We know that dreaming draws on large parts of the sensory networks in the brain that are involved when we perceive the outside world in a waking state, he says. “This is an exciting contribution from Johan Storm and his colleagues about cellular processes that can be key components in our dreams,” says Fosse, who holds a doctorate in dreaming.įosse believes the new theory fits in well with existing knowledge about the neurological basis of dreaming, especially in REM sleep. Exciting researchĭream researcher Roar Fosse thinks the theory is inspiring. “But when we sleep, this information flow to the roots is turned almost all the way off,” Storm says. In an awake state, the cerebral cortex receives most of its information through the roots of the pyramidal cells. The brain thus uses previous experience to interpret what we see, smell, taste or hear, he says. This is how the brain builds up an internal model of the outer world, by assembling and interpreting the sensory signals from the sensory organs, he says. This is how the brain can guess what we perceive, like recognizing a cup, a house or a human being,” says Storm. “But the pyramidal neurons can recognize patterns in the signals by comparing them with patterns stored in memory. "Even when we take information from real sensory stimuli directly into the cell roots in an awake state, the information is very difficult to interpret and basically completely incomprehensible to the brain,” Storm says. (Illustration: Figure 3 from the article Apical drive-A cellular mechanism of dreaming?) Awake brain makes model of the world by guessing The pyramidal neurons are disconnected, they receive no internal information and we don’t experience any dreams. Right: There is little acetylcholine in the cerebral cortex in dreamless sleep. However, large amounts of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine change the condition of cells so that they are driven by internal information from inside the brain. In the middle: When we dream, the cells receive less input from the sensory organs. The cells interpret this in light of internal information from memory, and our experience is that we perceive things. This is how dreams happen: Left: When we are awake, the pyramidal neurons in the cerebral cortex receive information about the world from the sensory organs. “This understanding happens because the same cells take in information from outer sensory stimuli and from memory, which is sent to the "tree crown" at the very top of the cell,” Storm says. When we’re awake, the "roots" collect sensory stimuli through the eyes, ears and other sensory organs.īut to understand what these impressions mean, they have to be interpreted in light of what we know about the world otherwise. They resemble trees, with roots, trunks and branches called dendrites. The largest of these cells are called pyramidal cells, or pyramidal neurons. The cells here are what we use to think and perceive with. Cerebral cortex is keyĪccording to the researchers, dreams arise in the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the cerebrum. The theory focuses on what happens inside our brain cells when we dream, in the context of brain processes as a whole that create dreams and conscious experiences. The researchers’ theory was recently published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. “These cells are in a completely different state when we dream, which means that they’re driven by information from the brain's internal stores, instead of being activated by new sensory input from the real world,” Storm explains. When we sleep, these brain cells are activated by internal information in a different way. The theory is that dreams occur in the same cells in the cerebral cortex that receive the sensory stimuli through which we experience the real world when we’re awake. They recently launched a new theory about how dreams arise in brain cells. Storm does research on brain signals with colleagues from Germany, Scotland and Switzerland. “One of the strangest things is that we experience dreams as real while we’re asleep with our eyes closed, isolated from the outside world, and not receiving any new sensory stimuli,” says Johan Frederik Storm, a doctor and professor at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Oslo.
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