When Dreaming Gets Your Heart Moving
Deep dreaming may be more in tune with the body than we thought The post When Dreaming Gets Your Heart Moving appeared first on Nautilus .
Recent research from Switzerland suggests that deep dreaming may be more closely connected to our bodies than previously believed. Traditionally, it was assumed that during deep sleep, the body would shut down all sensory signals. However, a team of scientists led by Marzia De Lucia, a neuroscientist at Lausanne University Hospital, conducted an experiment to investigate this hypothesis.
They monitored the responses of 25 healthy adults to external stimuli, such as clicks and tones, and their own heartbeats during different stages of REM sleep over two nights.
The findings indicate that as the participants drifted deeper into dreamland, particularly during a rapid-eye-movement phase associated with vivid dreaming, they became more in tune with their own heartbeats and less responsive to external stimuli. In some cases, dreamers were even more attuned to their heartbeats than when they were fully awake.
This suggests a reallocation of attention towards the body's internal states during deep sleep, potentially explaining why some individuals can sleep through loud noises but still wake up in emergencies.
The researchers propose that this inward focus may contribute to the vividness, immersion, and emotional intensity of dreams occurring during deeper REM phases of sleep. Their hypothesis could be further tested by measuring dreamers' responses to external and internal signals alongside dream reports. The study, published in Cell Biology, is preliminary and based on a small sample, but it opens up new avenues for exploring the role of bodily signals in our dream experiences.
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