Posted on 04/10/2017 12:17:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Most of us have about five dreams each night, though we're not likely to remember any of them.
But a team of researchers has found a pattern of brain activity that seems to reveal not only when the brain is generating a dream, but something about the content of that dream.
"When subjects were having [dream] experiences during sleep, there was a region in the back of the brain that tended to be very active, as if this region was a little bit more awake," says Francesca Siclari, a researcher at the Center for Research and Investigation in Sleep at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland.
Patterns of brain activity in this region also suggested whether the dream included a face or movement, Siclari and a team of researchers report in Nature Neuroscience.
The team found that dreams occurred during both rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep. But there were also periods of deep sleep in which dreaming did not occur.
The team studied dreams by monitoring electrical activity in the brains of 32 people as they slept.
Participants were awakened frequently and asked to report whether they'd been dreaming. This reduced the problem of people forgetting dreams over the course of a full night's sleep.
And sure enough, people in the study were able to recall not only whether they had been dreaming, but often what they had been dreaming about. Dreams included riding a bicycle, seeing geometric shapes in motion and smelling perfume.
After a person reported a dream, the investigators went back and reviewed brain activity patterns recorded with a technique known as high density electroencephalography. This allowed researchers to connect dreaming with a decrease in low frequency activity and an increase in high frequency activity at the back of the brain.
By looking for this electrical signature in the brain, the researchers were able to predict when a person had been dreaming about 90 percent of the time.
In a smaller study, the researchers looked at activity in areas of the brain that respond to specific stimuli, like seeing a face, hearing speech or perceiving movement. Activity in these areas during dreams offered hints at what the person had been dreaming about.
For example when someone's dream included a face, there was activity in a part of the brain used to recognize faces. And when a dream involved a sense of movement, there was activity in an area that is involved in the perception of movement. Brains Sweep Themselves Clean Of Toxins During Sleep Shots - Health News Brains Sweep Themselves Clean Of Toxins During Sleep
There was "a very close correspondence [between] brain areas that are active when we dream about things compared to brain activities that are active when we see or perceive things during wakefulness," Siclari says.
"We're using our brains the same way when we're dreaming that we use [them] to carry out those same functions when we're awake," says Robert Stickgold, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study.
But Stickgold isn't convinced that measuring activity in the back of the brain is a sure way to detect dreaming. Even people who are woken up every half hour probably don't remember every dream, he says.
"What they're really measuring is what's happening before you wake someone up and the person remembers having been dreaming," Stickgold says. And it's possible that forgotten dreams have a different electrical signature in the brain.
Even so, Stickgold thinks this sort of research has the potential to help scientists understand not only dreaming, but an even greater mystery: consciousness.
When we sleep, our brains repeatedly cross the boundary between unconsciousness and dreaming, which researchers consider a form of consciousness, Stickgold says. The question is: "How does the brain shift into a state of activity where we're dreaming, as opposed to having dreamless sleep," he says.
Finding an answer to that question, Stickgold says, could help scientists understand how the brain becomes fully conscious when we wake up each morning.
"That's a phenomenal question that we just don't have an answer to," he says.
I usually remember 2 or 3 dreams.
I have a device I sleep with that does seem to help me remember dreams better.
All you have to do is raise the sheets and look downstairs to see what a guy is dreaming about.
Isn’t it good, morning wood ?
I had nightmares about mufflers and woke up exhausted.
I had a reoccurring dream over the period of a few years where I was walking through this really cool waterside home. Over a period of time I began to recognize when I got to the house and recognize that I was, in fact, dreaming. I would remember to move past the last room and open the next door to get a good look at the size and shape of the room beyond and any other details (other doors, windows, etc...). Things like, “Remember you were going to check to the right to see whether those were cabinets or is that another door way?
One night, I remembered seeing a stairway in the distance and noted it for the next time. When the next time came, I actually was drawn to climb the stairs first thing and note the beginnings of the upper floor.
When I woke up, I was able to add some more each time to the floor plan I was developing in a notebook I kept at my bedside.
I still have the plans for “Dreamweaver”. Nothing too extravagant. But it definitely checks off all the boxes. And hopefully I will see her built some day. It was actually a pretty cool experience.
I’d like to ask these dream researchers how we can dream something that cannot possibly be true — for example, my basement does not extend all the way under the street — and then in the dream “see” that impossibility and wonder WTF is going on.
The good news is that the research predicted what the sample was dreaming about 90% of the time. Problem is, their entire sample was comprised of teenage boys.
A bong? What?
I observe my baby dreaming. She is a baby. What could she be dreaming about with so little life experience? A boob full of milk?
Also, I observe my 5 year old dreaming. She was tossing and turning, and yelled out "OSTRICH!"
When she woke I asked her she did not even know what an ostrich was.
Well, as they said, it is a ‘Hot zone’ ...
“help me remember dreams better.”
When I was in high school I kept a dream diary, as time went by my recall improved greatly.
I started to know when I was dreaming and that gave me some level of control; Falling, bounce back up. Don’t want to walk, fly (usually on an ironboard???). Don’t like the dream, start a new one. It was a hoot!
I mentioned this to my Doc and he told me that there was nothing in the literature about this, so I got used to weird, strange dreams that were rather entertaining.
“When I was started on Statins my dreams got really weird, nasty and strange.”
Apparently more than statins can do this. I’ve had to use various meds over the past year and a few of them have provoked some really unpleasant dreams. Not scary exactly, although there was a spooky quality to them- more like boring and dreary and I’d wake up tired from “watching” them. Not entertaining.
I have come to the conclusion that dreams rehash unresolved problems. Whether they suggest solutions is problematical but the mind is a 24 hour system.
It can run non-stop all it wants, I just don’t necessarily want to see its helpful rehashing. Or if I do see it at least I don’t want to wake up worn out from it.
I used to dream searchers would find where I hid a body.
No dream that I had murdered anyone, just that I hid a body and it would be discovered.
95% of the time, it’s gonna look like Kate Upton. Unless we’re talking Shep Smith. Then, it’s Doogie Howitzer.
Do they take in your emotional state at the time? Under stress you have nightmares, not dreams. I’ve lived that for 28 yrs.
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