ABSTRACT
Standard measures of sleep recordings give differing results depending on the gender and they constantly change with age. Sleep latency increases, delta sleep decreases, and sleep tend to be shorter in duration and fragmented in middle-aged and elderly adults. The deterioration of sleep is observed earlier in men. In the 1980s, new measures called the Latency of Eye Movement (LEM) and the Mean Latency of Eye Movement (M-LEM) were proposed. Previous studies have shown that untreated patients with endogenous depression had the LEM and M-LEM shortened and that both indices get prolonged during treatment with antidepressants. On the other side, alcoholics in the abstinence period have LEM and M-LEM twice as long as healthy controls. In this study we set out to compare LEM and M-LEM in healthy humans according to the gender and age. The subjects of the study were 80 healthy volunteers: 40 males and 40 females, who were divided into 4 groups: females and males, below and above 40 years of age. In contrast to standard measures, our study did not reveal any significant changes of LEM or M-LEM due to the gender or age.
