Humans can dream of many things and events that may be strange, but the question is: do other animals dream? Researchers studied the sleep of cats, rats and squid to find out what happens when these animals sleep, and some came up with results that contradicted previous assumptions. This type of study may help us improve our understanding of learning and memory in humans.
Animals' ability to dream has not been confirmed, but experimental psychologist Hyogo Spears of University College London sees them as very present.
In contrast, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first announced that animals had complex dreams, were able to keep long chains of events and retrieve them during sleep, and had recently published their report in the journal Neuron.
Most pet owners realize that sleeping animals appear to be dreaming, and studies have shown that animals' brains and humans go through the same sleeping situations, but this is the first time researchers have come to know what animals dream about.
Professor Matthew Wilson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Learning and Memory says: "No one has been able to ascertain the similarity of the way animals and humans dream, which may involve recalling events we experience during mindfulness or at least parts of them."
Wilson's team trained rats to run down a circular path for a food bonus, then monitored her brain activity while running through the maze and her brain activity when sleeping.
The team observed a distinctive pattern in the activity of certain neurons in the hippocampus region, a part of the brain that plays an important role in memory. They also found that cerebral activity was so similar in jogging and sleeping cases, that they could tell which part of the maze the rats saw in their "dreams." They were also able to determine when the rats ran or stood still in the dream, and the rats were evoking those memories as quickly as they did during their awakening.
We now realize that rats are already dreaming, and that their dreams are linked to real-life events ".
The results of this study correspond to the idea that physical places such as maze are encoded in long-term memory during REM sleep.
Wilson says that modern technology that enables them to monitor the brain during sleep will help them create a pillar to analyze what is seen during the dream stages, and that it may be a useful way to treat memory disorders such as memory loss and Alzheimer's disease, besides helping us to devise ways to learn and remember more effectively.
but now we have the means to begin studying the world of dreams in the field of animal perception study, and thus we have a deeper view of our perception."
In another newly published study in the journal eLife, Spears and his colleagues discovered that when rats saw their experiences of food before they went to sleep, certain cells in their brains painted a way to get that food; In other words, the rats were "dreaming" of their course of action for the reward.
In contrast, humans dream during REM sleep, and this also applies to most other mammals; So Director of the Center for Evolutionary Neural Behavior Patrick McNamara of Boston University says: It is reasonable to assume that animals have dreams while they are sleeping.
McNamara also referred to an experiment conducted by French neuroscientist Michelle Govitt and his team in 1959, in which they modified cat brains to disrupt the mechanism responsible for preventing movement during REM sleep.
Joffitt's team noticed that sleeping cats were lifting their heads, suggesting that they were watching invisible objects, and noticed that they had arched their back. Moreover, cats have shown other behaviors that indicate altercation and prey stalking.
All these behaviors indicate that these cats saw images during REM sleep, but we can't say for sure that they were dreaming like humans, according to McNamara.
The Dream of Animals
Writer Liz Langley of National Geographic says: "I have recently seen a strange dream of squid belonging to the group of footed besides octopus, which made me wonder: Can these animals dream?"
Spears says it's possible, but it depends on our concept of a dream. For example, squid experience a sleep-like condition, during which changes in color, shudders and rapid eye movements similar to the sleep of other animals' REM occur, according to a study published in 2012.
Why do animals dream of events alone?
If we can determine the content of the dream phase, we may be able to discover why certain events are reminiscent only during sleep. "
Furthermore, Wilson's study raises questions about old assumptions about animal thought processes; Scientists have previously thought that few animals (including chimpanzees and dolphins) are able to recall and assess detailed chains of events after they occur. Wilson noted that dreams are considered as underlying passage of events, and his study shows that animals are able to reanalyze their experiences after they have ended.
What do we benefit from studying animals' dreams?
Wilson is currently investigating the role sleep may play in forming long-term memories. Scientists believe that memories form across at least two phases: an initial stage that occurs during the same event, followed by a anchoring phase, during which the event is transformed into a long-term memory. The hippocampus is thought to play a role in both phases, and long-term storage of memories may occur when recovered during sleep.
Wilson's research is concerned with how memories are stored in the brain and the impact of their recovery during sleep in performance and long-term memory.
Wilson says: "If you learn five things and you're awake, which of them will be preserved in the brain? If little information is repeated during sleep, it may determine which events we will keep and remember afterwards ".
Previous studies have revealed that people who learn repetitive tasks are able to exploit REM sleep to improve their performance. In some cases, this unintentional exercise appears to be as useful as the exercise during mindfulness. Tests have shown that rats and humans perform in a newly learned task after a period of sleep.
Dreams may therefore be an opportunity to keep thinking about a specific issue during our sleep, as some people claim that when they wake up they find solutions to a dilemma that has confused them for several days.
As a result, dreams may provide us with the chance to gather pertinent experiences that, at the same time, did not occur so that we can learn from them. For instance, conjuring up a string of amusing or upsetting events may allow us to draw lessons from these experiences and use them to guide our behavior in the future.