Non-rapid eye movement sleep 3D maze. Participants were then trained in the maze for 4 hours and later, during the various sleep cycles of nonREM sleep, REM sleep and wakefulness, they were scanned twelve times using a PET scan during the night. The PET scan demonstrated a higher blood flow in the hippocampus during SWS/non-REM sleep due to the training from the previous day while the control group exhibited no increased blood flow and they had not received the training the prior day. The brain activity during sleep, according to this study, would show the events of the previous day do make a difference.
Rapid eye movement sleep fetuses in spite of lack of vision. Also, binocular REMs are non-conjugated (i.e., the two eyes do not point in the same direction at a time) and so lack a fixation point. In support of this theory, research finds that in goal-oriented dreams, eye gaze is directed towards the dream action, determined from correlations in the eye and body movements of REM sleep behavior disorder patients who enact their dreams. Dr. David M. Maurice (1922-2002), an eye specialist and semi-retired adjunct professor at Columbia University, proposed that REM sleep was associated with oxygen supply to the cornea, and that aqueous