A 20-H RECOVERY SLEEP AFTER PROLONGED SLEEP RESTRICTION - SOME EFFECTS OF COMPETING IN A WORLD RECORD-SETTING CINEMARATHON

The recovery sleep of a 21-year-old normal woman was assessed after sh e had endured 11 1/2 days of sleep restriction in a world record-setti ng film-viewing marathon. An exceptional sleep debt was observed as in dicated by an instanteous sleep onset, a high sleep efficiency, and a total sleep duration of over 20 hours. Other striking features of this recovery sleep were very short latencies to stages 3 and 4 sleep, ret urn of Stage 4 sleep after 14.5 h, REM and SWS sleep rebound, and a li near increase in REM sleep efficiency across 14 consecutive REM-NREM e pisodes. Seven of nine home dreams reported after this recording conta ined competition themes, but none relating to the marathon films. Comp arisons of the present results with those from subjects in previous re cord-setting events suggest possible explanations for the extremely lo ng recovery sleep. Results also suggest that analyses of multiple cons ecutive sleep cycles may provide novel ways of assessing hypotheses ab out regulation of the REM-NREM cycle.