Where Dreams Are Made, Really

News
By published
Photo taken by Kenn Kiser. The morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site.

Analyzed as portents of the future and windows to the subconscious, dreams have fascinated human beings since the dawn of recorded history. Their purpose, from a strictly cognitive point of view, remains a puzzle.

But a rare instance of dream loss in a patient with localized brain damage may pinpoint the where, if not the why, of dreaming.

Her sight returned after a couple of days, but subsequently she could no longer recall any dreams. Prior to the stroke she typically would remember three of four dreams a week.

Doctors from the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland, studied the woman while she slept on several occasions over a six-week period. As reported in a recent online version of the Annals of Neurology, they found that she continued to exhibit rapid eye movement (REM), which typically occurs at the same time as dreaming.

Yet, when the doctors woke the patient during REM, she still reported no dreams. All other aspects of her sleeping state were normal, and she showed no signs of disorientation or memory loss while awake.

"We know that REM is generated in the brain stem," said Jerome M. Siegel of the Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, so these results confirm that dreaming originates from a separate brain region.

The woman's stroke affected the inferior lingual gyrus, which is known to be important in recognizing faces and landmarks and in dealing with emotions. The authors suggest that this area plays a key role in the dream experience.

One possibility is that REM activity acts like an internal movie, but when the processing center is damaged, "the movie is still playing, but the patient is not watching it, or forgets that they watched it," Siegel said.

Michael Schirber
Michael Schirber
Michael Schirber began writing for LiveScience in 2004 when both he and the site were just getting started. He's covered a wide range of topics for LiveScience from the origin of life to the physics of Nascar driving, and he authored a long series of articles about environmental technology. Over the years, he has also written for Science, Physics World, andNew Scientist. More details on his website.