How The Brain Turns Reality Into Dreams
Dreams make perfect sense when you’re having them. Yet, they leave you befuddled the next morning, wondering “where did that come from?” The answer may lie in the dreams of people with amnesia, researchers report in an issue of Science.
Much of the fodder for our dreams comes from recent experiences. For this reason, scientists have tentatively supposed that the dreaming brain draws from its “declarative memory” system, which includes newly learned information.
The declarative memory stores information that you can “declare” you know, such as the square root of nine, or the name of your dog. Often, you can even remember when or where you learned something - for example, the day you discovered the harsh truth about Santa Claus. That’s called episodic memory.
People who permanently suffer from amnesia can’t add new declarative or episodic memories. The parts of their brains involved in storing this type of information, primarily a region called the hippocampus, have been damaged. Although amnesiacs can retain new information temporarily, they generally forget it a few minutes later.
If our dreams come from declarative memories, people with amnesia shouldn’t dream at all, or at least dream differently than others do. But new research directed by Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School suggests quite the opposite. Just like people with normal memory, amnesiacs replay recent experiences when they fall asleep, Stickgold’s study shows. The only difference seems to be that the amnesiacs don’t recognize what they’re dreaming about.
Dreaming of Tetris
Every day, the people in the study played several hours of the computer game Tetris, which requires directing falling blocks into the correct positions as they reach the bottom of the screen. At night, the amnesiacs didn’t remember playing the game. But, they did describe seeing falling, rotating blocks while they were falling asleep.
A second group of players with normal memories reported seeing the same images. Therefore, Stickgold’s research team concluded, dreams must come from the types of memory amnesiacs do have, which are called “implicit memories.” These are memories that scientists can measure even when individuals don’t know that they have them.
One class of implicit memories is found in the procedural memory system, which stores information that you use without really being able to say how you know what you’re doing. When you ride a bicycle for the first time in years, or type on a keyboard without looking, you’re relying on procedural memory.
Another type of implicit memory uses “semantic” knowledge, and resides in different parts of the brain, including a region called the neocortex. Semantic knowledge involves general, abstract concepts. Both groups of Tetris players, for example, only described seeing blocks, falling and rotating, and evidently did not see a desk, room, or computer screen, or feel their fingers on the keyboard.
Without help from the hippocampus, new semantic memories are too weak to be intentionally recalled. But they can still affect your behavior - for example, causing you to buy a certain brand of something you saw in an advertisement you don’t remember.
In contrast, the information in episodic memories is associated with specific times, places or events. Without these “anchors” to reality, it’s no wonder that dreams are so illogical and full of discontinuity, the study’s authors say.
Stickgold believes that dreams serve a purpose for the brain, allowing it to make necessary emotional connections among new pieces of information. “Dreams let you consolidate and integrate your experiences, without conflict with other input from real life,” Stickgold said. “Dreaming is like saying, ‘I’m going home, disconnecting the phone, nobody talk to me. I have to do work.’”
Because the hippocampus seems to be inaccessible for this “off-line” memory processing, the brain may use the abstract information in the neocortex instead. According to Stickgold’s theory, dreaming is like choosing an outfit by reaching into bins labeled “shirts,” “pants” and so on. You’ll rummage up something to wear, but it won’t be a perfectly matching ensemble.
Full Article..
© 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Click here for more information on Dreams
![ikenbot:
Solar Eclipse Sunday Promises Spectacular Views from China to Texas
Image: As the solar eclipse on May 20, 2012, progresses, its partial and annular phases will look very similar to this eclipse on May 10, 1994 / Credit: Fred Espenak/SkyandTelescope.com
Almost all of North America will undergo a weird and dramatic event late Sunday afternoon (May 20). A partial eclipse of the sun will be visible, and for most, it will coincide with sunset.
Only for places northwest of a line running roughly from San Diego to Winnipeg will the eclipse be visible from start to finish before the sun sets. Elsewhere, depending on where you are, if your sky is clear toward the west-northwest, the setting sun will appear slightly dented, deeply crescent-shaped, or even ring-shaped.
The eclipse will begin in China, but in parts of eight western states — Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — viewers living within a path averaging about 190 miles (306 kilometers) wide, will have a front-row seat to witness the rare and exciting spectacle of an annular solar eclipse, or ring eclipse. The path of annularity extends from the coastline at the California-Oregon border to northwestern Texas, where it will end at local sunset.
Places within the path include Medford, Ore.; Eureka, Calif.; Reno, Nev.; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Lubbock, Texas. Also within the path are two beloved national parks, Utah’s Bryce Canyon and Arizona’s Grand Canyon. The U.S. National Park Service has invited the public to view the eclipse from a national partk this weekend. [May 20 Solar Eclipse: Complete Coverage]
Continue..](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m48fw3BlJ01qbn5m1o1_500.jpg)
