The Enduring Mysteries of Sleep and Insomnia
(Page 6 of 6)
January-February 1999
by Bill Hayes, from Speak
The scientists then decided to look in on a fetus—literally. They implanted a clear porthole in the belly of a pregnant sheep, then watched a fetus nuzzling up against the window, like a tiny manatee swimming up to a docked submarine. In what seems an especially cruel prodding, the Oxford scientists later injected the sheep's womb with drugs known to cause waking postnatally. The fetus responded to the chemicals as if they were smelling salts—squirming uncomfortably, breathing rapidly, closed eyes moving—while its brain waves switched to a REM-like state, which suggested that it was dreaming. Its behavior led the scientists to a rather large theoretical leap: In humans, as in animals, REM sleep could be a form of wakefulness. More accurately, it may be a third condition altogether, a cross between the two. Just as in-utero breathing may train the respiratory system, fetal dreams and REM sleep may train the cerebral cortex for life as a functioning human being.
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What would one dream in utero? Without visual imagery to draw upon, fetal dreams may be more like dissonant music than a surrealist film: the sounds of maternal organs—heart, lungs, stomach—mixing with speech, laughter, crying. A dream might be choreographed from movements of the mother's body. Or maybe, just maybe, connected as it is by the umbilical cord, the baby has no dreams of its own, but rather dreams what the mother is dreaming.
My mother was dreaming of having a boy, a desire so powerful it may have rubbed off. I was her fifth child in six years, the firstborn son. Delivered by cesarean, as was my sister before me, I can't help wondering if my parents selected my birth date deliberately, as a kind of dual holy day for Irish Catholics like us: January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, commonly known as the 12th day of Christmas, when the three wise men finally found the manger. I like to think it also observes the term epiphany as redefined by James Joyce: the sudden revelation, by chance word or gesture, of "whatness"—the essential nature of a thing. Eyes open or shut, my life has been a continual, awkward stumbling upon whatnesses, sharp fragments of unexpected meaning. It all started in 1961, around the time I like to get out of bed now, at 8:38 in the morning.
Bill Hayes is writing a book, Sleep Disturbances, to be published by Pocket Books and Washington Square Press. From Speak (Sept./Oct. 1998). Subscriptions: $15/yr. (6 issues) from 301 8th St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94103.
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