Do rats dream?

The rats are believed to dream. Studies have shown that rats dream of things that take place during their waking period and they can attempt to get information from the past day or the past few hours. When the rats are shown a certain food treat which they are not able to reach, when they sleep, the neurons show that there is a fire in their brains as if they want to run where they have been shown the treat to take it. For them, it looks like they dream of where they want to be.

Just like people, rats can store a mental map in their hippocampi. It is two curved structures at each side of the brain. Scientists put electrodes into the brains of the rats and they explored the environment which was remembered or recorded in their brains.

The dreams of the rats may be shaped by the goals the rats want to achieve. It is not about reflecting on the baseline activity, but it can also depend on the desires of the animal. The studies support the idea that the hippocampus can help in imagining the future, the same as recording a memory in the past. There are some people who suffer damage on the hippocampi and they have problems when it comes to imagining the future events with detail or richness.

The rats can process information about location when they are sleeping. Rats are known to have complex dreams and they can retain or recall some sequence of events when they sleep. Each owner of a rat should be aware that while the rats sleep the brains have a certain series they follow.

It is not clear if the rats dream as people do, but it involves replaying the day’s events at a certain level. The studies have shown that it is possible that the rats dream and that the dreams are connected to their actual experience. This was seen by recording the brain cells when the rats sleep. However, when it comes to how the rats dream, it is not clear why some events may be replayed and others will not be.

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