Dissociated Pattern of Activity in Visual Cortices and Their Projections During Human Rapid Eye Movement Sleep

• DOI: 10.1126/science.279.5347.91
• Publication Date: 2002-07-27T09:49:42Z
• Authors: Allen R. Braun; Thomas J. Balkin; Nancy J. Wesensten; Fuad Gwadry; Richard E. Carson; Mary Varga; Paul Baldwin; Gregory Belenky; Peter Herscovitch
• Keywords: Neuroscience of sleep; Extrastriate cortex

Positron emission tomography was used to measure cerebral activity and evaluate regional interrelationships within visual cortices their projections during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in human subjects. REM associated with selective activation of extrastriate cortices, particularly the ventral processing stream, an unexpected attenuation primary cortex; increases blood flow areas were significantly correlated decreases striate cortex. Extrastriate also concomitant limbic paralimbic regions, but a marked reduction frontal association including lateral orbital dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. This pattern suggests model for brain mechanisms subserving where may operate as closed system dissociated from regions at either end hierarchy that mediate interactions external world.