A Glance at Today’s World through a Scientific Lens

There was a time when a popular belief was that our sensory systems are inhibited during sleep. This consensus discouraged researchers to look further into what may occur in our brains during sleep: the idea of brain activation during sleep was made inconceivable. However, an exception to this belief transpired due to the reported information on the olfactory system. It was identified as the only sensory system that displayed activity during sleep. Research on the olfactory system was conducted by Rasch Buchel, who studied how odors, when presented during sleep, influence our ability to formulate memories. In his study, he associated specific odors with new memories and later presented the same odors during sleep. Then a test was administered in order to document how well the memories could be recalled. Analysis of this experiment indicated that exposure to an odor during slow wave sleep, versus no exposure, promoted the consolidation of memories. Nevertheless, instead of allowing this research to inspire implications of other sensory systems, it was constrained to the view that the majority strongly believed in. Therefore, it was solely identified as an exception, implying that other proposed hypotheses on other sensory systems to be incompetent.

Even though the majority sustained power to their claim a minority of researched desired to disrupt that hold.  Fortunately, researchers that belonged to the minority at the time continued seeking other possibilities. A recent researcher, by the name of Umberto Olcese, who published in The Journal of Neuroscience in 2017, is one of many that addressed the common belief that the brain was disconnected throughout non-REM sleep accompanied by inhibited communication between the brain regions. His discovery among others, was able to disprove the long lived belief by providing evidence that not all communication associated within the cerebral cortex are lost during non-REM sleep. Olcese emphasized that neurons located in specific regions of the brain as well as various subpopulations in cerebral areas indeed maintain their associations in each area. This conclusion was determined by studying how the neural connections of the neocortex and hippocampus were regulated by the brain in rat models. This astounding evidence of activity throughout the various parts of the brain immediately surpassed the initial prominent claim.

Another researcher, Ken A. Paller, a professor and  neuroscientist at Northwestern University, acquired interest in how memory is affected by sleep. His research is inspired by the work of Rasch Buchel. Instead of using odor to determine the resulting associations among sleep and the consolidation of memory using the olfactory system as Buchel did, Paller decided to test the auditory system. He did this by first playing specific sounds, like a cat meowing, while presenting  a new memories. Later on, while the participant was asleep he played those same sounds loud enough to make sure the participant stayed asleep. Then he tested how much they recalled from the new set memories given in the beginning of the experiment. The results revealed a significant distinction between the participants that were cued the sounds (the experimental group) and those who were not (control group). The cued participants with the sounds showed a decrease in forgetting the new memories. On the other hand, the control group forgot almost twice as much of the memories when compared to the experimental group. This supports that there indeed are connections occurring between the brain and auditory system during sleep, which essentially revealed to aid consolidation of memories, once again disproving what was strongly believed before.

This scientific outlook allows us to see how influential our opinion can be, especially when it complies with the majority belief versus the minority. The major belief that the brain is simply “shut down” during sleep was enhanced and maintained by its believers. They were so focused on generating and maintaining the power of their claim that they began to blind themselves when it came to questioning if their claim was legitimate or not. If this claim continued to prevail and discredit any information that said otherwise, today the development and discoveries of Umberto Olcese, Rasch Buchel and Ken A. Paller would be irrelevant and we would still be in the dark about the possibility of brain activity during sleep. If the minority group of researchers decided not to take a leap in the opposite direction from society, then we would solely know the information the majority feeds us. Although this is a scientific example about claims and hypotheses established by scientists, it is not that far fetched to think we encounter this in our world continuously. In relation, it is evident that the president of the United States won by the majority of votes throughout the country. Just as the initial claim about our brains not experiencing activity, the President’s claims gained power due to his believers, who generated and sustained its power. This is why, a Journalist by the name, Nick Cohen, titled his piece, Trump’s lies are not the problem. It’s the millions who swallow them who really matter. If the majority of people continue to comply with his clams, what does that mean for our further development and discovery?

Works Cited
SINC. "Brain is still 'connected' during non-REM sleep." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 December 2017.        .

Cohen, Nick. “Trump's Lies Are Not the Problem. It's the Millions Who Swallow Them Who Really Matter | Nick Cohen.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Feb. 2017, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/05/donald-trump-lies-belief-totalitarianism.

Susanne Diekelmann, Jan Born, Björn Rasch
Front Behav Neurosci. 2016; 10: 74. Published online 2016 Apr 12. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00074