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 the middle of the night and assessed in the morning. Slow-wave sleep, part of non-REM sleep, appears to be important for declarative memory. Artificial enhancement of the non-REM sleep improves the next-day recall of memorized pairs of words. Tucker et al. demonstrated that a daytime nap containing solely non-REM sleep enhances declarative memory but not procedural memory. According to the "sequential hypothesis" the two types of sleep work together to consolidate memory. Sleep researcher Jerome Siegel has observed that extreme REM deprivation does not significantly interfere with memory. One case study of an individual who had little or no REM