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Updated: May 21, 2026

Quantifying Infra-slow Dynamics of Spectral Power and Heart Rate in Sleeping Mice
Published on: August 2, 2017
Dreaming without REM sleep
Delphine Oudiette1, Marie-José Dealberto, Ginevra Uguccioni
1Sleep Disorders Unit, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, APHP, Paris, France.
Abstract:
To test whether mental activities collected from non-REM sleep are influenced by REM sleep, we suppressed REM sleep using clomipramine 50mg (an antidepressant) or placebo in the evening, in a double blind cross-over design, in 11 healthy young men. Subjects were awakened every hour and asked about their mental activity. The marked (81%, range 39-98%) REM-sleep suppression induced by clomipramine did not substantially affect any aspects of dream recall (report length, complexity, bizarreness, pleasantness and self-perception of dream or thought-like mentation). Since long, complex and bizarre dreams persist even after suppressing REM sleep either partially or totally, it suggests that the generation of mental activity during sleep is independent of sleep stage.
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