The content of our dreams

The recently published article in the journal Current Biology, shows the research done by the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Germany, opens new doors to the fascinating field of dreams, which unfortunately it is not progressing at the speed we wish.

6 people with ability to control their dream, in a state that is known as lucid dreaming, participated in this research. The lucid dreaming is a condition that sometimes is not very common, but easily identifiable and which individuals can have naturally, but also can acquire with training. This type of sleep is characterized because the dreamer is aware of dreaming. It may be spontaneously or induced by certain practices and exercises.

To evaluate these subjects, the polysomnography technique, which records the electrophysiological parameters that define and differentiate the states of dreaming and wakefulness, was used, as well as the EEG or electroencephalogram that records the electrical activity of the brain, the electrooculogram (EOG, a measurement of eye movements) and electromyogram (EMG) that measures the electrical activity of muscles. Combined with neuroimaging techniques that measured brain activity through scanners that could give us a picture of areas that are being activated at the dreaming moment moment.

The subjects, while in this phase received indications to make a fist, while researchers made several neuroimaging tests. The same task but, in the waking state, had been measured previously.

As our brains act in a contralateral way, i.e: the left side of our body is controlled by the right cerebral hemisphere and vice versa, when we are awake and we make a fist, the areas of our brain that are activated (and therefore increases the rate of oxygenation) are contralateral sensorimotor areas. And this is the same that was found in these subjects, who had been instructed to make their right fist in the middle of a lucid dream, suffered in their left sensorimotor area the same activation as if they were awake.

One of the biggest limitations of this study is that it has only been applied to this type of dreaming, because acceding to the specific dreaming content, when sleeping and having any other stage of dreaming, has not been possible to control it clinically, because subjects can not be trained to perform mental activities in these phases.

But this study sets a great precedent to the research of the fascinating world of dreams. And it shows that the areas activated in mental imagery correspond to those that are activated by motor execution.

Ara

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