Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Nerea Herrero | email: neherrero@itba.edu.ar
Nerea L. Herrero 1°2°, Aylin Ágatha Vazquez Chenlo1°2°, Matias Pretel 1°, Luis I. Brusco 3°, Pablo Gleiser 2°4°, Cecilia Forcato 1°2°
1° Laboratorio de Sueño y Memoria, Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), Iguazú 341, (1437) Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2° Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICET), Godoy Cruz 2290, (1425) Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3° Centro de Neuropsiquiatría y Neurología de la Conducta- CENECON, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires.
4° Laboratorio de Neurociencia de Sistemas Complejos, Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), Iguazú 341, (1437) Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Lucid dreams (LD) refers to a dream in which the dreamers are aware of the dream condition. When they occur, subjects have access to their memories, are able to act voluntarily in the dream, and in some cases they are capable of modifying the oneiric environment. Furthermore, a dreamer can voluntarily indicate the beginning of their LD, by using specific prearranged eye movements leaving a mark in the polysomnography recording. False awakenings (FAs) are dreams in which the subjects have an erroneous belief that they are waking up in a familiar place, starting a daytime routine to later find that they are still dreaming. Little is known about FAs, and there is only a single report study which provides EEG data about it. In the Sleep and Memory Lab, we train dreamers on leaving the eye mark under different states of consciousness such as LD and FA to further register their brain activity in the Lab. Here we will discuss preliminary EEG data from periods of LDs and FAs, compared to sleep periods without consciousness.