We are as much getting ready to behave as we are getting over the effects of our behaviour.ĭreams have more in common than not across individuals. The protoconscious state of REM sleep dreaming is as much a preparation for waking consciousness as a reaction to it. We are always ourselves in our dreams we sense, we act and we feel vividly in an entirely fictive world of the brain's devising. Our dreams are reminders that we too were (and still are) protoconscious. It may therefore be a state of protoconsciousness in those animals that evince rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. I suggest that brain activation in sleep allows the development and maintenance of circuits necessary for higher brain functions, including consciousness.īrain activation and sleep occurs early in the development of mammals and birds. In some ways they're walking around as a shadow of themselves.We know how, but not why, the brain is activated in sleep. Stickgold says, 'I think it leaves a lot of what we experience and what we learn during the day unprocessed. When we don't have good quality REM sleep, Dr. Millions of people around the world take these prescription medications and consume substances like alcohol and marijuana, it can be very easy to get used to not feeling great.

Paper in the journal Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, ' The role of sleep in emotional brain function'.

Paper in the journal Cognitive Brain Research, ' Cognitive flexibility across the sleepwake cycle: REM-sleep enhancement of anagram problem solving'.

Paper in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, ' REM sleep enhancement of probabilistic classification learning is sensitive to subsequent interference'.

Review paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, ' Dreamless: the silent epidemic of REM sleep loss'.

He says dreams are important too. 'The dreams seem more to be involved in figuring out possible uses for the memory.'

Robert Stickgold, who studies sleep and dreams, says that REM sleep helps us to process contextual and emotional memories. Whereas slow wave sleep, or deep sleep, helps us remember facts. The REM phase of our sleep is important for certain types of memory consolidation. And finally sleep disorders themselves, primarily insomnia and sleep apnea, also contribute significantly diminishing REM sleep. Examples include benzodiazepines or anti-anxiety agents antidepressants drugs that are known as anticholinergic, which are a range of medicines that affect a gastric function and also allergy. So many of the most commonly used medications both prescription and over-the-counter medications can interfere with REM sleep. And one of them includes substances, which primarily are alcohol and cannabis. 'There are a number of factors that feed into this epidemic of diminished REM sleep. And he says it's not just marijuana that can affect our REM sleep. Rubin Naiman from the University of Arizona's Center for Integrative Medicine, we are in the midst of an epidemic of REM sleep deprivation.

According to a sleep expert who recently published a review article, Dr. That's because marijuana can diminish the quality of our REM - rapid eye movement - sleep. People who smoke a lot of marijuana often report they either don't dream or don't remember their dreams.

Deep sleep dreams