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Dream content measured for first time
Sunday October 30, 2011 05:06:36 PM,
IANS
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Munich:
Scientists have for the first time successfully analysed brain
activity during dreams.
They were able to do this with the help of people who become aware
of their dreaming state and are able to alter their content, known
as lucid dreamers.
Until now it has not been possible to measure dream content.
Methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have
enabled scientists to visualise and identify the precise spatial
location of brain activity during sleep.
However, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in
Munich, the Charite hospital in Berlin and the Max Planck
Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig
availed of the ability of lucid dreamers to dream consciously for
their research.
"With this combination of sleep EEGs (electroencephalograms),
imaging methods and lucid dreamers, we can measure not only simple
movements during sleep but also the activity patterns in the brain
during visual dream perceptions," says Martin Dresler, researcher
at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry.
Lucid dreamers were asked to become aware of their dream while
sleeping in a magnetic resonance scanner and to report this
"lucid" state to the researchers by means of eye movements,
according to a Max Planck statement.
They were then asked to voluntarily "dream" that they were
repeatedly clenching first their right fist and then their left
one for 10 seconds.
This enabled scientists to measure the entry into REM sleep - a
phase in which dreams are perceived particularly intensively -
with the help of the subject's EEG and to detect the beginning of
a lucid phase.
The brain activity measured from this time onwards corresponded
with the arranged "dream" involving the fist clenching.
The coincidence of the brain activity measured during dreaming and
the conscious action shows that dream content can be measured.
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