Word: brainstem
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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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...
Hobson has conducted extensive research on cats, which he says confirms the existence of the independent dream center in the mammalian brainstem. "REM occurs in cats when the entire brain except the brainstem has been destroyed," he says. The cat research has shown that REM causes the brain to create the dream and not vice-versa, Hobson says. "Obviously, we cannot tell if a cat is actually dreaming, but by inserting a microscopic electrode into a cat's brain, we can measure the electrical signal as it passes along a single nerve cell--the impulse in the eye fires before...