REM Sleep Explanation

[piglett23]

Hello to all that see this thread. I was just curious is there any known, solid, explanation for the eye movement in REM sleep. Does it induce dreaming or is it like a side effect? Thanks for reading

[Moonbeam]

Most of the muscles are paralyzed in REM sleep.  The eye muscles are not.   Some of us who pay attention to these things have noticed that other internal head and neck muscles such those controlling swallowing are also not completely paralyzed.

From personal experience, I know that interfering physically with eye movement during REM can influence the dream, so it does go both ways to some extent.  The eyes are part of the nervous system; they are a physical extension of the brain.  When you are awake, you can't see if you don't keep moving your eyes (automatic micromovements).  Maybe that means that the eyes have to move even if the visual experience is not coming from the outside and the reason for the constant movement is gone.

It would be an interesting experiment to paralyze the eye-moving muscles and then see how that affects dreams.

[piglett23]

I should have remembered that the eyes aren't paralyzed from Laberge's experiment, how he proved that lucid dreaming was real. Ya know, he moved his eyes in a specific pattern while lucid dreaming. And yes I've heard about the micromovements before too. Someone told me to rub your eyes before you WILD so your eyes can relax and stop looking for movement. And that would be a really cool experiment, I'm not sure exactly how you'd paralyze the eyes without causing blindness and not being able to close your eyes, maybe strong narcotics could help 

[riverboy]

I've read up on this specific subject quite a bit on my Psychology course I can send a copy of the original article if you're interested.

One thing to always bear in mind is that sleep experiments have, on occasion, revealed dreaming in the stages of non-REM sleep. This could mean that REM dreams are just more vivid etc.
The thing that will really interest you though is that there's a direct correlation between eye movement and the content of all dreams (lucid and non lucid). For example in one experiment they recorded eye movement going from left to right, left to right. When they interviewed the guy straght after the REM stage he said he'd dreamt about watching two people throwing tomatoes at eachother. These same correlations have turned up countless times

[Burned up]

There is a psychotherapy which effectively uses induced REM to gain access to memories which the ego prefers to block out (traumatic stuff, generally).  The theory is that, like in dreams, the ego's (i.e. the experience of the conscious "me")influence is reduced when the eyes are in a REM state.  Although the technique seems to work, the REM claims are disputed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing

[Moonbeam]

The thing that will really interest you though is that there's a direct correlation between eye movement and the content of all dreams (lucid and non lucid). For example in one experiment they recorded eye movement going from left to right, left to right. When they interviewed the guy straght after the REM stage he said he'd dreamt about watching two people throwing tomatoes at eachother. These same correlations have turned up countless times

You should tell them that if somebody's eye gets smashed into the pillow and can't move, they go blind in that eye in the dream.  (That's what happens to me.)

[piglett23]

You should tell them that if somebody's eye gets smashed into the pillow and can't move, they go blind in that eye in the dream.  (That's what happens to me.)

I read a post by you the other day talking about that and I was going to talk to you about that. Pretty interesting.

And ya, Riverboy, send me the article if you don't mind, sounds very interesting.

[howitzer]

With this subject in mind....one of the great experiments carried out by Stephen LaBerge, told in in ETWOLD, shed some solid validity to the truth about consciousness vs. the sleep state during REM periods!