You are running, fast and adept, in an attempt to escape the scary monster just around the corner. As it is about to grab you, your eyes open suddenly. Your forehead is damp; pricks of sweat form towards the top. Does this sound familiar? Well, you’ve experienced what hundreds of millions of people experience every night-- dreams. By a simple Google search, the definition of dreams pops up as “a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep.” Although everything stated previously remains true, dreams are intricate. The origin and the purpose are two aspects of dreams researchers are studying in depth, in hopes of grasping a true, definite answer.
Dreams seem to be from imaginations, memories, and recorders of past events. Everybody dreams. Studies and past research give the profound news that patients who suffered damage to the hippocampus (a structure embedded in the brain responsible for memory and learning) still dream. The study from the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging dive deeper into the questions surrounding the roles of the hippocampus. Spanò and others conducted an experiment using four people with a damaged hippocampus at the right and left sides, along with ten volunteers with no reported damages to the hippocampus. Instead of inquiring about the dreams the very next day, Spanò interrogated them with questions regarding their dreams as soon as they woke up to obtain the closest, most accurate results. She found that people with the hippocampal damage had less vivid dreams and fewer dreams as well through the span of their sleep.
This special part of the brain doesn’t just help with learning; it connects the emotions we feel with these memories and their formation. Emotions and learning are vital components of the formations of dreams. Dreams bridge the memories stored between brain cells and the hippocampus tracks as they form. It gives directions for neurons to replay and store these memories. Hippocampal damage does impact dreaming and strengthens the link between the memories our brains store to our dreams that occur at night. Spano’s study says, “The results of the study suggest that hippocampal integrity may be necessary for typical dreaming to occur.” Based on these research results, scientists also believed that dreaming connects with other cognitive functions that also rely on the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is now known to be a vital part of dreams if not damaged, the formation and effects on dreams. And although dreams are not direct recordings replaying our memories, the link between these two is noticeable with the hippocampus as an important connector. These new insights on the hippocampus and dreaming lead to new research and possibly a closer understanding of purpose in our dreams. Are they really just samples of our memories combined with our imaginations? Or, do they dive into something totally new?
Sources
Goffredina Spanò, Gloria Pizzamiglio, Cornelia McCormick, Ian A Clark, Sara De Felice, Thomas D Miller, Jamie O Edgin, Clive R Rosenthal, Eleanor A Maguire, “Dreaming with hippocampal damage,” June 8, 2020. https://elifesciences.org/articles/56211
