simply asked them "What was passing through your mind?" The states that the subjects reported in these cases were like sensory impressions similar to the dreams of REM sleep, but of shorter duration and with a more concrete, logical structure. Thus REM sleep is not necessary for dreaming. A certain kind of dream (one involving surprising juxtapositions) does seem to be closely associated with REM sleep, but dreaming and REM sleep are in no way synonymous. This distinction between dreaming , which is a subjective state , and REM sleep, which is a state of the brain , is fundamental. In other words, dreaming is a phenomenon that can be described only qualitatively, by the dreamer himself or herself, in an account that often involves some distortions, whereas REM sleep can be subjected to precise physiological measurements, in particular by means of its EEG trace . It turns out that counting sheep isn't really that much of a help in falling asleep -- it's more of a distraction. Source: www.ahajokes.com There are plenty of stories about people who went several days without any sleep. In 1959, a disc jockey in New York stayed awake for a week as a fundraising stunt for a charity. The researchers who monitored him closely during this experiment found that he soon began to have hallucinations, and then became so paranoid that he refused to answer their questions. Dr William C. Dement, an important sleep researcher, used himself as the subject of a sleeplessness experiment.