Polyphasic Sleep - A primer

Ok.. So I realize that this experiment seems half baked and insane to many of you. With that in mind, I'd like to touch on a few point and see if I can demonstrate a little bit of reason behind what I'm doing.

DISCLAIMER
Despite decades of intense research, scientists still have only clues about sleep function. Because sleep is heterogeneous, there are various theories none of which predominates.

In humans, there are two general categories of sleep. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM)

Lets talk about NREM first.
NREM account for roughly 85% of the time spent sleeping and is broken down into 4 stages:

*N1- Drowsey Sleep
*N2- The brain emits short bursts of activity and it is belived that the brain is trying to keep tranquil. ~40% of NREM sleep.
*N3- I like to call this dark territory.. ~3% of NREM sleep occurs here, but this is where bedwetting, night terrors, sleep walking, and sleep talking occur.
*N4- Usually > than 50% of NREM sleep is here. This is the deep sleep.

REM Sleep:

REM Sleep or R is marked by intense dreams and is linked to circadian rhythm.

The general theory behind polyphasic sleep is that REM sleep is largely responsible for the mental regenerative effects of sleep. After an initial period of sleep deprivation, one adapts a schedule of 6 even spaced naps of 20 minutes. This yields ~2 hours of REM as compared to the 1.5 hours for a 'normal' sleep pattern.
So the very short comparison goes like this:
Monophasic Sleep
16 hours awake time
8 hours sleep time
1.5 hours of regenerative sleep

Polyphasic (Uberman Version) Sleep
22 hours awake time
2 hours sleep time
2 hours regenerative sleep

Those are rough numbers, as I don't think that the entire time I'm asleep, I'm in REM.

I've suffered from insomnia for many years and gone months on less than 4 hours average sleep a night... I'm now getting about 2 hours a night and feel better than I have in years!