Sleep and Nystagmus

I saw a recent comment about the effect of sleep deprivation on nystagmus, and I think that's definitely something to consider seeing how REM sleep involves random movements that may be related to the random saccadic movements undertaken in order to form an image during the vision process. I decided to dedicate a post to this because I think it's really an interesting extension of everything I've been talking about over the previous few weeks.

I have a friend who is currently following a polyphasic sleep schedule, and I spoke to him about whether there could be a relation. He is getting about four hours of sleep every 24 hours, but it doesn't seem to have shown anything related to nystagmus or optokinetic movements. He has cited various cases in which his eyes have hurt after waking from a nap, but I don't think any conclusions can be drawn. I think the reason for this is that we really don't know much about sleep. If the random movements in REM sleep could be somehow linked to the random movements when seeing on a normal basis, the "random" movements in REM sleep may not truly be so random.

Oddly enough, when I began the research process I looked heavily into several psychology-related topics pertaining to sleep including lucid dreaming, hypnopedia, and more, and I find it nicely-related to be able to talk about sleep in relation to the topic I ended up choosing, which was obviously that of visual reflexes.