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William C. Dement

Academic Appointments

Education & Community

Professional Education

  • D.Sc., Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Sleep Medicine (2006)
  • B.S., University of Washington, Premedical, Medical Science (1951)
  • M.D., University of Chicago,, Physiology (1955)
  • Ph. D., University of Chicago, Physiology (1957)

Scientific Focus

Research Interests

William Charles Dement is the Lowell W. and Josephine Q. Berry Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and the Division Chief of the Stanford University Division of Sleep.

A native of the state of Washington, Dement received his M.D. from the University of Chicago in 1955 and his Ph.D. in Neurophysiology from the same institution in 1957. While a medical student, he began his career in sleep research when he joined the lab of Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman. There, he helped discover and describe Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. From 1954 through 1957, Dement described the relationship between REM sleep and dreaming, established the all night sleep patterns in human beings, discovered REM sleep in animals and newborn babies, and demonstrated that the patterns of specific rapid eye movements are related to the visual experience of the dream.

In 1963, Dement joined the Psychiatry Department at Stanford University, where for the past thirty-five years he has continued his studies on the neurochemistry of sleep and the functional significance of the different sleep states. In 1964, Dement initiated a special narcolepsy clinic through which he demonstrated that the syndrome of narcolepsy involves disordered REM sleep processes. In 1970, Dement started the world's first Sleep Disorders Clinic which introduced all-night polysomnographic examination of patients with sleep-related complaints, medical responsibility and management of the patient, and objective assessment of the relationship between nighttime sleep and daytime function. For the latter, Dement developed the Multiple Sleep Latency Test which remains the standard diagnostic measure of daytime sleepiness. Dement and his colleagues were the first to understand the clinical implications and high prevalence of sleep apnea syndromes, periodic leg movement, narcolepsy, delayed sleep phase syndrome, psychophysiological insomnia, drug dependency...

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