Memory and Dreams by George Christos, Rutgers University Press, $29, ISBN 0813531306 Reviewed by David Cohen
DREAMS are accompanied by frenetic brain activity, so why don鈥檛 we act them out in our sleep? It seems there is a clutch of nerve cells responsible for stopping signals from the brain getting through to muscles in the body during sleep. To prove this, researchers removed these nerves from a cat and observed it prowl around its cage as if stalking prey, while fast asleep. They concluded the cat was acting out its dreams.
George Christos presents this and other results as a prelude to his own theory in this fascinating book on the relationship between memory and dreams. His theory is seductive, if uncanny. He believes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) occurs when babies dream of not breathing. It turns out that one of the few faculties we have control over during our dreams is breathing.
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When we dream we enter a heightened nervous state called Rapid Eye Movement sleep, making it possible to determine when subjects are dreaming. Experiments have shown that people who dream about holding their breath do physically hold their breath at the same time.
Christos believes that babies that succumb to SIDS were dreaming of being in the womb, where they did not have to breathe. In Memory and Dreams, he argues that making their sleeping environment less like the womb will thus reduce the risk of SIDS. Controversial? Possibly. Fascinating? Definitely.