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The stuff dreams are made of: anatomical substrates of REM sleep

Exactly how animals switch between different sleep states remains unknown. A new study in Nature provides a glimpse into the mechanisms and anatomy of the brain regions that trigger rapid eye movement sleep.

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Figure 1: Location of the “REM sleep-on” (in red) regions in the rat and cat, and speculation on the likely location of the same region in humans.

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Siegel, J. The stuff dreams are made of: anatomical substrates of REM sleep. Nat Neurosci 9, 721–722 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0606-721

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