What is REM?

What is REM?

Chris Idzikowski (Director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre) gives expert video advice on: Why do we need sleep?; How much sleep is recomended each night?; Does the amount of sleep differ between men and women? and more...

Rapid eye movement sleep was originally called paradoxical sleep. The reason it was called that was when people were first investigating sleep by putting electrodes on, they found there was a stage where the brainwaves looked as if the person was awake or drowsing. Their muscles were paralyzed but their eyes were darting about as if they were looking at something. If you woke them up at that point, you would find that they were dreaming. Because of those rapid eye movements, it was called rapid eye movement sleep. It was also called paradoxical sleep because of this mismatch between muscle paralysis and being asleep with this apparent active brainwave activity.