The anterior, or front, portion of the cingulate, a semicircle in the brain’s center, influences motivation and decision-making-and can switch on while we’re snoozing. Decideĭespite their disjointed nature, dreams still contain semirational thoughts, likely thanks to areas supporting conscious cognition. We may rely on this process to dull the sting of difficult memories. It and other emotional domains are more rowdy during REM sleep, which could explain why strong reactions happen frequently when we doze. The almond-shaped amygdala helps generate feelings like fear, anger, and anxiety. It’s not clear what triggers these areas at night. Activity increases in brain regions that control movement and process optical inputs, like the visual and motor cortices, which likely create what we “see” and “do” in slumber. Our most vivid imaginings occur during the REM phase of sleep. That could be why reality seeps into our visions-but not why they tend to warp reality. At night it directs neurons to replay recollections, facilitating long-term storage. Rememberĭreams tap memories stored in connections between brain cells, which the hippocampus tracks as they form. Here’s how we think our brains drive our nocturnal hallucinations. While sleepy interludes seem to rely on many of the same mental processes we use while awake, researchers are still trying to understand the way they work together during slumber. Only in the past few decades, with the advance of technology like fMRIs that lets us record and visualize activity in the brain, have neuroscientists begun to figure out how and why we experience these reveries. You dream for two hours every night, but for something so common, it’s a remarkably enigmatic process.
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