Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is a sleep disorder (more specifically a parasomnia) in which people act out their dreams. It involves abnormal behavior during the sleep phase with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The major feature of RBD is loss of muscle atonia (i.e., the loss of paralysis) during otherwise intact REM sleep (during which paralysis is not only normal but necessary). REM sleep is the stage of sleep in which most vivid dreaming occurs. The loss of motor inhibition leads to a wide spectrum of behavioral release during sleep. This
Rapid eye movement sleep of Dream Deprivation" in June 1960. ("REM deprivation" has become the more common term following subsequent research indicating the possibility of non-REM dreaming.) Neurosurgical experiments by Michel Jouvet and others in the following two decades added an understanding of atonia and suggested the importance of the pontine tegmentum (dorsolateral pons) in enabling and regulating paradoxical sleep. Jouvet and others found that damaging the reticular formation of the brainstem inhibited this type of sleep. Jouvet coined the name “paradoxical sleep” in 1959 and in 1962 published results indicating that it could occur in a cat with its entire forebrain removed. Hiroki