Word: sleepings
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...discovery of REM sleep was supposed to be an opening through which science could throw light on dreaming. And it was, up to a point. But it has also been an obstacle to progress. What happened was that many scientists became convinced that REM sleep and dreaming are more or less the same thing-that they're underpinned by the same physiological processes. REM became known as "dreaming sleep," but that is almost certainly an oversimplification. "Sadly, there's an authoritative school of thought that will not let go of this idea," says Mark Solms, professor of neuropsychology...
...There are tensions in the field, but "it's starting to break out of its malaise," says Robert Stickgold, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School's Center for Sleep and Cognition. Recently, scientists have abandoned stagnant theories of dreaming and postulated new and intriguing ones, with experiments underway in various parts of the world aimed at establishing the function of our nightly hallucinations. If recent work suggests anything, it's that there is such a function, or more than one, and that dreams aren't just neural waste. They may improve the quality of our sleep. They...
...recent advances in brain science, it shouldn't surprise that the riddle of dreaming hasn't been cracked. "We still don't know why we sleep, let alone why we dream," says Dorothy Bruck, professor of psychology at Melbourne's Victoria University. It seems commonsensical that sleep is a restorative phase for brain and body, and there's some evidence that the effects of sleep deprivation are the result of minor brain damage that would normally be repaired when we're asleep. But despite their best efforts, scientists have been unable to pinpoint what's going on in sleep that...
...Still, sleep research is a breeze compared to studying dreaming. In the former, you can at least be certain you're observing a sleeping person. "But we don't have a device that looks into a person's head and sees dreams happening in real time," says Russell Conduit, a lecturer in the school of psychology, psychiatry and psychological medicine at Melbourne's Monash University. Instead, dream researchers rely on what he calls the "faulty methodology" of waking subjects and asking them what was going on in their heads immediately before they were woken. But because certain parts...
...Before delving into the latest theories, then, it's worth reviewing what we know about dreaming and the sleep state in which we seem to do most of it. REM follows four stages of sleep known collectively as non-REM sleep, in which brain activity becomes progressively more subdued. In REM-which occurs four or five times a night and lasts about 30 minutes at a time-our muscles become paralyzed, which could be a mechanism for preventing the acting out of our dreams. About half of a baby's sleep is REM compared to a quarter of an adult...