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 phase. The prospect that well-known neurological aspects of REM do not themselves cause dreaming suggests the need to re-examine the neurobiology of dreaming "per se". Some researchers (Dement, Hobson, Jouvet, for example) tend to resist the idea of disconnecting dreaming from REM sleep. After waking from REM sleep, the mind seems “hyperassociative”—more receptive to semantic priming effects. People awakened from REM have performed better on tasks like anagrams and creative problem solving. Sleep aids the process by which creativity forms associative elements into new combinations that are useful or meet some requirement. This occurs in REM sleep rather than in