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Key points
- Dreams serve important functions, from the consolidation of learning to emotional regulation.
- Research findings reveal the power of dreams to enhance learning and performance.
- Sleeping and dreaming offer valuable memory processing functions.
You dream several times a night, even if you don't remember most of them (Walker, 2017). In a typical lifetime, we spend years dreaming.
Throughout time and across cultures, man has ascribed importance to dreams. Recognized for his seminal contribution, The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud considered dreams to be the royal road to the unconscious. According to him, dreams represented instinctual aggressive and sexual drives pressing for discharge. Disguised by the primary process of symbols, displacements, and condensations, the dream was believed to represent hidden instinctual wish fulfillment.
While dreamers still make important use of metaphors and symbolic representations in their dreams, the thinking around the meaning of dreams has changed.
Both ongoing dream theory (Fossage, 2000) and research in the field (Walker, 2017) reveal that, well beyond wish fulfillment, we need and use dreams in the organization of data, the consolidation of memory, the integration of skills, and the regulation of psychological functioning.
Important in understanding the function of dreams are the findings related to sleep cycles:
- During all stages of sleep, the mind and brain work to process new memories, consolidating them into long-term storage and integrating recently acquired information with past experience (Warmsly and Stickhold, 2011).
- The human body cycles through two phases of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, which is further divided into three stages—N1 to N3. Each phase and stage of sleep includes variations in muscle tone, brain wave patterns, and eye movements. The body cycles through all stages approximately four to six times each night, averaging 90 minutes for each cycle.
- Lab studies reveal that we have dreams in both phases of sleep and that non-REM dreams and REM dreams actually serve different functions (Walker, 2017).
The Purpose of Non-REM Dreams
If you have ever skied all day, studied for hours, or spent hours reaching a level on a video game, you may have dreamed of moguls, math equations, or video images. These are non-REM dreams. They are very beneficial, as they are generally associated with the consolidation of newly learned facts, skills, and experiences.
In a study by Wamsley, et al. (2010), subjects were trained on a virtual navigation task and then retested on the same task five hours after the initial training. Improved performance at the retest was strongly associated with dreaming about the task during an intervening afternoon nap. Task-related thoughts during wakefulness, in contrast, did not predict improved performance. These findings underscore the importance of sleep-dependent memory consolidation in humans. The offline reactivation of recently formed memories in dream experiences reflects this valuable memory processing that sleeping and dreaming offer.
For students, scientists, performing artists, professionals, and anyone who feels compelled to pull all-nighters, it makes sense to work, find some time to sleep, and “perchance to dream.”
REM Sleep Dreams: Your Overnight Therapy
Building on the benefits of REM dreams, Matthew Walker, in his book Why We Sleep (2017), reveals that REM dreaming reduces the pain of the difficult, at times, traumatic emotional episodes we have experienced. This is due to a formerly unrecognized change in the chemical cocktail that takes place in our brains during REM dreams.
Chemical Changes
During REM dreaming, concentrations of a key stress-related chemical called noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine, are completely shut off. Actually, it is the only time in a 24-hour period that our brain is completely free of this anxiety-triggering chemical. This means that during REM sleep dreams, we are reviewing memories, be they frightening, tragic, or terrifying, without anxiety, in a “safe” dreaming brain environment.
Experimental Findings
One experiment with healthy young adults measured emotional reactivity when shown a set of emotionally charged images while inside an MRI scanner. One group was shown the pictures in the morning and 12 hours later in the evening. The other group was shown the pictures and then got a full night’s sleep before being re-shown the pictures. Those who slept during their 12 hours reported a significant decrease in how emotional they felt in response to the images compared to those who had not slept. Significantly, the recorded sleep of those who slept showed the electrical patterns of REM sleep dreams (Walker, 2017).
What about Nightmares?
Nightmares are one of the most frequent symptoms for those who have suffered trauma (Albanese et al., 2022). Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) is considered the method of choice for reducing nightmares. In this method, the therapist moves from having the client develop and create positive images, colors, scenes, etc., to sharing the nightmare with the plan of "rescripting the nightmare," reducing their sense of helplessness and terror in the process. Given the proven potential of dreams to expand learning, reduce anxiety, and enhance emotional regulation, it makes sense that those who change the script of their nightmare and practice new versions of it, are able to actually change nightmares. Essentially, they move from the terror recorded in dreams to the coping and healing made possible through dreams.
As life presents you with the good, the bad, and the unresolved, consider reflecting on your next dream and asking, "What was the feeling of my dream?" No expert knows the feeling of a dream like the dreamer. Maybe you were anxious. Maybe you were thrilled. It's your glimpse into the night shift that is busy as you sleep!
