Oneirology (from Greek oneiros, "dream"; and -λογία, -logia) is the scientific study of dreams.
The first recorded use of the word was in 1653. An advocate of this discipline was the French sinologist Marquis d'Hervey de Saint Denys. The field gained momentum when Nathaniel Kleitman and his student Eugene Aserinsky discovered regular cycles. A further experiment by Kleitman and William C. Dement, then another medical student, demonstrated the particular period of sleep during which electrical brain activity, as measured by an electroencephalograph (EEG), closely resembled that of waking, in which the eyes dart about actively. This kind of sleep became known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and Kleitman and Dement's experiment found a correlation of .80 between REM sleep and dreaming.
The independent and almost simultaneous confirmation of lucid dreaming by Stephen LaBerge of Stanford University and Keith Hearne encouraged further experiments and developments.
Current research seeks correlations between dreaming and current knowledge about the functions of the brain, as well as understanding of how the brain works during dreaming as pertains to memory formation and mental disorders. The study of oneirology can be distinguished from dream analysis in that the aim is to quantitatively study the process of dreams instead of analyzing the meaning behind them.
The first recorded use of the word was in 1653. An advocate of this discipline was the French sinologist Marquis d'Hervey de Saint Denys. The field gained momentum when Nathaniel Kleitman and his student Eugene Aserinsky discovered regular cycles. A further experiment by Kleitman and William C. Dement, then another medical student, demonstrated the particular period of sleep during which electrical brain activity, as measured by an electroencephalograph (EEG), closely resembled that of waking, in which the eyes dart about actively. This kind of sleep became known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and Kleitman and Dement's experiment found a correlation of .80 between REM sleep and dreaming.
The independent and almost simultaneous confirmation of lucid dreaming by Stephen LaBerge of Stanford University and Keith Hearne encouraged further experiments and developments.
Current research seeks correlations between dreaming and current knowledge about the functions of the brain, as well as understanding of how the brain works during dreaming as pertains to memory formation and mental disorders. The study of oneirology can be distinguished from dream analysis in that the aim is to quantitatively study the process of dreams instead of analyzing the meaning behind them.
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