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Why
does the brain remember dreams?
Why
does the brain remember dreams?
Date:
February 17,
2014
Source:
INSERM (Institut national de la
santé et de la recherche médicale)
Summary:
Some people recall a dream every morning, whereas
others rarely recall one. In a new study, research shows that the
temporo-parietal junction, an information-processing hub in the brain, is more
active in high dream recallers. Increased activity in this brain region might
facilitate attention orienting toward external stimuli and promote intrasleep
wakefulness, thereby facilitating the encoding of dreams in memory.
....................................
The reason
for dreaming is still a mystery for the researchers who study the difference
between "high dream recallers," who recall dreams regularly, and
"low dream recallers," who recall dreams rarely. In January 2013
(work published in the journal Cerebral
Cortex), the team led by Perrine Ruby, Inserm researcher at the
Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, made the following two observations:
"high dream recallers" have twice as many time of wakefulness during
sleep as "low dream recallers" and their brains are more reactive to
auditory stimuli during sleep and wakefulness. This increased brain reactivity
may promote awakenings during the night, and may thus facilitate memorization
of dreams during brief periods of wakefulness.
In this new
study, the research team sought to identify which areas of the brain
differentiate high and low dream recallers. They used Positron Emission
Tomography (PET) to measure the spontaneous brain activity of 41 volunteers
during wakefulness and sleep. The volunteers were classified into 2 groups: 21
"high dream recallers" who recalled dreams 5.2 mornings per week in
average, and 20 "low dream recallers," who reported 2 dreams per
month in average. High dream recallers, both while awake and while asleep,
showed stronger spontaneous brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex
(mPFC) and in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), an area of the brain
involved in attention orienting toward external stimuli.
"This
may explain why high dream recallers are more reactive to environmental
stimuli, awaken more during sleep, and thus better encode dreams in memory than
low dream recallers. Indeed the sleeping brain is not capable of memorizing new
information; it needs to awaken to be able to do that," explains Perrine
Ruby, Inserm Research Fellow.
The South
African neuropsychologist Mark Solms had observed in earlier studies that
lesions in these two brain areas led to a cessation of dream recall. The originality
of the French team's results is to show brain activity differences between high
and low dream recallers during sleep and also during wakefulness.
"Our
results suggest that high and low dream recallers differ in dream memorization,
but do not exclude that they also differ in dream production. Indeed, it is
possible that high dream recallers produce a larger amount of dreaming than low
dream recallers" concludes the research team.
Story
Source:
The above
story is based on materials provided by INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche
médicale). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal
Reference:
- Jean-Baptiste Eichenlaub, Alain Nicolas, Jérôme Daltrozzo, Jérôme Redouté, Nicolas Costes, Perrine Ruby. Resting Brain Activity Varies with Dream Recall Frequency between Subjects. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/npp.2014.6