Dream
Mon 25 Sep 2017
repost from www.theguardian.com
Caroline Horton: ‘The only problem is that sometimes people start dreaming about the lab’
Caroline Horton is a senior psychology lecturer at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. Her research concerns sleep, dreaming and memory, with a special focus on how dreaming consolidates memories from our waking lives. She has set up a dedicated laboratory for studying dreams, called DrEAMSLab (Dreams, Emotions, Associations and Memories in Sleep Laboratory), which launched in February 2016.
What are you studying?
I’m interested in how dreams improve memory. A lot of organising and reshaping happens when we’re asleep. Dreams help consolidate memories by sifting through what happened that day, deciding what we can forget and starting to set things we need to remember into long-term brain structures. Everybody has dreams, whether you remember them or not, so as a psychologist they are fascinating.
How do you gather your research?
Most of our studies take place in people’s homes. In a recent study, we gave the subjects a Dictaphone and a programmed alarm clock, and asked them to record their dreams at four different points over two nights, to see how dreams changed through the night. But this year we’ve launched the DrEAMSLab, where we can use electrodes to monitor people as they sleep. It’s a small, cosy bedroom with blackout blinds and a computer, as some of our experiments involve asking people to learn something before they go to sleep. The only problem so far is people sometimes start dreaming about the lab, while the home is a more natural environment to collect data in.
Why are some dreams so strange?
It’s a common misconception that you only dream during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. In fact, you dream all the time. Sleep is deeper in the first four hours of the night, and dreams in that period are shorter, and more mundane – you might dream about being at work, for instance. These dreams are reactivating memories from the previous day to see which ones need to be consolidated. During REM sleep, your brain is very active, so dreams become more complex and story-like. They can be bizarre because new memories are put into different contexts, to make them more memorable. Old memories tend to crop up more often – for example, you might dream about someone you saw on TV that night speaking in an office conference room you used three years ago. And because your brain is almost awake during REM sleep, those dreams are easier to remember.
As a scientist, it can be tricky explaining our work, as people still associate dreaming with subjective art forms
Why do we have nightmares?
People often dream of emotionally intense experiences from waking life, both positive and negative, because they’re important to remember. Sometimes, our brain runs through potentially scary or dangerous situations, so we are better equipped to cope if they happen in real life – like dreaming about the gear stick jamming when you’re driving, for instance. It’s also about using our past experience to help us in the future. Before exams, people have a lot of dreams about feeling unprepared. And if you wake up feeling unprepared, you’re more likely to get your head in the books.
Why do old places or people from childhood crop up in dreams?
You’re more likely to dream of life events that happened in your late teens and early 20s, as at that age you’re experiencing a lot of new things – moving away from home for the first time, or your first relationship. You’re at peak memory health when these are happening, and they can be emotional, so they’re the strongest memories in the system and appear in dreams throughout your adult life, often combined with new memories. Don’t worry, it probably doesn’t mean you’re still pining after your first love!
Is everything we dream related to memory?
The more often you record your dreams, the better you get at identifying which memory each fragment is from. I’ve been recording my own dreams for years and have become very good at it. But some things do come up that seem totally random. If you’re a creative person, like an artist, you’re more likely to have more creative, fanciful dreams, while individuals who experience psychosis have much more disassociated, bizarre dreams.
Can we interpret our dreams?
We usually dream of things from our everyday lives, and each dream is personal and unique to the dreamer. So I wouldn’t advocate a “dream language”. As a scientist studying dreams, it can sometimes be tricky explaining our work, as people still associate dreaming with subjective, therapeutic art forms. Sometimes the answer is simple – people who dream about losing teeth a lot are probably just grinding their teeth while they’re asleep.
Does cheese give you weird dreams?
Yes, we think so. This could be because cheese is very salty and so can make you wake up earlier because you’re thirsty, and so can catch you in the middle of a dream. But we don’t yet know whether it affects dream content and the types of memories that are activated.