Sleep Disorders and Dreams
Sleep Disorders
• Insomnia: persistent inability
to fall asleep or stay asleep
• Narcolepsy (“numb seizure”):
sleep attacks, even a collapse
into REM/paralyzed sleep, at
inopportune times
• Sleep apnea (“with no
breath”): repeated awakening
after breathing stops; time in
bed is not restorative sleep
Are these people
dreaming?
 Night terrors refer to
sudden scared-looking
behavior, with rapid
heartbeat and
breathing.
 Sleepwalking and
sleeptalking run in
families, so there is a
possible genetic basis.
These behaviors,
mostly affect
children, and occur in
NONREM-3 sleep.
They are not
considered dreaming.
• Insomnia- it is worsened by worrying about insomnia. We often
underestimate how much sleep we got because we only remember
being awake. We also overestimate how long it takes for us to fall
asleep. Sleeping pills and alcohol interrupt REM sleep and make us
feel worse.
• Narcolepsy- people have an overwhelming attack of sleepiness. It
lasts about 5 minutes. Most severe cases result in immediate REM
sleep and they lose all muscle tension. It is a brain disease.
• Sleep apnea- often associated with obesity. Loud snoring, high blood
pressure, risk of heart attack or stroke
• Sleep walking- usually harmless. Most sleepwalkers don’t remember
the trip the night before. Sleep deprivation causes longer NREM-3
sleep so that in turn may cause more sleep walking.
dreams
• We spend 6 years of our lives in dreams
• REM dreams tend to be vivid, emotional and bizarre.
• 8 in 10 are marked by some negative emotion.
• After suffering a trauma, people often report having nightmares.
• After playing Tetris for 7 hours, people dream about falling blocks.
• People in hunter-gatherer societies often dream about animals.
• What does this tell us?
• Our dreams often incorporate parts of our previous days experiences
and preoccupations.
• Our two-track mind is monitoring sensory stimuli from the
outside world. A smell or a phone ringing might make its
way into our dream.
• We cannot learn a second language by listening to a tape
while we sleep
• We cannot memorize information while we sleep. Most
information we take in within 5 minutes of falling asleep will
likely be forgotten.
• When we are deprived of REM sleep over time, we will
spend more time in REM when we sleep. This is called REM
Rebound. Shows us that REM is important.
Dreams
the stream of images, actions, and feelings, experienced while in REM sleep
What We Dream About
 Dreams often include
some negative event or
emotion, especially
failure dreams (being
pursued, attacked,
rejected, or having bad
luck).
 Dreams do NOT often
include sexuality.
 We may incorporate realworld sounds and other
stimuli into dreams.
 Dreams also include
images from recent,
traumatic, or frequent
experiences.
What We Dream About:
(Psychoanalytic Theory)
Sigmund Freud believed there was
often a hidden “latent content”
(conflicts, worries, and urges)
underneath the symbolic “manifest
content” (the plot, actions, and
images recalled) of dreams.
Freud Theories
• He believed that dreams were a release of our unacceptable feelings.
• Dreams have two types of content
• Manifest- The dreams apparent story line
• Latent- unconscious drives and wishes that would be threatening in
the real world
• We know that most dreams have no underlying sexual content,
however, Freud often traced dreams back to some erotic wish.
Information Processing Theory
• Dreams help sift, sort and fix the day’s experiences in our memory.
• Our dreams often have people we know and are in settings that we
recognize.
• In experiments, subjects who were deprived of both slow-wave and
REM sleep did not perform well on new learning tasks.
• Brain scans confirm the link between REM sleep and memory.
• High school students with higher grades averaged 25 minutes a night
more sleep
Physiological function
• Provides the sleeping brain with stimulation which allows for
expanding the neural pathways
• Babies spend more time in REM sleep as their neural networks
expand.
Neural Activation
• REM sleep triggers neural activity the creates random images in your
mind
• Our sleeping brain creates a story by weaving these images together.
These images do not originate in the visual cortex. This area receives
stimuli from the eyes.
• The limbic system is active in REM sleep. Frontal lobe regions
responsible for logic and inhibition are inactive.
Cognitive Development
• Prior to age 9, dreams are more like slideshows and less like an active
story
• Dreams overlap with waking cognition.
• They engage brain networks that also are active during daydreaming.
• As our knowledge and ability to think in more complex ways
increases, so does the complexity of our dreams.
Theories about Functions of Dreams
Theory
Explanation
Lacks any
scientific
Wish fulfillment
support;
(psychodreams may be
analytic theory)
interpreted in
many
different
But
why
do we
ways.
sometimes
Dreams help us sort out the day’s
Informationdream about
events and consolidate our
processing
This may
be
things
we have
memories.
true,not
but it
Regular brain stimulation from REM experienced?
does not
Physiological
The
sleep may help develop and
explain
why we
function
individual’s
preserve neural pathways.
experience
brain is
meaningful
REM sleep triggers impulses that
weaving
the
dreams.
Activationevoke random visual memories,
stories, which
synthesis
which our sleeping brain weaves
still tells us
into stories.
something
Does not
Dream
content
reflects
the
about
the
Cognitiveaddress
the
dreamers’
cognitive
dreamer.
developmental development—his or her
neuroscience of
theory
dreams.
knowledge and understanding.
Dreams provide a “psychic safety valve”; they
often express otherwise unacceptable feelings,
and contain both manifest (remembered) content
and a latent content (hidden meaning).