Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Institutions, Markets, Technologies (IMT) School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2023 Jun;27(6):568-582. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2023.02.006. Epub 2023 Mar 22.
Newly encoded memory traces are spontaneously reactivated during sleep. Since their discovery in the 1990s, these memory reactivations have been discussed as a potential neural basis for dream experiences. New results from animal and human research, as well as from the rapidly growing field of sleep and dream engineering, provide essential insights into this question, and reveal both strong parallels and disparities between the two phenomena. We suggest that, although memory reactivations may contribute to subjective experiences across different states of consciousness, they are not likely to be the primary neural basis of dreaming. We identify important limitations in current research paradigms and suggest novel strategies to address this question empirically.
新编码的记忆痕迹会在睡眠中自发地重新激活。自 20 世纪 90 年代发现这些记忆痕迹以来，它们一直被认为是梦境体验的潜在神经基础。动物和人类研究以及睡眠和梦境工程这一快速发展领域的新成果为这个问题提供了重要的见解，并揭示了这两种现象之间的相似之处和差异。我们认为，尽管记忆再激活可能有助于不同意识状态下的主观体验，但它们不太可能是做梦的主要神经基础。我们确定了当前研究范式中的重要限制，并提出了新的策略来从经验上解决这个问题。
