Knowing how the brain processes emotion during REM sleep may open the door to new mental health therapies, say researchers.
REM sleep is the darling of the sleep world. Short for"rapid eye movement," REM fascinates us because it's when we do most of our dreaming – when, supposedly, all of our inner fears, frustrations, and passions play out.
Turns out, neurons in the front of the brain may be busy reinforcing positive emotions while also dampening our most negative and traumatic ones, say researchers from the University of Bern, and University Hospital Bern, in Switzerland. It's a protective mechanism, they believe. They wanted to find out why the front of the brain – the prefrontal cortex – is actively integrating many emotions when you're awake but appears inactive during REM sleep, says lead study author Mattia Aime, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Biomedical Research at the University of Bern. It's a baffling phenomenon, the authors note in theirNeurons have three key parts, Aime explains – dendrites, axons, and the cell body .
"This means that the dendrites, active during REM sleep, provided a substrate for consolidation," Aime says, blocking any outgoing messages related to danger. Think of it as a game of"whisper down the lane" that stops short when someone receives a scary or negative whisper and doesn't pass it on to the next person.
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