The Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies by Mac Montandon

Author:Mac Montandon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2010-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

That, my friends, is mind blowing! The deeper we go into sleep, the more our brain function is actually altered to resemble a nonthinking, hallucinating creature. A zombie deep in sleep is even more zombie than normal.

Neurologically speaking, in deep, or REM, sleep, the Hobson and Pace-Schott paper notes: “Different regions are . . . hyperactivated (the amygdala, paralimbic cortices and certain multimodal association areas) and deactivated (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex).” As our friend Dr. Steven Schlozman has noted (and as we discussed in chapter 1)—zombies can be seen as little more than walking amygdalas, as that is the part of the brain that deals with and understands emotion and emotional responses. So, again, deep-sleeping zombies, it follows, would essentially be strengthening their zombie muscles while they doze. Hobson and Pace-Schott additionally point out that the amygdala transmits feelings of anxiety, which is why so many of us have dreams wherein we are soaring to dangerous heights or naked in front of strangers. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see the undead as being extremely anxious, to the point of irritability, about where their next meal of flesh and bones is going to come from.

The Harvard fellas’ paper also observes that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DPC) is “deactivated” during REM sleep. This suggests a zombielike state yet again, for it is in the DPC that such brain-powered things a logical thinking and the ability to plan ahead come from—our executive function, if you will. Qualities, I’m sure we’d all agree, zombies have in short supply, as if their DPC were in a state of perpetual deactivation.

Of course much, if not all, of these fascinating discoveries will have very little bearing on the waking lives of zombies unless one is a believer in plasticity. The case for plasticity says that there is a relationship between the sleeping life of the brain and the waking brain, that the brain grows, develops, and changes at night, particularly during REM sleep. Proponents of this idea point to the amount of sleep that newborns require as, in part, proof that plasticity is a true and vital element of brain development. As Hobson and Pace-Schott remind us, “Brain activity in utero and in premature infants consists almost entirely of REM-sleeplike states.”

The paper cites a handful of studies done on rats and even kittens that indicate a connection between brain development and deep sleep. What we can take from these studies and the theory of plasticity is this: if we start with the idea that zombies have a functional brain and that is why we must shoot, batter, or otherwise inflict harm to their heads to slow them down, then we can see how a zombie who rests for seven to nine quality hours a night will be even more terrifying than he already is. The parts of the brain that are already active in the ghoul—specifically the amygdala—will, it seems, develop even more, while the areas in which the ghoul is deficient—ye olde dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and all that jazz—wither yet more.

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