Dreaming and the physiology of sleep

Abstract

We review evidence which suggests to us that uracil, or a molecule structurally resembling uracil, is likely to be involved in the mediation of level of arousal. In addition we attempt to show that at least one theory, based on this idea, provides a molecular mechanism for certain features of natural sleep, and for the effect on arousal of several classes of drugs and of certain gene mutations. This theory, and related ones, can feasibly be tested further with existing methods.