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2 - REM sleep and dreaming

from Section I - Historical context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

By
Edward F. Pace-Schott
Edited by
Birendra N. Mallick ,
S. R. Pandi-Perumal ,
Robert W. McCarley  and
Adrian R. Morrison
Edward F. Pace-Schott
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
Birendra N. Mallick
Affiliation:
Jawaharlal Nehru University
S. R. Pandi-Perumal
Affiliation:
Somnogen Canada Inc, Toronto
Robert W. McCarley
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Adrian R. Morrison
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

Summary

Among sleep stages, awakenings from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep produce the greatest number and reported intensity of dream reports. Dreaming is a conscious state that lacks the insight and cognitive control typical of healthy waking but allows the remarkable emergence of coherent narrative, vivid visual imagery, strong emotion, and sometimes never-before-experienced elements. Similar to waking, ascending activation from the brain stem, basal forebrain, and diencephalon produces the brain-activated state of REM and its associated dream consciousness. However, in REM, the neuromodulatory influences producing this arousal are largely cholinergic and lack the aminergic activation accompanying cholinergic modulation in waking. Positron emission tomography (PET) studies have shown that in REM vs. waking, lateral cortical areas subserving cognitive control and higher order cognition are relatively less activated whereas midline anterior limbic cortical and subcortical structures are equally or more active. Such differences in neuromodulation and regional brain activity help shed light on the neural processes producing phenomenological differences between dream and waking consciousness. Advances in neuroimaging techniques including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electromagnetic source localization are providing new details on the tonic conditions and phasic neural events during REM that may contribute to dream experience.

Type
Chapter
Information
Rapid Eye Movement Sleep
Regulation and Function
 , pp. 8 - 20
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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