. They found that “Ss” could more accurately recall their dreams when awakened during REM periods than NREM periods. It was then concluded that it is possible to objectively measure dreams by recording REM’s during sleep.

What I found interesting about this study was that in addition to finding the accuracy of dream recall after waking the “Ss” up the experimenters would then also ask the participants if they could predict how long they had been dreaming given a duration of either 5 or 15 minutes. And the cool thing about that was that the majority of the time the participants guessed correctly.

Something that I didn’t really care for in this study methods and results aside, was that they mentioned that they placed a bell next to the bed of the participants and that was how they would wake up the patients… it was “sufficiently loud to ensure immediate awakening in all levels of sleep”. For me that would be a big N O, I don’t think I could have been a part of this study I would not like to have to be woken up from my sleep and then asked questions???? No thank you!

I don’t think I fully understand what the intent for the general public would be but from what I can gather I think the purpose is mainly just bringing awareness to the benefits of good quality deep REM sleep, it may also correlate to memory consolidation as well and how REM sleep helps with that.