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Review of When Brains Dream: Exploring The Science and Mystery of Sleep by Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold. W.W. Norton & Company. 336 pp. $27.95
“We are such stuff/As dreams are made on,” proclaimed Prospero. “And our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.”
Five hundred years after Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, we remain mesmerized — and mystified — by dreams. Why do we dream? What do dreams mean? What is their purpose?
In this book, Antonio Zada, a professor at the University of Montreal, and Robert Stickgold, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, draw on the latest studies in neuroscience and psychology to provide a fascinating account of the stuff dreams are made on.
Comprehensive and rigorous, When Brains Dream reviews pre-twentieth-century literature on dreams; critiques Freud’s influential book, The Interpretation of Dreams; and assesses “the veritable tsunami” of dream research in the 20th and 21st centuries. The authors distinguish between dreams during REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM sleep. They analyze the physiology of dreams and their content (enumerating typical themes in dreams and nightmares). And they summarize our knowledge of lucid dreaming and “parasomnias,” including narcolepsy, sleep paralysis, sleepwalking, and REM sleep behavior disorder.
Most important, Zadra and Stickgold explain NEXTUP (Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities), their model of dream function. When we are awake, they point out, our brains are optimized to process sensations in the here and now. When we dream during REM, serotonin increase is blocked, noradrenaline is shut off, and activity decreases in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (which regulates planning, logical reasoning, and impulse control). The brain’s bias shifts toward weak associations, strange juxtapositions of content, and invented narratives that explore social interactions and process emotions in ways we might reject in the light of day. This “enhanced mind wandering” can also stimulate creativity. Interpreting dreams, or being consciously aware of them, Zadra and Stickgold emphasize, is not necessary for NEXTUP to do its work.
The authors also offer practical advice to dreamers and therapists. “Dream incubation,” they indicate, is a free, time-effective, and harmless way to address everyday concerns. Individuals using the techniques should 1) think about a troubling issue before going to bed, 2) summarize it verbally and in writing in a phrase or question, 3) repeat the incubation sentence when falling asleep, 4) upon awakening, close their eyes for a few moments to remember as much of the dream as possible, 5) write down or record everything in as much detail as possible, without making judgments, 6) examine how the recalled dream does — or does not — relate to the incubation phrase. Researchers, Zada and Stickgold acknowledge, do not agree about why and to what extent the technique works.
To help gain insights from dreams, the authors recommend that therapists use the cognitive-experiential model developed by psychology professor Clara Hill of the University of Maryland. The patient recounts the dream in the first-person present tense; chooses salient images and discusses them with the therapist; re-experiences the feelings associated with each image; and identifies potential real-life triggers for the image. The dream experience as a whole is then examined in connection with the individual’s life experience and relevant psychological dynamics. In the final stage, life changes are considered. The approach focuses less on an authoritative interpretation and more about the personal insights the dream stimulates. Clients, the authors indicate, give high ratings to the cognitive-experiential model for reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.
For trauma-related nightmares, recurrent nightmares, or chronic idiopathic nightmares, they recommend imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT), a cognitive-behavioral intervention that instructs patients to “rescript” their nightmares in whatever ways feel right to them (even if it is not affirmative or triumphal) and rehearse the new dream through visual imagery for several minutes each day. IRT reduces trauma in children, soldiers, survivors of sexual assault, and individuals suffering from mental illness. Gains are maintained over time — and sometimes spill over into waking lives.
When Brains Dream, Zadra and Stickgold point out, is the product of a surge of interest in dreams in the 21st century and widespread acceptance of them among researchers and clinicians as legitimate objects of scientific study. That said, they recognize that fundamental questions — how the brain selects memories to use in a dream; how narrative structures are woven into a whole and emotions inserted; and how the process rises to consciousness — remain to be answered. The timeline related to the phenomenology of dreaming (the conscious experiencing of dreams), they conclude, is likely to be long.
Their fine book makes clear, however, that these questions are well worth addressing. And that far from “taking away the mysterious sense of wonder our dreams create,” scientific inquiry magnifies it.
