A normal night consists of several sleep and dream cycles, whereby the dream cycles occur roughly every 90 minutes; their length increases along subsequent cycles, while the amount of delta sleep diminishes. This story can be read everywhere. But what about those people who slept for several days? For instance, the people who joined the experiment to stay awake for as long as possible (I think they got up to 14 days or something); afterwards one of them slept for 5 days (!). If the amount of REM sleep increases with every new cycle, then he must have had dream cycles of several hours in the end, with little or no genuine non-REM sleep left, because the cycles would ultimately melt together. Or could there be an upper limit of the amount of REM sleep one may receive during one cycle? What do you think? I don’t think there’s been much research about the maximum amount REM sleep one is (at least theoretically) able to induce…
The longest LD recorded by LaBerge was 46 minutes long!
She was said to have very spiritually influenced dreams.
I remember once reading about sleep deprivation, but I didn’t realize that some have slept for 5 days afterwards!!
This thread made me curious what stage of sleep the lady was in to have the 46 minute LD. I wonder if she was napping in the morning, or if she was towards the end of a long sleep cycle? hmmmm, I’ll have to investigate that.
Interesting… but I guess she had her LD after a normal night with a somehow normal amount of sleep? The boundary of a night of 10hrs of sleep lies at approx 50-60min REM sleep in the last dream cycle. But I’m really looking for those who’ve slept for a whole day or longer. Perhaps a nice experiment to try?
A little remark perhaps… When I read about that person who slept for 5 days, I couldn’t really tell if he slept virtually the whole time or if he was awake for a few hours in between. While those sleep researchers were all busy documenting sleep deprivation, they’d better also monitored the following sleep period…
Probably, REM periods grow and then drop, like they do during a normal daily cycle, then grow again in a day… First roughly, approximating the usual cycle by the end of the sleep…
Just an idea, I have no information about it. hrug:
hrug: