Source

Sleep Disorders Unit, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, APHP, Paris, France; Inserm, U975, Paris, France; Centre de Recherche de l’Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière, Pierre and Marie Curie University, UMR_S 975-CNRS UMR 722, 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.

Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

PMID: 22647346 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]