{"id":570965,"date":"2010-05-19T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.mindhacks.com:\/\/8675f635f38493ef347f28f5199a1931"},"modified":"2010-05-19T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T18:00:00","slug":"the-eyes-are-a-window-on-the-dream-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/570965","title":{"rendered":"The eyes are a window on the dream world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" class=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mindhacks.com\/blog\/files\/2010\/05\/magritte.jpg\" width=\"164\" height=\"109\" \/>During REM sleep, where most dreaming takes place, your eyes move around but it&#8217;s never been clear exactly why. A new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/20478849\">study<\/a> just published online by neuroscience journal <i>Brain<\/i> suggests that they are looking at the ever-changing dream world.<\/p>\n<p>The first question you might ask is how the researchers knew what the dreamers were looking at. To study this, the project recruited people with a condition called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rapid_eye_movement_behavior_disorder\">REM sleep behaviour disorder<\/a> who lack the normal sleep paralysis that keeps us still when we dream.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, people with REM sleep behaviour disorder act out their dreams. We&#8217;ve discussed the fascinating condition <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mindhacks.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/when_dreams_come_to_.html\">before<\/a> as it gives an outside view to the inner dream life of the affected person.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, the researchers, led by neuroscientist Laur\u00e8ne Leclair-Visonneau, used electrodes to monitor the eye-muscle movements of 56 patients with REM sleep behaviour disorder and 17 healthy controls in a sleep lab, while also videoing their night-time movements.<\/p>\n<p>The research team initially looked to see if there was a major difference in rapid eye movements between people with the condition and those without. They found that the groups were statistically indistinguishable &#8211; meaning that the sleep disorder wasn&#8217;t likely to be affecting the eye-movements themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing that REM eye-movements were not abnormal in people who acted out their dreams, the team then looked at the video and picked out where patients completed a &#8216;goal directed action&#8217; while dreaming &#8211; such as picking up a dream object or reaching out to touch something.<\/p>\n<p>By synchronising the videoed actions with the eye muscle recordings during REM sleep the researchers found that the eyes were fixed on the dream target 90% of the time.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, when the eyes move during REM sleep they are looking at something in the dream world.<\/p>\n<p>The eyes seem genuinely to be a bridge between the land of dream consciousness and waking life.<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/20478849\">Link<\/a> to PubMed entry for REM and dreaming study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During REM sleep, where most dreaming takes place, your eyes move around but it&#8217;s never been clear exactly why. A new study just published online by neuroscience journal Brain suggests that they are looking at the ever-changing dream world. The first question you might ask is how the researchers knew what the dreamers were looking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-570965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}