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In 1953 sleep researchers led by Nathaniel Kleitman made the important discovery of rapid eye movement - or REM sleep. Curious about th long-standing observation that the eyeballs of sleeping subjects, in both, humans and animals, periodically move during sleep, they connected sleeping laboratory subjects to equipment that measured their brain waves (yielding an electroencephalogram, or EEG), muscle tone (electromyogram, or EMG) and eye movement (electroculogram, or EOG).
As is often the case with major discoveries, this one - after its announcement in the jounal Sience in 1953 - suddenly seemed glaringly obvious. Many people had observed the restless eye movements of sleepers, but no one had recognized the regularity of the twitches of had tried to puzzle out their significance. Once the news was out, however, other researchers quickly confirmed the phenomenon, and it was formally dubbed rapid eye movement, or REM sleep. The next step was to figure out what purpose REM served.
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