Eye movements 'change scenes' during dreams

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33860994

by sakopov • 11 years ago

46 8 11 years ago

iaw• 11 years ago

This is really amazing, I have always wondered what the first dreams a sentient creature are. What is the context of a dream before we have any experiences to form it from?

atmosx• 11 years ago

Hm, I don't think there is such a moment. From the moment we acquire some sort of consciousness and sleep becomes a requirement for the body and mind to work properly, you at least some sort of experience.

Newborns can't see properly, they see only shadows and perceive mainly by sound and contact. But even them, have nightmares or good dreams :-)

A better question might be: "What kind of dreams does a human blind from birth dream?"

Nature Magazine featured an article on the topic[1].

[1] http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/26/how-the-b...

jacquesm• 11 years ago

Or even dreaming in the womb:

http://www.science20.com/news_releases/do_babies_womb_have_d...

placebo• 11 years ago

Not sure what "change of scene" means, but:

"Based on earlier studies showing that some of the eye movements of REM sleep corresponded to the reported direction of the dreamer's gaze (e.g., Roffwarg et al. 1962), we asked subjects to carry out distinctive patterns of voluntary eye movements when they realized they were dreaming. The prearranged eye movement signals appeared on the polygraph records during REM, proving that the subjects had indeed been lucid during uninterrupted REM sleep (LaBerge 1990; LaBerge et al. 1981)" (from http://www.lucidity.com/slbbs/)

kiernan• 11 years ago

It sounds very similar to a 'Saccade' [1]. Something your eyes do all the time when waking whenever they move. From your mind's perspective it seems to cut off the old signal from wherever yours eyes were previously facing/absorbing, wipes the slate clean and starts building up mental imagery and models based on the new input feed.

I think this might be getting at what they mean by 'change of scene', but it's probably not possible to prove exactly what's happening since it's subjective.

As an experiment you can do yourself to highlight this effect, go to you bathroom and look into the mirror with your face almost touching it, staring at the point between your eyes.

Try not to move your eyes at all and relax them, even if it feels like they might be moving off-target. Eventually your whole 'view' should subtly change, maybe blur and come into and out of seeming focus as your brain tries to interpret the noisy input it's getting (since nothing should be changing, the only difference in the input is noise) and may refocus your mental imagery/minds eye at showing you what it thinks you're looking at.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade

stephengillie2• 11 years ago

When we're sleeping and want to change the dream subject matter, we twitch our eyes. It's like pressing the lever on a View-Master[1], or clicking the mouse to view the next slide.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View-Master

stephengillie2• 11 years ago

So essentially, eye motions during REM sleep are not directly related to visualization of dreams. Instead, it's linked to another set of neurons.

  "The eye movements are not actually scanning your dream - they're reorienting 
  your visual thoughts," Prof Horne told BBC News.

Further, the study delves into the connections between REM sleep and wakefulness. This could lead into lucid dreaming, as other commenters have remarked.

  "This study endorses other findings that REM sleep has many similarities to 
  wakefulness.

Others are using the new findings to dig into evolutionary causes.

  Prof William Wisden, a neuroscientist at Imperial College London, was also 
  convinced by the similarity of brain activity between awake and REM states - 
  but he said there are bigger questions still to answer.
  "The most fascinating question of all is why do we have to have REM sleep? Why
  does our brain have all this circuitry to do that?

x0x0• 11 years ago

News is so weird. The top of the article shows a picture of a person sleeping. Sleep is a pretty universal experience; I'm not sure how that image enhances the article =P

Eye movements 'change scenes' during dreams

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