Saturday 10 September 2016

Understanding Dreams!

Parts of the brain that regulate muscle movement, the brain stem regions that control breathing and heart rate- all experience an increase in metabolic activity during Rapid Eye Movement (REM), even more so than when awake.

In a part of the brain known as the limbic system, which is involved in emotion and reaction, you'll also see an increase in metabolism. The same for areas associated with memory and sensory processing, more specifically those involved in vision and hearing.

Something particularly subtle goes on in the visual processing regions. The part of the cortex that processes the first bits of visual information does not show much of an increase in metabolism, yet there is a big jump up in the regions that integrate simple, visual information.
That begs the questions, *How can this be, when, on top of it, your eyes are closed? This my friends is dreaming.
If plant respond to environment, metabolise and die, then, do plants dream? 

That tells us something about how dream imagery arises. But something else that happens in the brain that tells us something about the content of dreams. Theres a part of the brain called the 'frontal cortex'. Its the most recently evolved part of the human brain, its huge in primates and the last part of the brain to completely develop and mature.

The frontal cortex helps you do the harder, rather than easier things, for example, thinking in a logical, sequential manner, rather than bouncing all over the place cognitively. it keeps you from shouting at someone in public, just because you feel like it, stops you from telling someone exactly how you feel about their hideous outfit and instead finds something complimentary. The frontal cortex does all the 'discipling of you by inhibiting the frothy, emotional limbic system - Dr Sapolsky.

If you damage the frontal cortex, someone will likely become "frontally disinhibited", doing and saying the things we may think about but would never act upon. During REM sleep, metabolism in the frontal cortex turns down, turning up the limbic system to come up with the most outlandish ideas. Thats why dreams are dreamlike, illogical, non sequential, hyperemotional etc.. You'll probably breathe and talk underwater, fly in the air and announce your love for a stranger, create nd invent language whilst taking over new kingdoms and planets.

That gives you an understanding of dreams and sleep, but what is sleep for? To keep it short and tasty for this blog, Dr Robert Sapolsky states; "You die without it, even fruit flies need it. The most obvious answer is to appreciate that your brain consume a vast amount of energy to pull off all that calculus and symphony writing that you do, the brain constitutes around 3 percent of total body mass, but yet needs nearly a quarter of all energy". So rest.

Be Wise

Beatle.


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