Oneirology

Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. The term comes from the Greek oneiro which means dream. A person that studies oneirology is called an oneirologist.

The first recorded use of the word was in 1653. The field gained momentum when Nathaniel Kleitman and his student Eugene Aserinsky discovered regular cycles in human sleep, at the University of Chicago sleep laboratory in 1953.

A further experiment by Kleitman and William C. Dement, then another medical student, demonstrated the particular period of sleep in which electrical brain activity as measured by an electroencephalograph (EEG) closely resembled that of waking as the eyes darted about actively. This kind of sleep became known as REM sleep, and Kleitman and Dement's experiment found a correlation of .80 between REM sleep and dreaming.

The independent and almost simultaneous confirmation of lucid dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Keith Hearne has allowed for many different types of further experiments and developments.