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March 17, 1964. A CYCLE OF PENILE ERECTION SYNCHRONOUS WITH DREAMING SLEEP. Charles Fisher, M.D.
Previous studies of the dream-sleep cycle have shown that there are regularly recurring periods of sleep which are physiologically different and show a characteristic EEG pattern, together with bursts of synchronous, rapid vertical and horizontal eye movements (REMs). This physiological pattern is highly correlated with the sleeper's recall of dream experiences. In the present study, Fisher investigates the temporal correlation between the REM stages of dreaming sleep and the cycle of penile erection during sleep reported some twenty years ago by German investigators.
He found that erections were associated with a high percentage (ninety-four) of REM sleep periods by all of the measuring methods used. There were only four instances of no erection and three of these occurred during the first REM period which is often brief and unstable. In general, the erections began and ended in close temporal relationship to the onset and termination of the REM periods. Thus, Fisher confirmed the existence of a cycle of nocturnal erections and showed that they are coextensive with the REM periods, and, therefore, presumably with dreaming.
Dreaming sleep constitutes a special organismic state considered to be qualitatively a different form of sleep, ontogenetically early and phylogenetically old. It is a state of marked fluctuating physiological activation which approaches that of the awake organism in a state of alertness. It has also been found that similar physiological changes (including more diffuse body movement and erection that accompany dreaming sleep in the adult) are present in the neonate at a time when it is improbable that dreaming is taking place because psychic structure has not yet developed. The author concludes that there is no doubt that in the alternating stages of REM dreaming and non-REM sleep, we are dealing with an important biological cycle, and that the