In 1925, the German physiologist and psychiatrist Hans Berg-er first recorded the brain activity of his 15-year-old son. In his pioneering paper, published in 1929, he was the first to use the term "electroencephalogram" (EEG) to describe brain wave recordings. The use of the EEG in a clinical study of humans with epilepsy was first published in the English language in 1935. Even during the 1930s, researchers were using the EEG to study sleep, but a major breakthrough came in 1953, with the description of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Although the EEG has been used for at least 70 years to qualify and quantify sleep stages, it remains a very powerful tool for sleep research.
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