A NEW PARADIGM FOR DREAM RESEARCH - MENTATION REPORTS FOLLOWING SPONTANEOUS AROUSAL FROM REM AND NREM SLEEP RECORDED IN A HOME SETTING

The ''Nightcap,'' a relatively nonintrusive and ''user-friendly'' sleep monitoring system, was used by 11 subjects on 10 consecutive nights in their homes. Eighty-eight sleep mentation reports were obtained after spontaneous awakenings from Nightcap-identified REM sleep and 61 were obtained from NREM awakenings. Sleep mentation was recalled in 83% of REM reports and 54% of NREM reports. The median length of REM reports was 148 words compared to 21 words for NREM reports. Twenty-four percent of the REM reports were over 500 words long; no NREM reports over 500 words were obtained. REM report lengths were lowest during the first 15 min of the REM cycle and longest 15-45 min into the period. In contrast, 7 of the 9 NREM reports more than 100 words long occurred within the first 15 min of NREM periods. The Nightcap thus appears to be an effective and efficient method of collecting large numbers of sleep mentation reports with correlated sleep staging under normal ecological conditions. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.