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MELBOURNE: Even when asleep, portions of our brains associated with the planning and execution of a particular movement 'light up', according to new research into lucid dreamers.
The study, published in a recent issue of Current Biology, used lucid dreamers - who can interact with and manipulate with their dream environment - to shed light on the mystery of our brain activity when we are asleep. Lucid dreamers have previously been shown to have unusual sleeping brain activity within the pre-frontal cortex area of the brain, suggesting they can access memories and still be aware that they are dreaming.
"In lucid dreams, the subject is aware of the dreaming state and is capable of performing predefined actions", said lead author Martin Dresler from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Germany, adding that this makes them perfect candidates for dream analysis.
Mapping dream actions
The researchers instructed six lucid dreamers to move their eyes and hands during the dream. While asleep, the participants lack the conscious control required to actually move their hands, but the associated eye movements were tracked and their brain activity monitored at 22 locations across the brain.
The changes in brain activity could be correlated to the eye movements associated with hand movements, which allowed the researchers to map for the first time the neural activity of specific actions within a dream. This observation take us one step closer to being able to read and understand our own dreams.
"The main obstacle in studying specific dream content is that spontaneous dream activity cannot be experimentally controlled, as subjects typically cannot perform predecided mental actions during sleep," said study co-author Michael Czisch.
Dream research
Understanding dreams is a long-term goal in the field of sleep research, and has been so since the observation that REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep, associated with deep sleep) was associated with dreaming. Sleep is broadly characterised into two phases - REM and non-REM (NREM).
NREM dominates in the early sleep and rarely has dreams associated with it. On the occasions that dreams do occur during NREM, they are typically disconnected and not memorable. After NREM, the sleeper will transition into REM sleep, which is less understood, and it is in this phase that dreams occur.
Of the many theories regarding REM sleep, the most popular ideas are related to memories, brain development and repair and the importance of REM dreaming and creativity.
Research Data
The online sleep and consciousness research database, LSDBase, has some interesting data of rapid eye movements during lucid dreams that can be downloaded.