Depriving rats of REM sleep: the identification of a methodological problem

Several studies that used Jouvet's platform-in-the-water technique to deprive rats of REM sleep are reviewed. It is observed that a consistent feature of the design of these studies was to ignore the ratio between the size of the animal and the diameter of the platform when the REM deprivation was manipulated. Some contradictory studies are considered, and it is shown that the discrepant outcomes in the literature could be the result of inattention to that ratio.