'Dream centre' of the brain found

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?

I can’t reply to your question about self-awareness. :shy: Is self-awareness the same thing than establishing a relation between things (body, acts, thoughts) and your ego… It could be, but frankly I don’t know… :sad:

Well, if that is inactive in dreams, it could explain why we aren’t lucid so much of the time :smile:

I’ve believed for a long time that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is the key to lucidity. The DPC is responsible for working memory and the “reality-check” of consciousness :wink:

So, is that the part of the brain that controlls the ‘criticul factulty’ part of the psyche?

It might have something to do with critical faculty, though I’ve never seen a journal or research focus on or make mention of that.

That is a very interesting article, the kind of thing I love reading but I don’t feel it gives enough actual facts on the area and I feel they need to describe to us exactly how and why they believe this has stopped her having dreams. I personally think they are correct, I just want to see more info on it.

I found the answer in the Skeptic dictionnary. :smile:

But I’m always skeptic about what skeptics write… :tongue: