Mike Tranter's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-brain"
What are dreams and why do we have them?
Mike TranterA Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist
The following article is adapted from the new book ‘A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist’ by Dr Mike Tranter, out now on Amazon.
Dreams are where we play out an imaginary life where we can fly and visit strange places, or sometimes, encounter creepy Victorian little girls who sing nursery rhymes and giggle in doorways for apparently no reason – our nightmares!
We have all experienced dreams – thoughts and sensations that occur while we sleep – but why we dream has never been fully answered. Throughout the years, there have been many suggestions as to why we dream.
The clearest idea is that the brain needs time to process the memories and emotions that we experienced during the day and place them into long-term storage. This makes a lot more sense when we look at the brains of people who are sleeping and see that the hippocampus, the part for memories, and the anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in assigning emotional context, are particularly active. In fact, on days where we have lots of new experiences, the brain can still be processing this information up to seven nights later. This also partly explains why stressful and emotional events in our lives can significantly affect the quality of our sleep.
Furthermore, the dream’s events are believed to be a combination of the short-term memories we recently experienced and the long-term memories that our brain thinks are relevant and need to be connected with each other. Meaning that, broadly speaking, dreaming helps to transition our memories from being in short-term storage in the hippocampus to long-term storage all over the brain. This process happens mostly in NREM sleep, and the application of emotional context – how we feel about them – occurs in REM sleep, our deep sleep. Because some areas of the brain are sleeping, while others are not, we experience this as a strange reality and call it a dream. But are they really that simple?
World-renowned dream specialist Rubin Naiman thinks that we may be looking at dreams entirely the wrong way, and that they are in fact a subset of the thoughts and processes that we experience during the day. They are not particularly special or different to what we encounter during our waking life, and perhaps dreams should be spoken about the same way we talk about the stars at night – they are always there, but we only seem to notice them at night. So, if this is true and we never really stop dreaming, either during the day or night, then why am I not currently writing this article dressed in a pink tutu while sitting on the surface of the Sun? For starters, the pink tutu is currently in the laundry, but why not the surface of the Sun – well, that is all down to our prefrontal cortex. This is the area just behind the forehead, which is responsible for logic, planning, attention and generally things that are called executive functions. It’s basically the really smart part of the brain. Couple this to the fact that neurotransmitters, the chemicals sent between neurons, are lower than normal and need to be replenished, and you have a recipe for a brain that isn’t working entirely as it would be during our waking day.
Try thinking about dreams as if the brain is analysing our daily experiences without much logic. While you sleep, the visual cortex is very much awake. This part of our brain is busy processing the images from the day. Unrestrained, however, and the brain can now think more abstractly and creatively, using imagery and metaphors to express ideas. This is perhaps why scenes and events are often exaggerated during our dreams, yet we don’t notice the dream’s strangeness (as the prefrontal cortex is sleeping). It is at the point of waking when we recognise how unusual things actually were.
Want to hear something mind-blowing? There may be potential to harness dreams for our benefit. Lucid dreaming is a fascinating phenomenon, where you are aware of being inside a dream as you are actually dreaming.
Think of it a little like the movie Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio, whereby if you know you are dreaming, you have the potential to make the dream as you want it to be. Estimates suggest that approximately 50% of people will experience lucid dreams at some point in their lives, 20% of us have them monthly and a small number of people experience them almost every night.
Training a group of people to experience lucid dreaming in their sleep labs, a research team in the US were able to have two-way communication with the dreamers. They asked the dreamers to answer simple arithmetic, such as 8 − 6, and the dreamer was able to respond back with eye movements (each movement represented a number). They remained dreaming but were able to hear the question as part of their dream. Some heard it as a voice‐over, others through their dream-like radio playing in the background.
Although it was difficult for the team to get reproducible results, some were able to recall the question upon waking. This study gives more credit to the idea that we could someday interact with our subconscious dreaming mind gain an insight from our dreams.
One last thing. You can try to use dreams to help you in your daily life. If you have a particular problem that you need to find a solution to, well then dream incubation is your game! Before falling asleep, it is possible to focus on a problem that you may have. With enough attempts, studies have shown that it is possible to dream about topics of your choosing and use them to target a meaningful area of your life. The mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan is famous for mailing complex mathematical formulas to a University of Cambridge professor in the early 1900s. What makes his story even more incredible is that Ramanujan lived in a small village in India and had no real access to advanced books. From the age of 16 (he was 25 when he mailed his work to Cambridge) he said that formulas would appear before him in dreams, and he was able to develop them when he woke up.
Have a try yourself, maybe you will discover something amazing.
The following article is adapted from the new book ‘A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist’ by Dr Mike Tranter, out now on Amazon.
Dreams are where we play out an imaginary life where we can fly and visit strange places, or sometimes, encounter creepy Victorian little girls who sing nursery rhymes and giggle in doorways for apparently no reason – our nightmares!
We have all experienced dreams – thoughts and sensations that occur while we sleep – but why we dream has never been fully answered. Throughout the years, there have been many suggestions as to why we dream.
The clearest idea is that the brain needs time to process the memories and emotions that we experienced during the day and place them into long-term storage. This makes a lot more sense when we look at the brains of people who are sleeping and see that the hippocampus, the part for memories, and the anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in assigning emotional context, are particularly active. In fact, on days where we have lots of new experiences, the brain can still be processing this information up to seven nights later. This also partly explains why stressful and emotional events in our lives can significantly affect the quality of our sleep.
Want to hear something mind-blowing? There may be potential to harness dreams for our benefit.
Furthermore, the dream’s events are believed to be a combination of the short-term memories we recently experienced and the long-term memories that our brain thinks are relevant and need to be connected with each other. Meaning that, broadly speaking, dreaming helps to transition our memories from being in short-term storage in the hippocampus to long-term storage all over the brain. This process happens mostly in NREM sleep, and the application of emotional context – how we feel about them – occurs in REM sleep, our deep sleep. Because some areas of the brain are sleeping, while others are not, we experience this as a strange reality and call it a dream. But are they really that simple?
World-renowned dream specialist Rubin Naiman thinks that we may be looking at dreams entirely the wrong way, and that they are in fact a subset of the thoughts and processes that we experience during the day. They are not particularly special or different to what we encounter during our waking life, and perhaps dreams should be spoken about the same way we talk about the stars at night – they are always there, but we only seem to notice them at night. So, if this is true and we never really stop dreaming, either during the day or night, then why am I not currently writing this article dressed in a pink tutu while sitting on the surface of the Sun? For starters, the pink tutu is currently in the laundry, but why not the surface of the Sun – well, that is all down to our prefrontal cortex. This is the area just behind the forehead, which is responsible for logic, planning, attention and generally things that are called executive functions. It’s basically the really smart part of the brain. Couple this to the fact that neurotransmitters, the chemicals sent between neurons, are lower than normal and need to be replenished, and you have a recipe for a brain that isn’t working entirely as it would be during our waking day.
Try thinking about dreams as if the brain is analysing our daily experiences without much logic. While you sleep, the visual cortex is very much awake. This part of our brain is busy processing the images from the day. Unrestrained, however, and the brain can now think more abstractly and creatively, using imagery and metaphors to express ideas. This is perhaps why scenes and events are often exaggerated during our dreams, yet we don’t notice the dream’s strangeness (as the prefrontal cortex is sleeping). It is at the point of waking when we recognise how unusual things actually were.
Want to hear something mind-blowing? There may be potential to harness dreams for our benefit. Lucid dreaming is a fascinating phenomenon, where you are aware of being inside a dream as you are actually dreaming.
Think of it a little like the movie Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio, whereby if you know you are dreaming, you have the potential to make the dream as you want it to be. Estimates suggest that approximately 50% of people will experience lucid dreams at some point in their lives, 20% of us have them monthly and a small number of people experience them almost every night.
Training a group of people to experience lucid dreaming in their sleep labs, a research team in the US were able to have two-way communication with the dreamers. They asked the dreamers to answer simple arithmetic, such as 8 − 6, and the dreamer was able to respond back with eye movements (each movement represented a number). They remained dreaming but were able to hear the question as part of their dream. Some heard it as a voice‐over, others through their dream-like radio playing in the background.
Although it was difficult for the team to get reproducible results, some were able to recall the question upon waking. This study gives more credit to the idea that we could someday interact with our subconscious dreaming mind gain an insight from our dreams.
One last thing. You can try to use dreams to help you in your daily life. If you have a particular problem that you need to find a solution to, well then dream incubation is your game! Before falling asleep, it is possible to focus on a problem that you may have. With enough attempts, studies have shown that it is possible to dream about topics of your choosing and use them to target a meaningful area of your life. The mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan is famous for mailing complex mathematical formulas to a University of Cambridge professor in the early 1900s. What makes his story even more incredible is that Ramanujan lived in a small village in India and had no real access to advanced books. From the age of 16 (he was 25 when he mailed his work to Cambridge) he said that formulas would appear before him in dreams, and he was able to develop them when he woke up.
Have a try yourself, maybe you will discover something amazing.
Free Signed Copies Of My Book
Thank you to everybody who entered the giveaway to win a signed copy of my new book, explaining the brain in a fun and simple way:
A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist - the brain made easy.
It is number 1 on Amazon right now for explaining science and has a 5 star rating.
Today I finally received the books from Amazon and have signed them all and have posted them out to all of the lucky winners.
My social media will be showing you some behind the scenes pictures and videos of all the book signing, and everything in between. Be sure to check them out
IG: @TheEnglishScientist
Twitter: @RevolutionNeuro
Happy April 1st Everybody
Mike
A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist
A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist - the brain made easy.
It is number 1 on Amazon right now for explaining science and has a 5 star rating.
Today I finally received the books from Amazon and have signed them all and have posted them out to all of the lucky winners.
My social media will be showing you some behind the scenes pictures and videos of all the book signing, and everything in between. Be sure to check them out
IG: @TheEnglishScientist
Twitter: @RevolutionNeuro
Happy April 1st Everybody
Mike
A Million Things To Ask A Neuroscientist
