Rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep has perplexed scientists since it was first connected to dreams in 1953, but a recent study is the first to demonstrate that these movements are not random as previously assumed, but rather represent the brain’s creation of a dream world.
A team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco examined ‘head direction cells in the brains of mice, which are neurons that fire in the brain based on the direction of the animal’s head and are also present in various locations of the human brain.
Comparing the sleeping mouse’s heading directions with its eye movements revealed that during REM sleep, cells were precisely aligned, just as they are when the mouse is awake and active.
This suggests that human REMs travel in the same manner as their sight when awake.
In 3100 B.C., the Babylonians attempted to understand their dreams by etching them on stone tablets and documenting them.
Since then, mankind has endeavored to comprehend the meaning and formation of dreams.
REM sleep is one of the stages of sleep. REM stands for rapid eye movement, which is a characteristic of this state.
During this phase, brain wave patterns resemble those observed during waking, and dreaming occurs.
Eugene Aserinksy, a doctoral student at the time, is credited with establishing the first sleep research laboratory where the ‘rapid, jerky, binocularly symmetrical movements’ were identified.
Aserinksy’s notion was previously supported only by speculation, but the new study is the first to present strong evidence in its favor.
Massimo Scanziani, the study’s principal author, stated in a statement, “We demonstrated that these eye movements are not random.” They are coordinated with what is occurring in the mouse’s virtual dream world.
This discovery provides a glimpse into the cognitive processes occurring in the sleeping brain while also solving a problem that has piqued the interest of scientists for decades.
The team of Scanziani discovered that the same areas of the brain — and there are many of them — coordinate throughout both dreaming and awake, providing validity to the notion that dreams are a means of integrating information acquired during the day.
How these brain regions collaborate to develop this generating capacity is the next enigma Scanziani intends to solve.
He stated, “It is essential to comprehend how the brain updates itself based on accumulated experiences.”
Understanding the mechanisms that allow us to coordinate so many distinct parts of the brain during sleep will provide insight into how these experiences become part of our models of how the world is and how it functions.
