All the most commonly prescribed drugs for mental and emotional disorders affect dreams—typically via their effects on REM sleep. Under healthy conditions REM sleep ‘turns on' when activity levels of ...

For many years, the idea that “sleeping on it” would provide an individual with some time in which their subconscious mind would work through a problem or problems has generally been accepted as ...

Sleep is essential to physical and mental well-being. Experts are interested in understanding how sleep may affect or be affected by certain conditions, like dementia. The study found that taking ...

Hasegawa et al. first used a fluorescence-based sensor to measure dopamine levels in the amygdala of mice as they naturally cycled between wakefulness and non-REM and REM sleep. Dopamine release in ...

Eugene Aserinsky never wanted to study sleep. He tried being a social worker, a dental student, and even did a stint in the army as an explosives handler. He enrolled at the University of Chicago to ...

While it is certainly true that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep functions, in part, to promote a healthy waking mind, there are compelling reasons to believe that the opposite is the case as well: the ...

When Massimo Scanziani’s daughter was young, he’d often see her eyes twitching beneath her eyelids while she was sleeping. These rapid eye movements (or REMs) are so obvious, Scanziani told me, that ...

Our sleep is marked by cycles of distinct brain activity. The most well-known of these is probably rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, which is characterized by loss of muscle control leading to ...