Originally Posted by
O'nus
Apples and oranges are "very similar" depending on how you look at it; do you immediately ignore the differences?
Empty rhetoric is not a substitute for facts.
Of course, dreams in REM and NREM are more similar than apples and oranges. The differences are length and that NREM dreams are typically of singular nature.
Different length, yes. Singular nature, no. You might want to read Rosenlicht, N., & Feinberg, I. (1999). REM sleep = dreaming: Only a dream. Sleep Research Society Bulletin, 3, 10-12.
From the article:
Goodenough et al. (1959) appear to have been the first to seriously question the REM=dreaming equivalence. They reported that a group of subjects (Ss) who reported frequent spontaneous recall of dreams at home had a high (53%) rate of dream recall in experimental awakenings from NREM sleep. Three years later, Foulkes (1962) reported a similarly high (54%) rate of dream reports from NREM awakenings in Ss unselected with respect to dream recall. With reports of "thinking" included as dreams, this rate jumped to 74%, close to the ~80% usually obtained from REM awakenings. Foulkes did, however, find qualitative differences between REM and NREM dreams. Narratives from NREM awakenings tended to have a lower incidence of affective events and visual images than those from REM. This observation, which remains influential in textbooks and other literature, turned out to be misleading, as we discuss below.
[...]
As it became evident that mental activity occurs in NREM sleep, some argued that REM dreams were qualitatively different because they were often more bizarre and affect laden. However, REM reports are usually longer than NREM reports. Therefore, when comparing the incidence of "dreamlike" events (visual images, discontinuities, etc.) in narratives from the two states, the length of the report must be taken into account. Antrobus (1983) demonstrated that when length of dream report, as measured by TRC (total recall count) is partialed out, the apparent qualitative differences between REM and NREM reports disappeared. A number of investigators including Foulkes and Schmidt (1983), Fein et al. (1985), Cavallero and Foulkes (1990), and Cavallero et al. (1992) have also shown that when length of dream report is controlled, there is little or no difference between REM and NREM reports. Thus, if narratives elicited by awakenings from REM have distinguishing features, these have yet to be demonstrated.
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