Sleep pattern during afternoon naps?

Hi everybody. I don't know if this is the right place to post this thread so I apologize if it isn't.
I wanted to know if there are differences between night sleep patterns and afternoon nap sleep patterns. Sorry for my english I don't really know if it's called like that. I've noticed I can have multiple dreams (and recall them) during a nap. Does that mean that REM appears faster and more frequently during a nap than during the night? Is this the reason for people being successful in WILD'ing during afternoon naps or is there another explanation?
I've searched the web for research concerning this topic but I didn't find anything related to my question.
If anybody has a scientific explanation I would be glad to hear it. A hypnogram from nap time would be really interesting too.
Thanks!

From what I understand your REM pattern continues for several hours after you wake up, so that if you wake after say 5 hours and stay awake for an hour or two, then you can go directly back into REM sleep. This is the reason WBTB works. I'm not sure how long it takes before your body resets the REM cycle to start fresh - but I guess at least 3 or 4 hours.

Yes, I know, we talked about that in another thread :D But I'm interested in naps, in the differences in sleep pattern between nighttime and afternoon naps. As it seems people get faster into REM during naps ant that's why WILD works better at that time isn't it? Usually you have been awake for more than 4 hours before having a nap, so why do you still enter REM earlier than during the night?
I am interested in seeing a hypnogram from naptime, in order to compare it to the typical nighttime hypnogram which looks somewhat like this:
http://www.lakesidepress.com/pulmona.../hypnogram.png

From my personal experience some of my strongest dream premonitions have occurred when I took a nap in the afternoon and had such a strong dream that I jumped out of my sleep. I do believe that for me personally that during naps is when my dream energy is most vibrant and also overall I'm able to recall more as to if I was to have dreams through out the night.

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Originally Posted by SkaLord

Yes, I know, we talked about that in another thread :D But I'm interested in naps, in the differences in sleep pattern between nighttime and afternoon naps. As it seems people get faster into REM during naps ant that's why WILD works better at that time isn't it? Usually you have been awake for more than 4 hours before having a nap, so why do you still enter REM earlier than during the night?

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You're correct, afternoon naps are almost totally REM. There's an interplay between serotonin, melatonin, and histamine that goes on throughout the day, and it happens to produce the most fertile conditions for REM at two times, which are the early morning and afternoon (but not in between). My guess is that it's like the tides, in that it happens twice a day for related, but slightly different reasons.