In life there are those who remember their dreams and those who forget

londondeposit/epictura

Published the 27.12.2017 at 22h43

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Keywords :

sleep paradoxalrêvemicro-rével

They fascinate us, intrigue us… when we can remember… One thing is for sure, we are not all equal in the face of dreams. Each morning, there is a great injustice. Some of you may remember without difficulty of their dreams. The other not at all, which can be very frustrating. For more than forty years, the explanation adopted is that the brain is asleep could not “print” the information in long-term memory and that he had to, to remembering a dream, wake up, even a small very short period of time to be able to print it and remember it in the morning…

The assumption has become a certainty

There was, at the time this hypothesis has been raised, not to machines available today. This is why an Inserm unit, Lyon, has offered volunteers to come to sleep at the lab with electrodes on the head. This has allowed us to verify very simply that the great dreamers have a larger amount of micro-awakenings.
Our sleep is divided into several cycles, more or less long depending on the people, which explain that those who have short cycle times, require less sleep than others. Between two cycles, we wake up to a very short but complete. It is often the perception of these micro-awakenings, which gives the impression of a good or bad night… But, there is a certain justice, since these are the biggest dreamers !

Science in the service of knowledge

This is not the end – for this study : we put the volunteers in machines to set what region of the brain was affected. These volunteers, 40 in total, a perfusion in the arm had to sleep in a machine that does not prompt specifically for the dream. It took a year and a half to get there. But the audit is vivid : the great dreamers have increased activity in a specific region of the brain compared to small dreamers. A region that is known to be very sensitive to the stimulations of the outside world… So everything fits ! The great dreamers have an ability to be more easily awakened by noises, for example, so to better remember their dreams.

Rem sleep

Beyond the pleasure of understanding, these results are medically valuable, because it is another confirmation of the operation of the phase of sleep called ” rem ” which is the time when we dream, but also the key element of our intellectual life unconscious. It is called rem sleep, for ever sleep has been so deep and the brain also awake. The phase restorative that precedes it is called “restorative” – in the sense of repair of our body – but this rem sleep is that of the reorganization of the brain. During this phase, it sorts the information learned during the day to remember those that are essential ; in particular the phases of learning.
When one does not remember his dreams, is that this does not mean that we do not dream, because rem sleep exists in everyone, it simply means that we do not have printed… because we slept very well !

In summary, we can wake up in full form, perfectly repaired of the abuse of the day, but without having completely improved his memory. It is important ! And we will quote Marcel Proust : “a little insomnia is not unnecessary to enjoy the sleep ! “.