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Genius Mouse Experiment Reveals How Temperature Affects Our Dreams at Night
Genius Mouse Experiment Reveals How Temperature Affects Our Dreams at Night [sciencealert.com]:
Neuroscientists from the University of Bern in Switzerland broke a receptor gene in mice and watched how changes in temperature affected their sleep state, demonstrating the brain prioritises temperature control over dreaming.
When we're comfortable enough, our brains easily drift between a quiet state of rest and one described by the movement of our eyes: Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM [wikipedia.org]).
[...]when 'warm-blooded' animals like us do dream, temperature regulation is suppressed [sciencedirect.com]. Sweating, shivering, panting and flushing just isn't as effective at maintaining our core temperature once REM sleep kicks in.
"This loss of thermoregulation in REM sleep is one of the most peculiar aspects of sleep, particularly since we have finely-tuned mechanisms that control our body temperature while awake or in non-REM sleep", says neuroscientist Markus Schmidt [unibe.ch] from the University of Bern and the Department of Neurology at Bern University Hospital.
It's a short leap of logic to assume our brain makes a choice – process the events of that day, or let it go in favour of keeping your body from freezing or frying. Because for some reason it just can't do both.
[...]Fine-tuning body temperature and running a big brain are two of the most energy-intensive activities on a mammal's to-do list, so it seems reasonable to think these two vital tasks are going to come into conflict at some point.
[...]"These new data suggest that the function of REM sleep is to activate important brain functions specifically at times when we do not need to expend energy on thermoregulation, thus optimising use of energy resources," says Schmidt [unibe.ch].
Journal reference: Noëmie Komagata, Blerina Latifi, Thomas Rusterholz, Claudio L.A. Bassetti, Antoine Adamantidis, Markus H. Schmidt. "Dynamic REM Sleep Modulation by Ambient Temperature and the Critical Role of the Melanin-Concentrating Hormone System" DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.009 [doi.org] (direct link: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30542-1 [cell.com](paywalled).
No word on how this affects one's predisposition for sleepwalking [wikipedia.org].
