Rapid eye movement sleep in the brains of sleeping cats. In 1944, Ohlmeyer reported 90-minute ultradian sleep cycles involving male erections lasting for 25 minutes. At University of Chicago in 1952, Eugene Aserinsky, Nathaniel Kleitman, and William C. Dement, discovered phases of rapid eye movement during sleep, and connected these to dreaming. Their article was published September 10, 1953. Aserinsky, then Kleitman, first observed the eye movements and accompanying neuroelectrical activity in their own children. William Dement advanced the study of REM deprivation, with experiments in which subjects were awoken every time their EEG indicated the beginning of REM sleep. He published "The Effect
Rapid eye movement sleep animals already in slow-wave sleep. Carbachol, which mimics the effect of acetylcholine on neurons, has a similar influence. In waking humans, the same injections produce paradoxical sleep only if the monoamine neurotransmitters have already been depleted. Two other neurotransmitters, orexin and gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), seem to promote wakefulness, diminish during deep sleep, and inhibit paradoxical sleep. Unlike the abrupt transitions in electrical patterns, the chemical changes in the brain show continuous periodic oscillation. According to the activation-synthesis hypothesis proposed by Robert McCarley and Allan Hobson in 1975–1977, control over REM sleep involves pathways of "REM-on" and "REM-off" neurons in the