Why do eyes move while dreaming, new research discovered the reason
Dreaming is not destined only for humans. Many animals go into the world of imagination while sleeping. We know this because while dreaming we see glimpses of activity even in our closed eyes. Activity is visible in their muscles. But scientists could not understand the reason behind it for decades. Through a new study on the brain of rats, researchers have come closer to knowing why there is movement behind the pupil of the eye while dreaming.
long time study
Scientists have been studying the process of eye blinking based on dreams for a very long time. People who wake up immediately after having a clear dream show more activity in their eyes. This easily led to the assumption that this may have been due to the sensitivity to the appearance of the dreamed scenes.
Based on the experiences of the awakened
No matter how credible this thing may seem, it is a very challenging task to confirm it experimentally. Most of the studies so far have been based on sleep-wake experiences in which researchers link eye movements to dreams, but this method has a lot of potential for doubt.
There are more reasons
Other researchers have also highlighted that rapid eye movements occur even in the absence of dreams. This occurs in infants and has also been seen in people who have suffered a stroke who are not in a state of imagination. This means that we can dream even without rapid eye movement sleep.
experiments on rats
But importantly, not all studies support this scanning hypothesis. Apart from this, another reason is also given for the rapid movement of the eyes under the pupils of the eyes, which is also called saccades. It may simply be a basic activity of neural responses resulting from the brain’s loss of contact with the unconscious mind. To learn more about human dream neuroscience, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted tests on rats.
what was detected
The researchers specifically measured the activity of nerve cells in the thalamus of the mice, which are responsible for turning their heads in one direction. The saccades while awake are combined with the movement of the rats’ heads when they are moving. The matching of nerve impulses to head direction to eye activity should be a substantial evidence supporting the scanning hypothesis.
What did the study find
The researchers replaced the probe apparatus in the mice and recorded their neural activity while they were moving freely in their environment in the awake state. Along with this, a series of cameras were also installed in the same environment which were capturing every movement of their eyes. Even when the rats fell asleep, the sensors were recording everything. Using the neural activity and the scans recorded during the waking hours, the researchers determined the movement of their eyes during rapid movement.
