Large dogs, on the other hand, have fewer, but longer dreams. Coren reports that small dogs have more frequent dreams than large dogs, but those small dog dreams are shorter in duration. People vary as to how often they dream and what they dream about, and researchers believe that is true of dogs, as well. The dream pattern in dogs seems to be very similar to the dream pattern in humans,” according to the researchers. “What we’ve basically found is that dogs dream doggy things. The results were pretty much what we’ve all suspected for years. This allowed them, under carefully controlled conditions, to let the dogs act out their dreams. Researchers figured out that one of the ways to discover what dogs might dream about is to temporarily disable the pons during REM sleep. The same is true for human infants and older adults. This is because the pons is underdeveloped in puppies and less efficient in older dogs, according to Stanley Coren, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia. You may have noticed that puppies and older dogs twitch and move a lot in their sleep. Without the pons, we might act out everything we were dreaming about - probably with disastrous results. In other words, you can thank the pons for preventing your partner from flailing around during dreams and waking you up. The pons is the part of the brain stem that is involved in the control of sleep cycles and the regulation of deep sleep and is responsible for inhibiting your large muscles from moving during sleep. If, like me, you’d never heard of the pons before this, let me explain. To figure out what dogs might dream of, researchers performed a test that temporarily disabled the pons. Most dogs lead more interesting lives than rats. For puppies, senior dogs, and larger breeds, time spent sleeping can be even longer. The National Sleep Foundation reports that dogs spend about half their day sleeping. Researchers at MIT concluded that animals have complex dreams, and they can remember and replay long sequences of events when they are asleep. The rats dreamed about their day, just like you might find yourself back in the office in your dreams, even if you would rather have dreamed yourself someplace more exciting. This suggested to the researchers that animals tend to dream as we do. What they found was that the same areas lit up in the rats’ brains, which meant that the rats were likely to be dreaming of the maze, and by comparing the data the researchers could figure out where exactly in the maze the rats had dreamed themselves. Scientists monitored the brain activity of the rats in the maze and compared it to the brain activity of the rats during REM sleep. These rats spent all day running in a maze.
One of the most famous of these dream experiments involved lab rats. Scientists can track these cycles and associated brain activity using specialized equipment. REM sleep is the period responsible for the most memorable and vivid dreams and is believed to be a part of how the body processes memory, among other things. There are periods of wakefulness, followed by Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, and non-rapid-eye-movement sleep. Like us, dogs and other animals go through several sleep cycles. In fact, scientists believe that most vertebrates, and maybe even the humble fruit fly, can – and do – dream on a regular basis.
While we don’t have all of the answers, scientists are taking steps to figure out dog dreams, bringing us one step closer to understanding our canine companions. What do dogs dream about? Have you ever wondered? Is she really hunting rabbits, or is she just twitching in her sleep? Do dogs dream as we do?
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