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Dreams can serve as your brain's personal psychotherapist by helping process bad memories, experts say.
Ever since the dawn of humanity, people have wondered about the purpose of dreams. We’ve imbued these mental meanderings with all sorts of powers, from forecasting the future to providing a window into the soul.
But scientists say they now know what dreams are for: they sooth the sting out of troubling memories. And when dreams don’t do their job, horrific memories can take over a person’s life, as they do with PTSD, a new study suggests.
Matthew Walker and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, found that the brain uses dreams to strip the emotional content from memories of painful events.
Here’s how the researchers think it works. During dream, or REM, sleep, our brain chemistry changes, leaving us with lower levels of stress hormones. While we’re in this quieter state, the brain mulls over what happened and then files away the memory – but with less emotion attached.
So, when everything works right, when we later recall these events we’ll remember what happened, but less of the pain associated with them.
Walker and his colleagues tested their theory in an intriguing, but simple, experiment.
The researchers asked 35 healthy volunteers to lie in a brain scanner while looking through a series of 150 images, which ranged from bland to emotionally jarring. One image might show a tea kettle, for example, while another might show the aftermath of a horrific car accident. As they were looking at the images, the volunteers were asked to rate the emotional intensity of what they were viewing.
Half the volunteers looked at the images in the morning, while the other half looked at the images just before bedtime. Twelve hours later the volunteers were asked once again to look at and to rate the images while being scanned. This meant that half the volunteers had a night’s sleep in between scans.
What the second set of scans and ratings showed was telling. Volunteers who had slept through the night rated the horrific photos as far less emotionally charged – and their brain scans showed a much lower level of activity in the amygdala, a brain region central to emotional processing.
It’s like dreams become the brain’s psychotherapist, Walker explains. Just as we can benefit from reviewing disturbing events in the safety of a therapist’s office, our brain benefits from processing these same types of events in the quieter dream state.
Walker suspects that the system short-circuits in PTSD sufferers because their brains are constantly charged up even during dreams. And research in veterans with PTSD appears to bear this out, Walker says. When veterans with PTSD are given medications that knock back a neurotransmitter that keeps the brain in an excited state, sleep appears to improve symptoms of the disorder.
“We’re hoping to provide the mechanism by which that drug has its effect,” Walker says.
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Another theory I read about when researching bi-polar was that dreams are used to make the decisions you didn't make during your waking hours, especially for procrastinators. The brain works extra hard at night making the decisions you didn't that when you wake, you are exhausted and your dreams were very vivid.
The mind is much more powerful than we give it credit for. If only we can tap that potential...
Well, this research explains the "going to work naked" dream, but what about the "handing out toilet paper to people you haven't seen in 20 yrs" dream?
Sounds like UC Berkley has found another way that us poor Americans can get a disability check.
Sounds like you're a jackass. I'm pretty sure people roll their eyes at you behind your back.
With your name I suspect you roll from story to story hoping to drop your spin of political crap in GOP slime fashion
Fed Up, I know you need a disability check.
I'm curious, Fed-UP, what is your education level?
Sounds very plausible, dreams helping ease painful memories. However, it seems my problem gets compounded with constant insomnia. In the last couple of months Ive had constant nightmares and strange dreams or insomnia.. its usually either or.
if that's really how they did the study, it's not the best evidence...it could simply be a time of day effect. you would have to have another condition where subjects first viewed it at night, but then stayed up another 12 hours and were rescanned and show that this group did not show decrease amygdala activation.
It's funny that scientists have finally broken down the gate and are now wandering through the wilderness, drooling.
Pure free associating.
And what company, pray tell, funded this? Journalists really ought to include this information when reporting on science.
Science has to begin somewhere ... and, as likely -or unlikely- a place as putting subjects through a series of trials with images, sleep, and educated guesses, it's always to our benefit -no matter how simplified.
Although it is generally agreed that all 7 billion of us dream, most of us will wander through life not knowing why or how ... thankfully that is not ALL of us.
This article makes it sound like this is the *only* purpose of dreams. That cannot be right, and it is unlikely that any scientist would claim that. It may be *one* purpose of dreams.
This may be one benefit of dreams. but it's obviously not the only reason we need sleep with REM cycles as the article as written implies.
I am very tired of "Scientists say." What is this one? Two or three out of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of scientists?
I do not at the moment, and for years have not had, painful memories. Maybe I do not get as upset over things as most people, but, I have had very few painful memories in my 71 years. Yet, I dream. I think these researchers are producing nonsense.
My dreams seem to be my mind occupying itself, amusing itself, even playing games and thinking up interesting ideas, such as newspapers with punched lines around the articles to make it easy for you to tear out an article. I recently had a dream where I lost my watch and realized I would have to buy a new one. I awoke, sat up, picked up my watch, and the band broke, and, I had to buy a new watch. I dreamed I had to buy a new watch a couple of minutes before discovering in reality I had to buy a new watch. How does that fit this "research?"
I can't see this "research" applying at all to me. Or, most dreaming most people do.
I've found throughout my life that I solve problems in my sleep. Not issues I'm necessarily distressed about, merely things that need to be resolved. It actually worked great in college when I took a nap while doing my math and physics homework, after I had attempted to solve all the problems leaving some of them unfinished.
Certainly there are many purposes of dreams, and for this article to say that THE purpose of dreams has been determined is ridiculous. This is just another study that has drawn some conclusion, but that doesn't make it THE conclusion.
Nope, my painful events, and the feelings that accompany them, are just as crisply seared into my psyche as the day they happened.
Not sure why you people are picking on fed up , life is too short to be so thin skin. Get over it and move on.
what does not kill you makes you stronger.
Maybe the test subjects who didn't get any sleep before the 2nd viewing were just tired and more susceptible to emotion
I once dreamed that I ate a 500 pound marshmallow. When I woke up, my pillow was gone.
I think that this Doctor was quilty of mal practice and should serve in jail, however, Michael Jackson was responsible for the drug addiction that ultimately killed him. Had he not passed on from the drugs the Doctor had given him, his death would have come early anyway. Each one of us faces a Holy God after death and Michael Jackson had to answer for his failings as a person. This wasn't just about Dr. Murray. This was about a drug addict and a family of vultures.
Ok, so a good night's rest helps you deal better with things. Big shocker there. So what does this experiment have to do with dreaming?
Now, since animals also dream when they sleep, and have sleep cycles, - does it mean that they also have painful memories that need to be healed?
My assumption is that basic brain chemistry and sleep/wake mechanisms are acient, and common for all mammals.
So may be we need to start from the beginning - research the basic form first, and then see what advanced (we tend to think that human brains are more advanced - this is an assumption that has yet to be proven, especially in view of some earlier comments) brain design adds to it...
The NEW post Freudian psychology, as derives from Yehoshua Ya'acov's #HUMANOMCIS(sm) Trilogy in general and its NEW central organizing principle #Receiving, go give(sm) in particular. And more particularly its NEW Identity Resolution-IR technology(sm), NOW transcend Freuds "id, ego, super-ego axis," with its formidable paradox, dilemma, dichotomy to prosciption's COGNITIVE ascent axis, of man's Identity Resolution-IR. Primarily because the theory of dream REM state moderation, of emotional composition(s) is absolutely a vital element of in the dense matrix of allusion, fears, confusions and delusions, as are also strongly manifest in the dream state. It's to be NOTED the central motivation of the sub-conscious is repression of man's authentic identity, as is the still hidden CONSTANT driven FEAR as is still repressed. Blessings the scientist, Ha Rav Yehoshua Ya'acov; the quintessential "tent dweller," as NOW leads Israel's post "cave dwelling" era of political Zionism, NOW COLLAPSED, though the DENIAL(s) does continue. Tky, yy
I suffer from PTSD and I remember only a hand full of dreams a month. And the dreams I do remember are typically extremely somber to put it best. The brain IS as deep as it is vast and most neurologists know about 10%. (Think of the ocean floor) I've seen over 30 neurologists in 8 years and that seems to be my impression. I am, however, hopeful that technology will produce tremendous results in the future.
Once again, a bunch of nonsense. Who can control what they dream? I certainly can't. I've seen horror movies before bed and didn't dream of the Frankenstein Monster or the Wolfman! A majority of my dreams are nightmares and there isn't a scientist alive who can tell me why or what I'm dreaming, nor is there a medication to remove painful memories. It's a nice thought. Maybe something for a movie-or a dream, but that's about it.
Would that be sooth as in forsooth....WTH...the word is soothe. I cry for the education system. This is a national "news" service..could we at least spell correctly.
I close my eyes at night after a long day of work and then it all starts - I'm in a strange house and looking for a bathroom to go pee, I see a creepy man that looks devil like and I'm trying to get away from him before he hurts me and there is blood all over the walls and in one room there is another man with a leather mask on & he's whipping some guy thats strapped on a wood table and there is blood gushing from his body, so I run down the hall in panic and the colors are so vivid with deep red, and I can't find that damn bathroom cause I gotta go so bad I don't want to pee myself, I hear screaming all around and I can't get out of this house, then all of a sudden I'm outside walking down the middle of the street while it's raining in the dark and I could just see the streetlights gleaming down on the road and some tree off to the side and I'm soaking wet running but don't know where I'm going to - so I wake up and It's about midnight and I get out of bed and go pee.