Latest Japanese research: Brain blood flow increases and energy plummets during dreaming sleep stage

The latest Japanese research found that during the sleep stage that is closely related to dreaming, cerebral blood flow increases significantly, but the available energy of nerve cells plummets abnormally, showing that

Many people think that dreaming is a time for the brain to rest and relax, but the latest scientific experiments have overturned this perception. A Japanese study found that during the "rapid eye movement" (REM) sleep, which is closely related to dreaming, although the blood supply to the brains of mice increased significantly, the energy immediately available for nerve cells plummeted abnormally, indicating that the brain was undergoing intense internal energy consumption.

The science and technology news website "ScienceDaily" reported that this research led by a team from Tohoku University in Japan has been published in the international journal "Communications Biology". Researchers tracked the brains of mice during natural sleep and found that about 50 seconds before entering the dreaming sleep stage, cerebral blood flow began to surge; however, surprisingly, the concentration of "adenosine triphosphate" (ATP), the most critical energy source in nerve cells, dropped significantly.

This discovery breaks the traditional understanding and creates a strange physiological contrast in which "the supply of blood and metabolic raw materials increases, but the energy available to nerve cells decreases."

Why does the brain consume so much energy? Suspect is busy sorting out memories

Why does the brain use so much energy when dreaming? The research team proposed two possible mechanisms: The main inference is that the brain is intensively undergoing "memory solidification and synaptic reorganization" during dreaming. Huge information transmission occurs between the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex, which are responsible for memory. The huge computing load instantly burns up the energy storage of nerve cells. Another possibility is that the transmission channels of energy substances between cells are blocked, or the efficiency of cells to synthesize energy temporarily fluctuates.

The research team pointed out that this result proves that the brain during sleep does not simply hibernate, but performs extremely complex energy deployment between blood vessels and neurons.

However, the researchers emphasized that this experiment was conducted on mice, and it cannot be directly inferred that dreaming in humans will cause physical fatigue after waking up, nor can it be concluded that the more dreams there are, the more tired the body will be. However, this discovery provides extremely critical scientific clues for unraveling the connection between human sleep, dreaming, and the brain's memory mechanism.