Bump Give this one more try before it fades away.
friedo
February 25, 2010, 10:13pm
3
A Google Scholar search turned up this short paper: The Effects of a Combination of Monophasic and Polyphasic sleep (PDF) by one Yvonne Tran, who experimented upon herself by trying a polyphasic sleep schedule. (The paper mentions Uberman in particular in passing.)
Here is her conclusion:
While I slept through some REM, I was generally in delta sleep due to the sleep deprivation caused by
cutting the sleeping time in half. It was often extremely difficult to wake up from the naps suggesting that
naps do consist of mainly delta sleep although it is possible that I had woken up after the REM cycle had
ended. Also, the lack of dreaming suggests that REM sleep was missing from the naps.
At the end of the experiment, I was tired and did not experience the benefits of polyphasic sleep; this is
mainly due to the fact that I had not completely adapted to the schedule. Having to take naps at hours in
which I normally felt awake was inconvenient, and the time spent in bed was frequently almost twice as
much as the sleep. However, this sleep schedule was effective in gaining boosts of energy and taking
restoring breaks from mental work.