Dreaming Rats
…Wilson and Kenway Louie described the behavior of rats that had been trained to run on a circular track. As expected, running on the track generated a distinct pattern of neural firing in the rat hippocampus, a brain area essential for the formation of long-term memory…
… as before, Wilson kept the electrodes in place while the rats drifted off to sleep… The scientists examined 45 dreams and found that 20 of the dreams repeated the exact same patterns of brain activity exhibited while running in a circle. In fact, the correlation between the dream and the reality was so close that Wilson could predict the exact position of the rodent on the track while it was asleep.
I’m sure you want to read Jonah Lehrer’s article about dreaming.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 8:03 am and is filed under animals, neuroscience, science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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