Related Experiment Videos
Studies on nap sleep in young students. Relationships between polygraphic data and the occurrence of dreams in
J Islas-Marroquín1, H A Delgado-Brambila
1Laboratorio Multidisciplinario de Investigación, Escuela Militar de Graduados de Sanidad, UDEFA, México, D.F.
Background:
Afternoon nap sleep was studied in 32 young male medical students who take customary naps to replace loss in nocturnal sleep.
Methods:
From 16 subjects, a group called dreamers was formed, and the other 16 individuals were grouped as non-dreamers. Polygraphic recordings lasting 30 min were done at a fixed time in the afternoon, and the relationship between these data and the occurrence of dreams was investigated.
Results:
We found that this replacing of nap sleep can adopt different sequences and relative durations of its phases, and can also show individual variations that have a systematic relationship with the occurrence of dreams. It was observed that dreaming was closely related to the appearance, during the first 10 minutes of the nap, of Stage I with Slow Eye Movements, interrupted by Sleep Onset REM Periods (SOREMPs) and, to a lesser degree, to phases IV and III of slow sleep.
Conclusions:
According to these findings, the existence of dreamers and non-dreamers depends upon the relationship between an internal sleep-waking rhythm, and an external rhythm imposed by the daytime resting-activity schedule on the habit of dreaming, and, to a certain extent, on the mental phenomena occurring between the generation of dreams and the moment of awakening.