Evidence for a directional correspondence between eye movements and dream imagery in REM sleep.
Sleep January 1, 1984 J H Herman, M Erman, R Boys et al.
During REM sleep, the direction of eye movements recorded by electrooculograph (EOG) corresponds to the direction of gaze shifts in dream imagery. In a double-blind experiment, subjects were awakened after predominantly horizontal or vertical eye movements. Dream reports were scaled for gaze shifts and compared with EOG measurements. Analyses of variance showed statistically significant relationships between the number and direction of gaze shifts in dreams and the corresponding EOG, when accounting for experimenters' prediction confidence. However, judges could not correctly match dream narratives to EOG recordings better than chance, though they did pair narratives with recordings sharing the same axis of gaze.