Somnologist Mikhail Poluektov: where dreams come from and why we quickly forget them
Miscellaneous / / April 03, 2023
No more worrying about bad dreams.
Many people think that sleep is a direct reflection of what occupies and excites us in reality. Somnologist Mikhail Poluektov believes that the truth is somewhat more complicated. In an interview with Boris Vedensky, he told about the theories of physiologists and psychoanalysts. We have prepared a summary for readers.
Mikhail Poluektov
Candidate of Medical Sciences. Associate Professor of the Department of Nervous Diseases and Neurosurgery, Head of the Department of Sleep Medicine, University Clinical Hospital No. 3 of the First Moscow State Medical University. AND. M. Sechenov. President of the Russian Society of Somnologists
Why do we dream
There are two theories that do not intersect with each other. Which one is better, it is impossible to say.
Because the brain at this time processes the information received during the day
Physiologists believe that dreams are random noise created by electrochemical impulses in our brain.
Impulses can be internal or external. The first appear when the brain analyzes the new information that the past day has brought.
An example of external would be experiment Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. He and his team regularly operated on patients with epilepsy. During operations, surgeons stimulated certain parts of the human brain with electricity. During this time, the patient had vivid dreams. Electric impulses gave rise to complex visual images that did not depend on what occupied a person’s thoughts during the day.
Therefore, physiologists believe that it is not necessary to look for meaning in the plots that we see in a dream.
Mikhail Poluektov
Dreams are fairy tales that the brain tells itself.
Because in a dream images come up that we want to forget about during the day
This theory was created by Sigmund Freud and described in his book The Interpretation of Dreams. Today, psychoanalysts actively apply it in practice.
According to Freud, a person does not want to remember any traumatic events or strong experiences. Unwanted emotions are hidden in the subconscious, and a person cannot comprehend and apply this experience in any way. Therefore, during sleep, various images associated with unpleasant experiences emerge.
But these are not direct memories. For example, a person someone offended in the past and he can not forget the offense. In a dream, he will not see the offender, but an image that is born of unpleasant emotions. And each person will have their own associations.
The task of psychoanalysts is to decipher what is hidden behind the image, to help pull unpleasant memories into consciousness and process them into a useful experience.
How absurd dreams appear
Everything is simple here. The electrical activity of neurons causes various memories to emerge at the same time - both fresh and those that were recorded a long time ago. As a result, events appear before our inner eye that do not intersect in any way in real space and time. But it is vital for the brain to explain why it saw all this. And out of chaos, he creates a plot - one that connects all the pictures that have arisen and the emotions associated with them at once.
The more incompatible in reality the simultaneously surfaced memories, the more absurd the plot of our dream will be.
Why do people have nightmares
Usually, when we talk about nightmares, we mean any unpleasant dreams. Such dreams are a continuation of the events of the day that we did not like. Over time, they are forgotten and are not dangerous for the psyche.
Real nightmares are states when a person wakes up from an extremely unpleasant sensation that does not go away with time. A person constantly remembers this feeling along with the circumstances of sleep, this takes him out of a stable mental state and interferes with normal life.
Healthy adults do not have such nightmares. They happen in children while their nervous system is not yet strong and mental protection has not yet appeared, but they disappear with age.
Nightmares can return if a person finds himself in a critical, life-threatening or mental situation. For example, they are in a state of PTSD - post-traumatic stress disorder. If they appear, you need to go to a psychotherapist.
Is it true that black and white dreams are a sign of a happy person?
There is a belief: if you always see black and white dreams, you are a happy person, but if your dreams are always in color, you are unhappy. Or you suffer from a mental disorder.
In fact, there are no black and white dreams. There are colorful dreams and colorless ones. Well, how vivid the dream will be depends only on the emotions that we have while we are watching it. The stronger and deeper our emotions, the more colors we will remember. If the plot of the dream does not touch us at all, the colors will be dull. Or we don’t remember them at all - then the dream will seem to us black and white.
There is another reason for bright and dim dreams. The more attention one pays colors and shades in life, the more colors he notices in a dream. If color is not important for a person in life, dreams will be remembered as black and white.
Yes, sometimes colorless dreams are a signal of emotional well-being and mental health, and bright colors in dreams are a sign of emotional instability. But not always.
Mikhail Poluektov
Indeed, scientific studies have shown that mentally ill people are more likely than healthy people to see vivid colored dreams. But healthy people also see colored dreams.
Does everyone dream
Everyone has dreams, because while we sleep, everyone has the same processes going on in the brain. The brain processes new information and analyzes how it interacts with what it already knew, which neural connections to strengthen and which to weaken. Dreams are a by-product.
But many immediately forget about them. Therefore, it seems to them that they do not dream.
Why do we forget what we dreamed
This feature is known to everyone who sees dreams.
Because emotions are erased
While we sleep, our brain goes through several identical data processing cycles, which consist of phases of non-REM and REM sleep. It is in the fast phase that dreams are born, and with them the accompanying emotions.
If a person is awakened during the fast phase, emotions will be vivid and he will remember his dream. If the cycle ends, the emotions will also go away and the person will soon forget what he dreamed about.
Mikhail Poluektov
With the passage of each sleep cycle, information is first taken from the boxes of long-term memory and appears to our inner gaze. Along with it, the emotions associated with that memory return. Then the information is processed and sent back to the same boxes. And so several times a night. When the data is unzipped and archived several times, some of the emotion is gradually lost.
Because we may not be interested in dreams and their content
It often happens that dreams for a person are an unimportant and uninteresting part of life. He pays much more attention to reality. The brain is arranged rationally, so it quickly removes from access that information that turns out to be unclaimed.
Can dreams be controlled?
Yes. Usually in a dream we take for granted even absurd events. We are not surprised if we meet in a dream a person whom we have not seen for a long time. Or quietly fly over the city. This happens because a critical function is turned off during sleep. brain. He stops comparing what is happening with the image of familiar reality and accepts all the events of the dream without protest.
But it is possible to reach a state where a critical assessment is partially preserved, and we understand that we are seeing a dream and can act in it as we ourselves want. To turn an ordinary dream into a lucid dream, you need to understand that you are dreaming.
Dream control technology was developed at Stanford University back in the 1970s. For this, glasses with LED lamps were created. Each participant in the experiment saw these flashing lights many times in reality and remembered: this is a signal from the outside world.
Then in a dream, when the lamps began to blink, a person could understand that reality is not a dream, it is outside. Over time, he gained the ability to control dreams - just like in Christopher Nolan's movie Inception.
Mikhail Poluektov
If a person realizes that he is dreaming, he gains power over dreams. Then he can really sculpt the worlds at will. But why is unclear. In a practical sense, doctors are trying to use this technique to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and fight nightmares. But it is easier to give a person a pill whose effectiveness has been proven.
However, no one interferes with the use of lucid dreams to relax and visit the worlds you created. At least in a dream.
How to manage dreams
Before going to bed, you need to tune in not to believe in everything that the brain shows, and look for some object or person in a dream. Ask: Why isn't someone or something here? Such a technique will not work right away, but if you try to repeat it every time you sleep, then over time you will be able to attract into your dreams who and what you want.
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