'Dream centre' of the brain found

if you dont dream you die… that is after quite a few nights, so taht would be one way to see :wink:

This almost can be matching a victim to a crime. It does sound like it could be something worth investing research into though.

*Crashing and banging through blueprints and tools in his shed, “where is that brain”

I posted this in stuff dreams are made of. :eh:

It seems to me like these scientists haven’t done thier homework on dreaming…

They seem to have mixed up dreaming and dream recall. You have something like 7 - 12 dreams a night. This lady only remembered having three or four dreams a week, but really she had over thirty.

She simply managed to regain her DR. However, it was not as good as it use to be. I’m sure she had just as many dreams as before.

They probably lost no vividness at all. But as she had weaker DR she couldn’t remember them as well - and thus they seem less vivid.

So, it has damaged her memories. More proof of a weaker DR.

I agree with this and is the first thing that came to mind when reading the document. So, that really raises the biggest question - why is she still alive even though she ‘hasn’t dreamt for a year’?

What makes you think that inability to have dreams will lead to death? A prolonged lack of DEEP sleep will certainly lead to many health problems, seeing how deep sleep is the regeneration of body and mind on the physiological level.

I wish they would have named the specific lobe of the brain they claim to be responsible for the cognitive model management of dreams :neutral:

Pons; it’s above the brain stem and below the lymbic area

If she has not lost any other memory functions, which I would have to assume they tested, then the researchers could still well postulate that it was infact a loss of dreaming and not a loss of dream recall.

After a week or two (can’t remember which one it is) of no REM, you can do very little. You can’t move properly, can’t think straight, are prone to hallucinations and many other problems.

Leave it a little longer and you die (yes, this has been tested - the animals which it was tested on still got deep sleep, just no REM).

Sureal,
Do you have a link to that info? I’ve never heard of REM deprevation doing that, but NREM (deep sleep) deprevation certainly will cause those symptoms and health deterioration.

I’ll see if I can find the topic here…

EDIT: Sorry, can’t find it :/.

I’ve never heard such claims about REM deprevation either. I’m going to look at that, but right now I’m back to the mouse & MS On-Screen Keyboard… :tongue:

This might be the finding you’re looking for, a paper published in the journal SLEEP in 1989 by Kushida et al. Here’s the abstract (note the REM sleep is referred to as paradoxal sleep):

Twelve rats were subjected to paradoxical sleep deprivation (PSD) by the disk apparatus. All PSD rats died or were sacrificed when death seemed imminent within 16-54 days. No anatomical cause of death was identified. All PSD rats showed a debilitated appearance, lesions on their tails and paws, and weight loss in spite of increased food intake. Their yoked control (PSC) rats remained healthy. Since dehydration was ruled out and several measures indicated normal or accelerated use of nutrients, the food-weight changes in PSD rats were attributed to increased energy expenditure (EE). The measurement of EE, based upon caloric value of food, weight, and wastes, indicated that all PSD rats increased EE, with mean levels reaching more than twice baseline values. All of these changes had been observed in rats deprived totally of sleep; the major difference was that they developed more slowly in PSD rats.

Hmm…that is interesting. :cool:

I would think that dreams are governed by more than just one part of the brain. The Pons area may be the main part, but isn’t there also something to do with the visual, audio and tactile sytems in the brain?

Yes, your long-term memory and perceptive senses are still active, though the frontal lobes are almost dormant.

What do the frontal lobes do?

Something to do with your personality I think.

The prefrontal cortex is related with personnality and social behaviour. If it’s no more linked with the inner parts of the brain, your actions and thoughts will no more be perceived as yours, but as external ones. For instance, you’ll hear your thoughts like they were pronounced by another people (schizophrenic hallucinations… and HH :tongue: ).

Wow - I’ve learnt something else today :smile:.

Hm, that’s quite interessting. So - the prefrontal cortex… it bascially makes your self aware?