"High-quality Sleep Method", by Raphael Perajo, translated by Yang Qingbo, CITIC Publishing House, February 2022.
Are our dreams random, or is there some sort of unconscious meaning? Although people's conjectures about dreams have continued for thousands of years and are now undergoing increasingly complex research, scientists are still working on the concept of "active subconscious thinking." But the answer is very close, and very important — unraveling this age-old question might lead us to figure out the physiology of memory and creativity. In the following content, we will delve into this problem and many other problems related to dreaming, exploring the mysteries of it.
Why is it so hard for us to remember our dreams?
If a fantasy event in a dream happens in real life, it's hard to forget. However, dreams are always difficult to remember. To remember your dreams, you have to think about them immediately after you wake up, preferably just when you wake up. (That's why some people put pen and paper next to their beds in order to record their dreams before they forget.) ）
However, when you wake up someone who is in REM sleep, they have about an 80% chance of saying they had a dream, because the REM sleep phase is when you are most likely to dream. In other stages of sleep, you may produce fragmented dream images, but the details in the dream are far less abundant than the dreams in the REM sleep phase. Even those who claim to have never dreamed, if awakened during this time, often say they have just dreamed.
Stills from the movie "Good Dreams Day Trip" (2019).
In fact, dreams may have been forgotten in the first place. REM sleep accounts for 1 to 2 hours of our total nighttime sleep. Imagine if every morning you had to tell 2 hours of vivid dreams. You won't be able to do anything then! Dreams are difficult to remember, which may hint at the potential function of dreams: on the one hand, it can consolidate memories, and on the other hand, it helps to understand diseases such as dementia.
Sometimes our dreams are so vivid and detailed that when you dream, you take it as a real experience. It's only when you wake up and recall fragments of your dreams that you realize how strange your dreams actually are. When people are awake, the prefrontal lobe of the brain plays the role of commander-in-chief, filtering out irrelevant information, which helps us make plans and make decisions.
When we are awake, other parts of the cerebral cortex also play a role in thinking. When we enter RAPID EYE movement sleep, activity in the prefrontal lobe decreases, while activity in other parts of the neocortex increases. In a dream, you are in an irrational world with your own unique logic, and your way of thinking will change. The wonder of dreaming is that the brain creates a surreal world and reacts to it.
Dreaming has the potential to enhance memory
The brain's advanced functions allow us to adapt to changing environments and grow healthily. It is able to absorb new information and integrate it with what we already know, helping us better understand the world around us. Any neural activity in the brain, such as learning something new, must somehow alter the memory network in the brain in order to connect the new memory with the old one. At the same time, we need to forget about the things that don't matter. (If we remembered everything, the brain could be much less efficient!) The idea was proposed by neuroscientist Matthew Walker.
We may do some memory reassembly and learning while we're awake, but the restorative maintenance process of recombining memories and resetting brain function occurs mostly while we sleep. That's why we have a hard time thinking when we're tired, and why our brains are more efficient after a good night's sleep.
Stills from the movie Inception (2010).
Until now, it has been difficult to tell whether dreaming is a random byproduct of a certain neurological function or of some significance, but some scientists believe that dreaming may be part of the process of emotional and memory reprocessing during sleep. There is no doubt that we experience memories of the past when we dream. These memories must be activated or somehow enter our brain activity and merge into our dreams.
Dr. Robert Steck gold of Harvard University and others point out that this theory is based on the idea that dreaming is the process by which the brain reactivates and modifies memories and emotions from early experiences. This explains why we mix old and new memories in our dreams. If these theories are correct, then dreaming is one of the mechanisms the brain uses to improve our ability to adapt, allowing us to adapt to our own ever-changing world of consciousness.
Studies of dreams have also shown that memory function is reflected in the true content of dreams. In humans and rodents, neuronal firing patterns while learning a task while awake are reactivated during post-training sleep. In the hippocampus of mice, synchronized recordings of a large number of neurons showed that specific patterns and sequences of neuronal firings observed by the researchers as the mice searched for food on a circular orbit reappeared in subsequent sleep. Positron emission computed tomography studies in humans have shown that brain regions that are activated during learning are selectively reactivated the following nights while sleeping. This confirms the idea that sleep can help consolidate memories. As Matthew Walker said, "Dreaming is to remember, and dreaming is to forget." ”
Dreaming has the potential to boost creativity
Creativity is not only important to art, but also provides us with the tools to adapt to new environments, and it is also the key to solving problems. Neuroscience is just beginning to understand the biological mechanisms by which the brain produces creative thoughts, and many of these mechanisms are at their best when we sleep and dream.
When we are awake, we cannot ignore the world around us for a long time. Our senses are constantly receiving new information, and we have to process that information and react quickly. However, when we fall asleep, we are detached from the stimuli of the outside world. In quiet sleep, especially in dreaming, the brain extracts information that we've been thinking about when we're awake and scans other parts of our brain for connections to that information, often producing new, possibly surreal intermingling of thoughts. After this interaction of neural activity during REM sleep, new ideas enter our consciousness. If we can remember these thoughts, they can give us a deep understanding of the things that we think about repeatedly when we are awake.
Haunted by nightmares
If you're a painter who is scared of your work, you might change your painting style and create something less scary. We can think of nightmares as horror art created by the brain, dreams coming from dreamers. The first step in eliminating nightmares is to clear out any external factors that might interfere with sleep. Anything that interferes with sleep, including snoring, outside noise, and physical discomfort, can wake you up in your dreams, making you more aware of their contents. For example, if you sleep with a stomach that is too full and has a burning sensation, you may have nightmares, which is why some people attribute nightmares to certain foods. If you have frequent nightmares, especially in the first half of the night, then don't eat anything for a few hours before going to bed.
Nightmares can also be a symptom of some kind of physical ailment. For example, nightmares involving drowning or being buried alive can be caused by obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that makes it difficult for a person to breathe while sleeping. Once sleep apnea is treated, the nightmares quickly disappear.
Stills from the movie "Good Dreams Day Trip" (2019).
If you find that there are no external factors interfering with your sleep, but you are still suffering from nightmares, you can learn to change your dreams. There are two methods that can be used alone or in combination: dream rehearsal and lucid dreaming. Dream rehearsals require you to think about those recurring dreams while you're awake and imagine how they can have different endings. You can try it yourself or do it with the help of a therapist. When using lucid dreaming, you need to realize that you are dreaming while still dreaming.
Recurring dreams may come from recurring thoughts
Most people have had recurring dreams in which they repeatedly experienced an element or theme. Common themes include falling, flying, or being late. If dreams are an important reflection of our thoughts and feelings, then it can be concluded that a recurring dream must have some meaning, or no meaning.
Dreams are difficult to remember unless you take the time while awake to consciously strengthen the memory of dreams. If you wake up thinking about the dream you just had, you have acquired a memory of it. After that, this memory can be reactivated again during your sleep. Therefore, just consciously remembering a dream increases the chances of that dream recurring.
That is, recurring dreams can be a manifestation of unresolved emotional problems. Recurring images can even be fragments of information stuck in a loop. If dreaming is when the brain processes and deletes information, then over-indulging in recurring dreams is a bit like throwing away the garbage, collecting it, and then taking it home.
If you're plagued by recurring dreams, try the dream rehearsals and lucid dreaming options below. A therapist can also help you explore the possible emotional problems behind the constantly repeating dreams.
Dream Rehearsal: Rewrite and control my dreams
When you have a very terrible dream, you naturally want to avoid thinking about it again. But when you're lying alone in bed thinking, the memory of nightmares can make you afraid to fall asleep. The less sleep there is, the more stressful the brain is to go into REM sleep, and in this state, nightmares are likely to happen again. This cycle can be broken by a method called dream rehearsal. Think about what scares you and how you can make your dreams less terrifying. For example, if you dream of being held down by a monster, imagine that monster turning into a snowman and slowly melting. Use your imagination and imagine your nightmares eventually become fun, think of anything. You can imagine during the day, stay away from your bed, and then wait until it's time to go to bed, remind yourself to think about the ending you rewrote, and then sleep and dream with anticipation. Be sure to keep reminding yourself that dreams are the art you create, and you can change the art.
In ordinary dreams, the dreamer is forced to react to an out-of-control world. However, when we realize that we are dreaming—and at the same time we continue to be in dreams—we find ourselves in a world of our own making, and the only rule of this world is the limits of our imagination.
This is called lucid dreaming. Actively controlling and manipulating our dreams is a unique experience, which is actually a change in the state of consciousness. Lucid dreaming has a long history and dates back to antiquity, but its popularity in Western culture is due to the American psychologist Dr. Stephen Labocke.
Although many people report that they are aware that they are dreaming when they dream, lucid dreaming is not common. In the case of young people, although young people instinctively say that they have had a special experience of lucid dreaming, studies have shown that only 10% of the population has actually had lucid dreaming. The big question is: Can lucid dreaming be learned? There are seminars, retreats, books and online videos around us to learn and practice lucid dreaming, and there are even dietary supplements and devices that are beneficial for lucid dreaming on the market — and many more are in the making. All of this may increase the chances of lucid dreaming, but not everyone will learn to dream lucidly freely.
If you're interested in learning to do lucid dreaming, the first step is to realize that it's a dream while dreaming. One technique that does this is called the authenticity test: practice observing things carefully a few times a day, such as observing your own hand, so that when you're in a dream, you might look at your hand and realize that it's different. It's a way to let you know you're dreaming. What's the hardest part of lucid dreaming? The hardest part is that you need to realize that it's a dream without waking up. This may be surprising. However, with practice, you may get used to the experience and be able to stay asleep. If you can do that, you can start experimenting with manipulating the world in your dreams.
Do animals dream too?
Perhaps, some animals also dream. We know that many mammals have a recurrent of remultation sleep, as evidenced by experiments in birds, lizards, and even fish. In REM sleep, signals from the brainstem can put us into a temporary paralysis called REM dystonia, which prevents most of our muscles from moving.
In experiments with cats, this signal was removed, and as a result, people observed that sleeping cats were active and made a complex set of behaviors that were not related to real-world conditions. Later, similar behaviors were found in people with brainstem signal failures, who reported that the content of the dreams was consistent with the behaviors they were observed. We can safely infer that in REM sleep, the experimentally controlled cat's behavior is due to some kind of internal stimulus—in other words, it is likely to be dreaming. If cats can dream, then so can other animals. In the world of dreams, we are not alone.
This article is selected from the "High-Quality Sleep Law", which is slightly abridged and modified from the original text, and has been authorized by the publishing house to publish.
Original author 丨 [American] Raphael Pelayo
Excerpt 丨An also
Editor 丨 Shen Chan
Introduction Proofreading 丨 Guo Li