Word: brainstem
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Hobson and co-researcher Dr. Robert W. McCarley, professor of Psychiatry, have been investigating the physiological aspects of dreaming for 12 years at the mental health center, by focusing on the relationship between Rapid Eye Movement (REM--the active dreaming stage of sleep) and a "dream center" in the brainstem. Since 1953, when REM was discovered, most psychiatrists have believed that dream images from the frontal brain cause these quick, darting eye movements. Hobson and McCarley's "activation-synthesis," theory maintains that the opposite is true...
This theory, presented three years ago in the American Journal of Psychiatry, maintains that periodically during sleep REM activates a dream center in the brainstem. For example, if the eyes look to the left, the dream center may receive a message for the body to turn left. The dream center then relays this command to the body. Although the body does not actually move left, it sends a message to the frontal brain indicating that it moved. But the movement is not always so simple as turning left. Because the eyes are not actually seeing, the messages they transmit...