Researchers find neural switch that turns dreams on and off in mice | Hacker News Reader

Researchers find neural switch that turns dreams on and off in mice

news.berkeley.edu

59 pointsprakashk20 comments

Very speculative, but if this could some day be adapted to humans, I'm deeply curious how (if at all) this will figure into treatments for PTSD.

Considering that debilitating nightmares are a common and harmful symptom (as it's hard to function when you spent the night back in $trauma), I wonder whether temporarily "switching off" dreams during treatment would be helpful, if nothing else, allowing the person the occasional restful night.

But, on the other hand, it could be harmful, too, if the traumatic dreams are actually a healthy (if not pleasant) manner of processing the trauma.

Interesting!

I've wondered if this might be a better approach to VR in the future.

If we could turn on a dreaming state and somehow a computer could control what you experience in the dream. You'd get full motion and haptics for free. No motion sickness, etc.

The article suggests the same mechanism is used for danger perception. When REM sleeping you enter a state of deep paranoia. If you are conscious at the same time (what we call sleep paralysis) the fear is almost unbearable and you start hallucinating extreme danger and evil around you.

When REM sleeping you enter a state of deep paranoia

This is speculation rather than fact, as far as I am aware. I do know about sleep paralysis (I worked on a movie about it and got to read a bunch of interesting research) but there are also lots of mystical/ meditational techniques for handling your dream experiences - it's a skill that can be learned.

Sleep paralysis is not nearly as scary once you know what it is. I get it a lot. The first time it happened to me, I thought I was literally dying (I could hear a rhythmic thumping noise, gradually slowing, became convinced it was my heartbeat and that once it stopped I was dead).

Now when it occurs, I think, Oh. Sleep paralysis again. That's annoying. And then I either wait it out until I can wake up fully or try to fall back asleep and convert it into a lucid dreaming experience.

I've never felt an unbearable fear or the presence of some other being though. Just strange noises (usually a dull roar that is so loud it becomes a physical pressure on my body), tingling in my limbs, vertigo, and sometimes the feeling that the bed is tilted and I am continuously sliding down the incline along the sheets except that the sliding is infinite and I never move (a type of vertigo, I suppose, though this comes with the sensation of the fabric moving across my skin as I slide).

I agree once you know about it is much easier to manage. When I get it, I definitely know what is going on and can now manage it most of the time. However, from time to time I just can't prevent myself from falling into a very bad trippy situation. The problem is, when it does devolve into paranoia, I can feel the trauma for a few days afterward.

All that said, it doesn't prevent me from actually seeking it to get a lucid dream though. So yeah, I agree a technology that helps it would be interesting.

What about lucid dreaming? I've done that a number of times and found no paranoia.

I occasionally get sleep paralysis. I've also experienced lucid dreaming. For me sleep paralysis is different than lucid dreaming. In lucid dreaming, I basically realize that I'm sleeping and then from there can direct the dreams. In sleep paralysis, I'm in bed with my eyes open and experiencing hallucinations. It's not the same as dreaming as you are looking at real (and unreal) things. For me, I can't catch that inconsistency that makes it a dream.

To give you a good example, in a dream it is practically impossible to read. If you are dreaming that you are reading, one of the tricks I have played to get into lucid dreaming is to try to say what I am reading. It is either impossible, or it becomes absolute nonsense because there is nothing for you to read and your dream is skipping over that detail. To get into lucid dreaming, you just need to notice that and then decide not to wake up.

For sleep paralysis, you actually are looking at your room. You can see the pattern on the wallpaper in exact detail. Everything is real (except for the hallucinations). Also, you can't move.

When I've got sleep paralysis, I usually feel like someone has broken into the house and I need to warn people. But I can't move a muscle. I can't speak. Sometimes I will literally see people in my room. Sometimes I will see other things (even bizarre things like flowers).

It's interesting, though. A colleague of mine opined that sleep paralysis was the absolute most terrifying thing on earth. I said flippantly that I had it and it didn't bother me much.

Unlike lucid dreaming, I don't seem to be able to catch the inconsistencies in sleep paralysis. But as soon as I realize that I can't move, I get really pissed off and it overrides my fear. It's hard to describe, but I have a kind of internal explosion that starts in my stomach and gradually forces it's way out and shatters the sleep paralysis. Often I end up shouting something incoherently as I emerge from sleep. As soon as I wake up, I feel absolutely pumped up and amazing -- empowered, I guess.

I hadn't really thought about it, but I wonder if the lucid dreaming has allowed me to subconsciously recognize the paralysis and trigger a way to get out of it.

A handful of times I've been able to control things while lucid, but more often than not (probably at least once per month) it serves only as a sort of "escape mechanism" from the dream.

I haven't had a "nightmare" in probably 10 years because they never make any sense to me while I'm dreaming. Like if it's a drastically bad situation I always realize that it can't possibly be real, which switches off the dream as if it were a movie. Then I'm left in a sort of void where I have to work toward waking up -- out of the sleep paralysis. It was at this point that I used to panic, but now I know better, and that eventually I'll be fine and awake. I too seem to have a lot of energy after this process of "escape".

But my original comment was more a question of whether or not the research in the article could potentially trigger a lucid dream state, facilitating an on-demand, in-brain VR situation.

I don't think I've ever experienced fully conscious eyes-open sleep paralysis.

First I wonder what pointed them in this direction. It seems like a lot of time and work to conduct this experiment, so what did they expect and why?

Second, I wonder if rTMS or similar might be able to induce some of the same effects on unmodified animals or people.

The article says that it was already known that that area of the medulla was responsible for sleep paralysis during REM.

Perhaps they just looked to see if activating it causes sleep paralysis, which is what would be expected. If that were true, then deactivating it could be a potential area to explore for treatment of certain REM disorders (such as sleep paralysis failing to occur, and the person acts out their dreams).

Instead, they found that activating it causes both sleep paralysis and REM itself, all together. This is actually discouraging from the standpoint of treatment of REM disorders. However, it is still very interesting to know that REM can be caused by that area.

More significantly, they could awaken mice instantly by stimulating certain neurons in the medulla. This could have far-reaching effects! Imagine working comfortably for days. Both industry and the military will be all over this.

This would have very negative effects though, as the brain dumps waste during sleep. If industry/military regularly would force people to be awake, who knows what would happen to their health? Mental illness rates for Alzheimer's, Dementia, &c would likely increase.

Pretty certain it'd be handy in certain military situations. But I could also see easy abuse in industries like computer game design. Imagine if EA could force you to stay awake to shorten their deadlines.

It doesn't even have to be outright intentional abuse in order to be a really shitty situation. The story for going home at time X can no longer be something like "I need to sleep in order to be productive tomorrow", so it'll morph into something like "I don't particularly care about the success of the company" and you'll get branded as a bad employee.

No top-down force required, just a shift in common knowledge about what your capabilities are.

The military already does this by handing out amphetamines during major combat operations - look up various stories on 'go pills' from the early stages of the Afghan war. Having taken prescription amphetamines over an extended period for adult ADD this isn't necessarily a disaster, but its not that sustainable either, and I would not be surprised to find a correlation between high dispensation rates and subsequent suicide rates by unit.

Yes exactly - imagine all that. Because its all going to happen. This is a watershed moment, with new opportunities both to help people, and to abuse them in new ways!

Stimulants do a pretty good job of keeping people awake (with the corresponding effects kicking in after a couple days) and have already been abused by both industry and especially militaries. Not sure a novel method of inducing wakefulness is more dangerous than Germany pumping its soldiers full of amphetamines in WWII or the junior partner that abuses modafinil or the college student that binges on adderal before exams.

Because its far more effective. Wire a soldier's brain, and Bing! they're awake when you need them awake.

TANSTAAFL

This reminds me of part of The Lathe of Heaven, which I just read after a recommendation on here a few weeks ago. Interesting that they can both start and stop REM sleep, from what I can tell.

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