Dream Sequences
You are running, but you never seem to get any where. Some strange men are chasing you around a random maze and you have no idea how you’ve got yourself into this situation. Suddenly, you feel like you’re falling and your body jolts up.
Dreams: something that none of us truly know how they work and how they affect us. Something that will always be fascinating to us as we wake up and wonder if we can recall a dream from the night before, and if we can, the wonderment of what that dream even meant. As I have said before, and I’ll say it once again, the brain is a fascinating creature.
Let’s start with: where in the brain do dreams occur? They occur in the temporal lobe of the brain, specifically in the hippocampus. Imagine someone who has damage to, or does not have, their hippocampus. Having said this is where dreams, so essentially imagination, and creating memories occurs, how would this effect a being? Well, it would be extremely difficult to form memories or dreams without a fully functioning hippocampus. This is essentially what you see in those with amnesia.
When dreams do occur, you are aware of it at some level. You are not fully conscious, you may not be able to recall it, but you are aware. I am not sure if any of you have watched the movie Inception, but for those of you who have, you can recall that this movie is essentially all about dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio invades dreams, showing that we are aware of our dreams and what is occurring at some level. All of these dreams and thoughts and experiences are linked to neural networks, and on a more cellular level, neurons.
Through our work at xNeurals, we can use technology to simulate our brain and what goes on in one’s head during a dream. For lack of a better term, virtual reality 2.0. Why is this important? We can basically use it to understand ourselves and our thought sequences better, as our brain is who we are.
Studies show that dreams can also influence how we experience feelings and emotions the next day. I can definitely attest to this as I have first-handedly experienced this. This then brings us back to our work at xNeurals where we can also use this technology to predict and regulate our emotions. Often times, many will use SSRI’s (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), which are medications to regulate thoughts and emotions, often times for disorders like anxiety, depression, and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder. This technology would essentially be a technical SSRI.
A study, featured by BBC News in an article called “Eye movements ‘change scenes’ during dreams”, even shows evidence that rapid eye movement (or REM) essentially “changes scenes” in our dreams. This evidence is a huge finding in the neuroscience world, allowing xNeurals to use simulations of brains, or maybe even artificial brains, to look more deeply into this, and allow us to have the resources to then translate this into helping those with autism or other emotional and spectrum disorders.
References
Guardian News and Media. (2017, April 10). Scientists identify parts of brain involved in
dreaming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/10/scientists-
identify-parts-of-brain-involved-in-dreaming.
Lewis, P. A. (2014, July 18). What is dreaming and what does it tell us about memory? [excerpt].
Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-dreaming-and-what-
does-it-tell-us-about-memory-excerpt/.
Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. (2019, September 17). The most
commonly prescribed type of antidepressant. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/
diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/ssris/art-20044825.
Morelle, R. (2013, April 4). Scientists ‘read dreams’ using brain scans. BBC News. https://
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22031074.
NPR. (2007, October 30). The science behind dreams and nightmares. NPR. https://
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15778923.
Wamsley, E. J. (2020, June 8). How the brain constructs dreams. eLife. https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7279884/.
Wamsley, E. J. (2020, June 8). Memory: How the brain constructs dreams. eLife. https://
elifesciences.org/articles/58874.
Webb, J. (2015, August 11). Eye movements ‘change scenes’ during dreams. BBC News. https://
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33860994.
- Jayvanti Vanmanthai
