Hello.

Pretty much my whole knowledge of dreaming and REM cycles comes from reading "Exploring the world of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge, but I have some questions which aren't really answered in the book:

We know our REM cycles get closer and longer throughout the night. However, we also know that if we wake up, and then go back to bed a few hours later, this pattern is continued as well, to the point where sleeping 8 hours or 4 and then being awake for 2 and then sleeping another 2 hours gives you very similar REM times (this is actually one of the techniques described by him for people who don't have 8 hours to sleep). I've even noticed this when taking naps during the afternoon, where I often get massive dreams, and this happens after being 4-5 hours awake. My question is, when and why does this REM timer "reset"? Would it be possible to find a sleep schedule which would perpetuate this "late night REM stage", for instance?

The second question is how long can REM cycles realistically take. The book mentions 45m-1h, but some of the dreams described in the book look like they would take much longer than that. I'm talking content wise, not just time frame, I know a dream can feel like it lasted a week, and that's not what I'm referring to, I'm referring to dreams where what's described simply takes a ton of time to actually happen. I know sometimes it's easy to get back into the same dream after you wake up from it, but I'm curious if that's it, or if I'm missing something.

Lastly, are there any other books about the subject of dreams or sleep that may be worth checking out? Dreams didn't really evolve since Stephen wrote the book, of course, but I feel some things are just left unexplained.

Thanks in advance.