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All parts of the brain › Functions › Dreaming

What part of the brain controls dreaming?

Dreams have no single centre: most come in REM sleep, which is switched on from the pons, and scans in REM sleep show the thalamus, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex and higher visual areas of the occipital lobe more active, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate less active. That pattern may be why dreams feel vivid and emotional but are rarely questioned. [1][2]

The 3D brain needs JavaScript. The list of parts still says what each one does for dreaming.

Slice

All 6 parts are lit together. Drag to turn, pinch or scroll to zoom, tap a part on the brain or a name in the list to focus it; .

Dreaming: 6 parts lit

Pons, thalamus, amygdala, occipital lobe, prefrontal cortex and cingulate gyrus. Tap one to see where it is and what it does.

The parts and their roles

REM sleep starts in the brainstem, especially the pontine tegmentum and the locus coeruleus, whose REM-on neurons are mainly cholinergic; the pons also sends the PGO waves that mark REM, and in REM the body’s muscle tone drops through inhibition of motor neurons. [2][3] Where is the pons?
More active in REM sleep than in deep sleep; the PGO waves pass from the pons through its lateral geniculate nucleus on their way to the visual cortex. [1][3] Where is the thalamus?
Active in REM sleep, part of a marked activation of limbic and paralimbic structures (with the hippocampus) that is linked to the emotional tone of dreams. [1][2] Where is the amygdala?
The PGO waves end in its primary visual cortex, and the higher occipito-temporal visual cortex is strongly activated in REM sleep, in step with how visual dreams are. [3][1] Where is the occipital lobe?
Mixed in REM sleep: its medial part is more active, while the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex are less active, a pattern linked to the weak self-reflection and odd logic of dreams. [1] Where is the prefrontal cortex?
Split in REM sleep: the anterior cingulate cortex is among the more active areas, while the posterior cingulate (with the precuneus) is among the less active ones. [1] Where is the cingulate gyrus?

How they work together

REM sleep takes about 20–25% of an adult’s sleep, in four or five periods a night, the first about 70 minutes after falling asleep. About 80% of people woken from REM sleep can give some kind of dream report. [2]
Dreams are not only a REM event: people woken from deeper non-REM sleep report some experience 50–70% of the time, and 10–30% of non-REM reports cannot be told apart from REM reports by any criterion. [1]
Loss of the REM generator is not what stops dreaming: in Solms’s study of 361 people with brain lesions, dreaming stopped altogether mostly after lesions in or near the junction of the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes, or less often in the white matter around the front of the lateral ventricles; lesions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, sensorimotor cortex or primary visual cortex generally left dreaming intact. [1]
Honest limit: dreaming is studied mostly by imaging people during REM sleep, so these are activity patterns of REM sleep, networks seen in imaging, not single centres and not a “dream centre”; dreams also happen outside REM, and each part is lit whole, not just its active subregion. [1][2][4]

Dreaming happens inside sleep: the sleep page lights the parts that switch sleep on and off and time it, and REM sleep, the stage richest in dreams, is one of its stages. [2] What part of the brain controls sleep?

Sources

Facts describe anatomy and normal function only. A part lit here takes part in dreaming; it does not do it alone, and it does other jobs too. The 3D model is the adult male BodyParts3D brain (credits and licence); on it the brainstem includes the midbrain, pons and medulla, so lighting the brainstem lights all three.