sleep rem :: essays research papers

States of Consciousness Consciousness   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1960 a man named W. Dement conducted a series of studies relating to sleep. His main goal was to understand and learn about the effects of dream deprivation. His tactics would soon be very useful in the quest of answering some very complex questions.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  He started out with the idea of observing infants while they were asleep, without realizing that he couldn’t get no verbal feed back from a new born. He then decided to choose 20 random adults to be his ginnea pigs. He would then end up putting these 20 individuals through a series of test and trials. Dement did this by a series of awakenings through the course of sleep. He would monitor his subjects in another room by hooking up electronic devices to the patients muscles located around their eyes. The purpose of the electronic devices was to be able to wake up the subjects in two different periods. One being eye movement and the other no eye movement. He would then wake them up and ask if they could remember their dream.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  According to Dement 74% of the 27 awakenings during the periods of sleep accompanied by eye movement, could remember detailed visual dreams. The other 26% reported â€Å"the feeling of having dreamed,† but they could no recall the content in detail. During periods of no eye movement, there were 23 awakenings of which 82% did not remember dreaming and 4 of them said that they might have been dreaming but were not for sure. While his study progressed each subject would have to be awakened more frequently because of the bodies way of REM-rebound. Your body needs sleep and when it is denied sleep it tries to make up for lost sleep.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Today we know that there are four different stages of sleep. One being the lightest and four being the deepest. At the time, Dement had no idea that he was messing with one’s circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is like the body’s clock in which it sends messages to your brain to let you know what your body needs. For instance if your body needs sleep you will then start to feel tired.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The results could be used to improve interrogation tactics by utilizing dream, or sleep, deprivation. Dement did this by depriving his subjects of sleep. The body’s continued effort to make of for lost REM sleep, can force someone to say, or do, something that they normally would not have done.