Jouvet and Delorme (1965) discovered, in cats, that damage to a small region below locus coeruleus prevented this muscle tone suppression producing an animal that, when in REM sleep, locomoted and appeared to be pursing and attacking imagined images ( Jouvet, 1962 Jouvet & Delorme, 1965). Muscle tone is normally suppressed in REM sleep. The application of techniques revealing dream mentation in humans to other mammals, specifically those that exhibit unusual sleep states, may lead to advances in our understanding of the neural underpinnings of dreams and conscious experiences. In both scenarios, the cetaceans are the least likely mammalian group to experience vivid dream mentation due to the morphophysiological independence of their cerebral hemispheres. This non-REM dream mentation may be different in the species where non-REM is atypical, such as during unihemispheric sleep in aquatic mammals (cetaceans, sirens, and Otariid seals).
Alternatively, evidence that dream mentation occurs during both non-REM and REM sleep, indicates that all mammals have the potential to experience dream mentation. Atypical REM sleep in other species, such as African elephants and Arabian oryx, may alter their potential to experience REM dream mentation.
If we take a hard-stance, that dream mentation only occurs during REM sleep, we conclude that it is unlikely that monotremes, cetaceans, and otariid seals while at sea, have the potential to experience dream mentation. Here, we explore the potential for dream mentation, in both non-REM and REM sleep across mammals.
Recent advances in our understanding of the anatomical and physiological correlates of sleep stages, and thus dreaming, allow a better understanding of the possibility of dream mentation in nonhuman mammals.
The presence of dreams in human sleep, especially in REM sleep, and the detection of physiologically similar states in mammals has led many to ponder whether animals experience similar sleep mentation.
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