H—reflex in Lucid Dreams

Abstract

When I started medical school, I wanted to continue doing psychophysiological research into consciousness during REM sleep, but many of my mentors suggested that by definition this was impossible. I was going to have to come up with some sort of unequivocal proof that the phenomenon I was talking about was indeed REM sleep and not a micro-awakening. After collaborating with Stephen LaBerge, and others, and reviewing the literature, we decided that the best thing to do would be to continuously monitor H-reflex amplitude throughout the night, its suppression being a unique criterion of REM sleep.