Science Vs - Dreams: What Could They Mean?

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Dreaming might be the weirdest thing that our brains do. Out of thin air we may see ourselves battling a triceratops, or stressing for an exam that we don't have … so why do we do this?? What is going on in our brains to create these bonkers images? For years, the land of dreams was a place for mystics and philosophers, but with groundbreaking technology, we're getting closer to understanding the science of dreams than ever before. Comedians Toni and Ryan join us for a romp through the bizarre science of dreaming, along with neuroscientist Professor Francesca Siclari and dream/sleep researcher Professor Bob Stickgold. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsDreams In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Welcome to the Nodcast (05:11) How our dreams change all night (08:50) The myth of REM dreams (14:30) Why do dreams feel so real?  (22:02) What are we really dreaming about?  (30:45) Why do we dream?  (34:46) Could dreams help us process emotions? This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, with help from Joel Werner, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, and Michelle Dang. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka and Peter Leonard. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke to including Dr Dylan Selterman, Dr Nirit Soffer, Professor Caroline Watt, Pr Pilleriin Sikka, Professor Drew Dawson, Dr Başak Türker, Dr Katja Valli, Dr Delphine Oudiette, Dr Sarah Schoch and Dr Dan Rubin. Also thanks to Lauren Silverman, Stupid Old Studios, Andrew Paquette, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. This is the show that pits facts against figments of your imagination as we dive into the world of dreaming. People often say that talking about your dreams is one of the most boring things that you can do. Agreed. So in the interest of keeping this fun, I've invited two of the funniest people that I know along to the show, comedians Tony Lodge and Ryan

John from the hit podcast, Tony and Ryan. Welcome to the show. Wow. Thank you. And that means that I'm funny according to science. Yeah. Which I've always wanted to know. Yeah. And thanks for bringing up the main topic already, Wendy, because I believe that everyone thinks their dream is interesting, but no one thinks that other people's dreams are interesting. Tony, you didn't seem happy with that comment. Oh, I love dream chat. I love it. I, every morning, Google my dreams.

Like, I'm into dreams. What do you love about dream chat? I love that something has happened overnight that to me feels monumental and I have to get it off my chest. I feel like I've watched a movie and, you know, when you walk out of a movie theatre and you go, oh, what did you think? Oh, God, Jude Law was good, wasn't he? Don't know why Jude Law was the first act I thought of.

There must be something in that one. Do you want to talk about that after? Someone's watched The Holiday. The Holiday, yeah. It's a great film. My favourite Christmas movie, I reckon. It is. Jack Black is amazing in that.

Fantastic. Underrated dramatic actor. So good. But see how we're debriefing about The Holiday right now? So when I've had a dream, I just find it to be like I've acted in a film overnight and I need to tell my friends about it. Mate, we're going to have so much fun this episode. So Ryan, you've been quite silent

while Tony... Because I'm quite silent most mornings when Tony comes into work and goes you'll never guess what I came to last night. I'm going to go f***. Don't, you love my dream. So, okay, so what's a dream, Tony, that you've had recently that sort of baffled you perhaps? I had one the other night

in the home that I live in. Yeah. The ocean was crashing in through the windows. As if I was on like a cruise ship in a really like torrential storm, the house was rocking and the water was coming in and like smashing through all the windows and stuff. Was it scary? Yeah, it was.

You woke up quite quite upset by it. I woke up like, oh my God, like there's water everywhere. And then my exact next thought was I need to Google this. I read that a lot of like very water heavy dreams often are like emotion that you need to express with somebody or like you've got a lot of unresolved feelings about an occasion or a person or something. Okay, so what science questions do you two have about dreaming? Does this mean something?

Yes, of course. Yeah. Is there something underlying somewhere that I have to probably go and chat to someone about in the awake world and then my asleep subconscious is trying to give me a hint or push me in the direction and go, oh, you maybe haven't dealt with this and maybe it'll help. Or is it just random garbage? Interesting. Okay, so today on the show, we are diving into the science of what is up with this weird thing that we do at night.

You know, here we are, water is coming into our house. Sometimes we're naked at grandma's funeral, we're flying, we're losing teeth. For centuries, we've seen symbols in dreams, deeper meanings. And for years, it was like the land of dreams was a place for mystics and philosophers. Well, no more. It's time for science to enter the fray.

With groundbreaking technology. For the first time in history, we're becoming closer to understanding dreams than ever before, which may be a bit of an oversell. Pipe it up. We're in showbiz, baby. I couldn't be more excited to tell you about the science of dreams. Today on the show, we're going to find out what is happening in our brains as we're transported into this world.

Why do dreams feel so real? Yeah. And of course, what do dreams mean? Could they be some window into our deep subconscious? Or perhaps even be helping our brains to work better? Enter the land of Nod, if you dare. Oh, I love that. Welcome the land of Nod if you dare. Oh, I love that. Welcome to today's Nodcast.

Coming up after this, quick break. Who came up with Nodcast? Me. I thought I did. No, you would never come up with a pun like that. Just another man stealing another woman's jokes. I'm going to dine out on that for a while. It's really not important to me to have a lot of things to show off.

Fancy cars, you know, a giant home. Those things are just not part of who I am. But I've been coached and I've learned through my advisor that it's not one size fits all. Everyone has their own preferences. Everything that I do with Edward Jones is tailored to who I am. Edward Jones. We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist?

And where is Jan 11? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jan 11. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jana Levin. I'm Steve Strogatz.

And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Today on the show, we are exploring the world of dreaming. We're here with comedians and dreamers Tony and Ryan. Hello. Hello. Howdy.

Dreamers, I like that. Dreamers. I'm going to pop that on my LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. Big dreamers. Okay, so when I started looking into the science of dreaming, I had this idea that when we dream at night,

it isn't such a big deal. Like I thought we really only did it during this particular time of sleep called REM, like rapid eye movement. Is this an idea that you two have heard about? I have heard of that, but I dream right up until my alarm, like every day. Interesting. Okay, you're about to be very validated by science. I love science. Okay, so let me walk you through a typical night of dreaming

with our daydream believer, Professor Francesca Siclari. She's a neuroscientist at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. And so we got on a call and I asked her, throughout the night, how often are people dreaming on average? Much more than one thinks. At least several hours per night one dreams. Several hours per night. So if you think about sleep like a Hollywood movie, dreaming is not some little bit part. It's like Chris Hemsworth, not Liam Hemsworth. Now, one of the main ways that researchers like Francesca

know how often we are dreaming for is this. They take someone into a lab. They get them to go to sleep. And then throughout the night, they wake them up and say, are you dreaming? Oh, my God. That is my worst nightmare. Yeah, that sounds awful. That's not dreams.

That's nightmares. That's awful. That is, when I. How can anyone go to sleep knowing that that's going to happen? I know, I know. But they do. They do. And by doing this kind of thing,

Francesca has found that not only are we dreaming more than you might think, but our dreams change throughout the night in these really surprising ways. So let's start basically as soon as you've gone to sleep because that's when our very first dreams get going. We call them snapshots that just pop up or a little sequence of a movie, like a very short movie sequence. They are very difficult to remember unless someone wakes you up and asks you in this space

what you just experienced. Interesting. I find this so fascinating because unless you are involved in one of these studies, you really wouldn't know what you are thinking about during this time. No. And so those first dreams that we have, they're almost like these short, forgettable TikToks. But then you get into deeper and deeper sleep and the activity in your brain during this time changes.

So here's Francesca. Your brain activity progressively gets slower and gets slower everywhere in the brain. And we enter a stage that we call deep sleep. And the slower the brain activity is, basically, the deeper the sleep. And in this stage of sleep, if Francesca would wake you up and say like, Ryan, Ryan, what are you experiencing in this moment? What are you dreaming about?

You might say nothing. There are moments throughout the night where you're literally not dreaming. Or she says people might have these like almost abstract dreams. Where sometimes an experience was so fleeting and so really difficult to describe, so minimal. It's just a tiny thought or like a vague sensation of threat. Does any of this sound familiar? Have you guys ever woken up and had these sorts of feelings?

I've woken up and remembered the thought I've had in the dream. Really? But I don't, there's no visual to it. Interesting. So that, those sorts of thoughts might be happening at this stage of sleep. Right. And then, so all of these sort of like weird like dream light, we could call them, they're all happening before we hit that big moment

that many people associate with dreaming, like REM. And so I thought at this moment we could maybe all do a little sing-along because you can't say REM without a little song, right? Yeah, but I'm more of a karaoke person, so if we were all mid-song, I could join in. Oh, okay. So I'm just a sing-alonger. So what you need is me to go,

That's me in the corner. Oh, okay. So I'm just a sing-alonger. So what you need is me to go, That's me in the corner. That's me in the spot. This is actually a dream I've had. I woke up and Wendy from Science Versus and Ryan were singing R.E.M. really terribly in the podcast booth. There were two celebrities singing in front of me. Okay, now, so a lot of people associate this stage of sleep, REM, to dreaming. And it's not just people, but scientists had wrongly thought for ages that we really only dreamt in REM sleep.

And that's because there is this, when you look at what's happening in the brain and the body during this time, there's this very like neat and tidy story. So if you look what's going on in the brain, it is truly bonkers. Like remember how Francesca said that during deep sleep, your brain activity gets slower and slower, which like makes a lot of sense. It's taking a break.

It's taking a break, exactly. And then you hit REM roughly 90 minutes into your sleep. And it's like party time. And the brain activity is very big. It's very wake-like. Although one is really asleep. Your brain is just like buzzing with activity. Research has found that during REM sleep,

you actually get more blood rushing into the visual centers of your brain, which explained why you have these like vivid, like vivid dreams. You got all that activity. And then there's what's happening to your muscles. When you measure muscle activity during the stage, it's very flat. And by flat, you mean it's like they're dead. Well, yeah, not all the muscles, but almost all the muscles are functionally paralyzed. Have you guys heard this before, that when you're in REM, you're basically paralyzed? I didn't know that. No, I didn't know that. That's horrifying. I wish I didn't know that. Oh, right. Yes. So you do. And maybe

you might have experienced this if you ever like wake up during REM and you cannot move. This is called sleep paralysis. Paralysis. I've had friends who've had that and it sounds awful. It sounds like being trapped in a, oh, yeah. Yeah, it's happened to me a couple of times. You're just like move, move, move, but you literally cannot move.

And the reason that scientists think this happens is so that you don't act out your dreams while you're asleep. Oh, so if you're dreaming that you're fighting someone. Yeah, and there's actually people who have a condition called REM sleep behaviour disorder where they don't get paralysed and they do act out their dreams. And I read this hectic case report of this guy who would bang his head against the wall

and so to stop him from doing that, he actually tied his hands to a bedpost at night. Oh, my God. So be glad that you get paralyzed. Oh, my goodness. And so all this stuff, like our busy brains, our paralyzed bodies, it all seemed to line up with the idea that REM is where our dreams happen. But then through studies like Francesca's, where she'll wake people up through the night, she's found that as the night goes on and on, you know, people will have these big vivid dreams.

Even, you know, in what's called non-REM sleep. Where there is a story-like narrative and where the non-REM dreams actually become almost, by any means, indistinguishable from REM sleep dreams. And this is like a super weird thing, right? Like even when Francesca started reporting on it, other scientists were like, are you sure?

You know, but that is what she's saying. And so now we do know that whether it's like weird abstract thoughts that you're having or full-blown films in your mind, we're dreaming a lot. In fact, a small recent study that Francesca did estimated that we could be dreaming for around 70% of non-REM sleep and 95% of REM sleep.

Yeah. Other studies using other techniques estimate that it might be a bit less than that. But, you know, this other researcher that I spoke to said that he thought we were probably dreaming four to six hours a night at least. And he said, if you remember 10 minutes worth of that, you're doing really well. Fascinating.

Like, I'd love to get a printout in the morning, go, here's the like 15 dreams you had last night. I go, fuck, that looks like a fuck. Yeah. Jump back into that one. 100%. So science is confirming people who say I don't dream much, what they mean is I don't remember them.

Yes, that's exactly right. They're having them, they just don't remember them in the morning. Yeah, exactly. And there are people who say I never have dreams and then scientists take them into the lab, do the sort of thing Francesca does, and the vast majority of them are found to be dreaming. They just don't remember their dreams.

Yeah. There's some weird research around like if you care about your dreams, you write dream journals, it makes it more likely that you will remember your dreams because this feels very meta, but it's like you're telling your brain dreams are important. You remember them. Yeah. Yeah.

So because, Tony, you have a really good recall of your dreams, right? And they're really important to you. Yeah. Should we play a game? Like for a dream you remember really well, do you want to just tell it to us now? Yep. Okay.

So I was standing at the bus stop across the road from my family home that I grew up in. Yeah. And as I was walking past the bus stop about to cross the road, I realised the house is on fire. There was like a crazy, thank you, wow, I've got you all now. Yeah. And then I realised like my family home is on fire. Yeah.

And there's all these people, like hundreds and hundreds of people gathered around the front of the house all of a sudden. Everybody's kind of like, how did this start? And then somebody walked across the front of the house that was wearing a black mask that had the Nirvana smiley face on. You know, the yellow, like, infinite happiness Nirvana face? What? They were wearing a black mask with that on it

and they were, like, holding a brown Bic lighter. Guys! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. And I was like, they did it and no one could hear me. So the stress and the drama of the dream was that I could see the culprit, but no one could hear me and no one could see this person. I reckon I had this dream probably 15 years ago, 16 years ago.

Yeah, and that dream now still haunts me. And when you woke up, what was the feeling that you had? I just felt so distressed because it was so vivid. It was as if I had witnessed a crime in real life. I remember waking up and, like, telling my mum, like, oh, mum, I've had this horrible dream. She was like, that's okay, babe. Like, you can sit.

Like, the house is fine. We're all safe. Like, wow. Wow. It was so real. Okay, well, this leads us into our next question, which is why do dreams feel so real? Because it's this delusion you're having.

It's not real. You're asleep in bed. And you're not alone. Many people have had this feeling of a dream that feels so real. One study of undergrad students found that 70% of them had experienced a dream that for a moment they thought really happened. There's a research paper that describes people dreaming of their parents, kids, or pets having died. One person even called to make arrangements for the funeral. Oh my God. And then realized, oh no, they're still alive. That

was just a dream. So this is something that many of us have experienced, right? And Francesca did this awesome study that's really helping us understand what might be going on here so here's what she did she trains people so that when they wake up they stay in bed and stop and remember the exact thing that they were thinking or dreaming about just before they woke up and she does this so that she can get this, like, detailed readout of their dreams at a particular moment in time. And basically, people practice this at home for two weeks. They got really good at it. And Francesca said that by the end of these two weeks,

they could say things like, Well, when the alarm sound went off when I heard it, I was in the kitchen looking at this and this or talking to this person. And before that, this and this and this happened. So they could distinguish the last scene from what happened before. So she brings them into the lab after they've been trained. And then she takes them to this room that looks a bit like a simple hotel room.

She puts a cap on their head with a ton of electrodes to measure the electrical activity in their brain. Then she gets them to go to sleep. And the alarm goes off. They do the trick. They go back in their brain. Then she gets them to go to sleep. And the alarm goes off. They do the trick. They go back into their minds. And then she asks them, like, what were you dreaming about? If you were dreaming, what was in that dream?

Was there a face in it? Did anyone speak? All these questions. And repeat this many times. It's quite exhausting. She told me that she would wake them up up to 20 times per night. Oh my God. And by the end of the experiment,

Francesca and her team now had a ton of reports of what people were dreaming about. They'd say, you know, I saw a face, I saw a pony, whatever. And she had the brain images, right? Yeah.

As well. So now she can start looking for patterns. And a big question is basically, when you see something in a dream, is it just like seeing something when you're awake? And is that why dreams feel so real? So to figure this out, Francesca looks at this part of our brain

that lights up when we're looking at faces. So it's really cool, but there is a particular part of our brain, it's when we're looking at faces. So it's really cool, but there is a particular part of our brain, it's called the fusiform facial area, and while I'm looking at your faces right now, this area of my brain will be buzzing and excited. Like, bing, bing, bing, you are looking at faces. Whoa.

And basically she wanted to know if people were dreaming of a face, was that still... Did that light up? Wow. Does it? So one day day she's in the lab it's thanksgiving and she looks at the data on the people who had just dreamed of a face she looks for that little area and boom i saw this this face area light up clearly pop up with such yeah so clearly i really had the impression that I had captured

like a trace of a dream, something objective. And there, yeah, this was a big moment for me, perhaps the best moment. It's so cool. It's so cool. Like, you could see it right there. I was like, telling the colleagues that were there, look at this, look at this. That's incredible. I mean, it makes sense because it does feel so real. But I think to have that confirmed. Interesting. Very interesting. And in fact, this isn't just about seeing things in dreams,

but research has found that when we experience emotions, it is as if we're really experiencing the emotion. So research has found that this region of our brain called the limbic system that is linked to emotions gets fired up during REM. And then there's this other study that found that there's a particular brain pattern that you can see when we are angry. And then when we're angry in a dream, you see it there too. You see that brain pattern. And so, like, this totally goes against the idea that dreams are just like kind of weird thoughts you have.

Yeah. Because in a dream, when you, for instance, see a face in a dream, you really see it. It's not that you think about a face, right? So that can explain, yeah, why when we wake up angry or sad in a dream, like we've really felt that emotion. We've experienced it. I think that's crazy.

That's awesome. No wonder you're so stressed when you wake up when you dream that your boyfriend's cheated on you. Yeah. Like if I've dreamt that my boyfriend's cheated on me in a dream, I'll wake up, like, so heartbroken. Yeah. And he'll be like, hey, sweet, like, how was your sleep?

And I'll be like, I actually can't talk to you right now. I know you didn't do this. I know you didn't do this, but I feel this right now and I just need to, like, sit in this from, I need to let myself feel it. But at the same time though, when I dream of my mum, who passed away 10 years ago, I dream about her a lot. I feel like I've seen her.

Really? And that makes me feel really nice. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like, I don't know if other people do that. Like you've caught up with her. Yeah, like I've chatted to her and that like the hug in the dream was like felt like a real, so I'm willing to take the bad

because I get the really good stuff as well. So that's amazing. Yeah. Okay, so what we have learned is that when we are fast asleep, our brain is hard at work, wearing away, building these worlds for us. And our next question is why? Why do we do this thing? Yeah, and when do our brains get to sleep?

When do they get to rest? They're so busy. They're up all day. They're up all night. It's all coming up after this quick nap. Welcome back. Today on the show, we're exploring the world of dreams. We're here with Tony and Ryan.

You guys still awake? Yes. Even though I can't wait to go to sleep tonight. Yeah, same. I wonder what I'll find. So now we're about to find out why do we dream. And for this, we need Bob Stickhold. He's a professor at Harvard and he's like a god in the dreaming world.

Although if you met him at a barbecue, you wouldn't know it. When I go to parties and I meet someone new and they ask me what I do, I study sleep and memory. And I don't say dreams because if I say dreams, the next seven words out of their mouth are, oh, I had the most amazing dream. And then they proceed to tell me this really stupid and boring dream. Yeah, he gets it.

He's an expert at Harvard. He gets it. That's amazing though that even he's like, nah, I can't buy into this. I think it must be the same when people say like, oh, I'm a nurse and they go, oh, can you have a look at this mold? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

There's always this one question that when people find out what you do, they always ask the same question. They've always got the same question. So every time we say, oh, I work in podcast, and they go, oh, my mate, no, I've got a great idea for that. Yeah, I've got a great story. Yeah, I've got a great story or a great idea. And they tell you the worst story ever.

But it's good to know that a Harvard professor also is in that same area. So Bob studies why do we dream and what dreams mean. And he told me that for decades when it came to this question, Freud was kind of the biggest game in town. You know, he's the one that thought that dreams were some manifestation of our deepest, often darkest desires. And if you found yourself like eating a pickle in a dream, it meant you wanted to do something cheeky with your dad.

Is that the direct science? Well, Bob isn't buying any of it. No evidence for that at all. Okay, so do we have any science-backed reason to explain why we dream? Bob went searching for the real evidence here. And he figured that one good place to start was just by looking at what people actually dream about. And the thing is, we often remember like the really weird and scary stuff. So we, if you ask people like through your lifetime, have you ever dreamed of being like chased or falling or teeth falling out? You know,

people will say, yeah, yeah, I did have a dream of that. Another common one is exams. So I once sat down and wrote up a list of, I think, 20 exam dreams you could have. You get to the exam and it's all over. Everybody's leaving. You get to the exam and it's the wrong room. You get to the exam and it's written out in Russian. So my recurring dream, yes, is I have a Spanish exam, but I can't study for it for some reason. And it's coming and it's coming and I can't study for it. Right. And you know it's too late to study

and you just know it's going to be doomsday. So there you go. I told Bob my stupid, boring dream. You did the one thing. Exactly. Do you speak Spanish? No, but I've always wanted to. It's so annoying because as a kid, my recurring dream used to be

I was in a battle with a triceratops. That sounds quite fun. That's quite cool. It's way more. And then at some point it switched to a Spanish exam. And I was like, ah. Oh, that's growing up, isn't it? Do you get stressed in Spanish?

No, my Spanish isn't good enough. I wish. It'd just be like, ay caramba. Bumblebee man from The Simpsons. That's how bad my Spanish is. That's why I keep stressing about it. Thanks for bringing it up, Ryan. Okay, so every now and then we'll have dreams like this,

but the thing is that the research has found that most of the time, day after day after day, we're not dreaming of exams or flying or being chased. We're dreaming of something else. And Bob did this kind of famous study to test out what this thing is. So it all started more than two decades ago when he went for a hike in Vermont with his family. That night I go to bed and as I'm falling asleep, I suddenly realize I can feel myself

back on the mountain. I can actually feel the rocks under my hands. And it startles me back awake. And I say, that's really strange. Now, at the time, Bob was studying memory and he was like, well, this is really weird. Like, why is my brain going back to this hike? Why am I dreaming about this? He wanted to study it systematically. And at first, he actually wanted to, he was like, maybe it's something about the hike. And so he wanted to get a bunch of people to go back on the hike and see if they dreamed about it.

But then this one student came up with a much simpler idea. Oh, Tetris. And I said, huh? And another one of the students says, oh, yes, yes, definitely Tetris. And I sort of said, what are you talking about? And they say, oh, when you first start playing Tetris, you go to bed at night and you see Tetris pieces floating down. I've seen that. Yeah, definitely. When Candy Crush was a really big thing, I remember seeing that. Yeah.

Exactly. Okay. So the plan was set. Bob and his team were going to get people to play Tetris over a couple of days. Then they'd go to bed and just as they were going to sleep, the team would wake them up and say, what was going on in your mind just before we woke you up? And what do you know?

Oh, I just saw Tetris pieces floating down and I was rotating them and fitting them into slots. And this was published in 2000 in this very prestigious fancy journal called Science. And when it's published, this paper just goes off. Everybody loved it, but they love it because they say, that happens to me too. PlayStation even has a VR game about dreaming of Tetris pieces added the promo. They will talk about a lab at Harvard University. One of the first formal studies of the phenomenon

was at Harvard Medical School in the year 2000. And then they switched to this music by some current rock star who I don't know, but my wife Debbie recognised. Blocks. They all saw blocks falling through space. So there you go. And as you mentioned with Candy Crush, this is not just about Tetris. Bob and his team then got people to play Alpine Racer 2

and people dreamed about downhill skiing. And on a more serious note, when other researchers showed people videos of what happened during September 11, so, you know, towers burning, people trying to escape, then they were also more likely to have dreams of that kind of thing. And this all suggests that while we might remember vivid and weirdo dreams that we have, most of the time, we're actually dreaming of stuff that just happened throughout our day. And I asked Francesca about this. And you know, she's woken up like, people hundreds of times to be like, what are you dreaming about? I mean, how often would you get like a dragon was coming out from the sky, and then the Starship Enterprise came and I went inside?

That's not what most people dream about most frequently. So a lot of time in these laboratory experiences, what we get are laboratory dreams about cables, about electrodes. Very rarely do we get like the full Hollywood movie type of dream. This is why I think Dream Chat is boring. Because I agree with her. Most of my dreams are kind of just like what I did yesterday again. Like if I said, Tony goes, what did you dream about last night? I'd be like coming into work today and like doing this thing.

And so one study that really hammered home this idea that like we're mainly dreaming about stuff that happened to us is this study that got about 20 people to record their dreams over a week. And then they found that almost 90% of the dreams were tied to something that really happened, mostly in the very recent past. And curiously, about half of the dreams had multiple memories in them kind of jumbled together, which makes sense, Tony, with your Nirvana dream, like you're kind of mixing Nirvana. Like it was the house I could see, it was a band I liked and, yeah, no, that makes sense. But your dream went Nirvana chat, I'm not feeling heard, the house is on fire and just suddenly just piled them together.

Yes, this is like what we think about. Exactly, we shove them together and sometimes they don't belong together. I like an Uber pool. and sometimes they don't belong together. I like an Uber pool. Yeah, they don't belong. I've never done an Uber pool and gone, I like you. Yeah, no. Never. Yeah.

That is exactly right. That is exactly right. All right, we've solved science. Have a good day, everyone. Follow, like and subscribe. Okay, so this takes us back to the idea of why you know now that we know what we are mainly dreaming about why do we do it why do we dream and it makes sense that if we're mainly taking things that happen to us during the day we're somehow like that's our memory we're taking

memories of the day and so researchers like bob like, maybe dreams have something to do with consolidating or bolstering our memories. It's doing the admin. It's the filing of the day. Yeah, this happened, you know, like... Yeah, the filing of the day is a really interesting analogy. And something that's in that Tetris study that I haven't told you about yet. Sort of, it almost suggests that maybe we could even file away things in our dreams that we don't even consciously remember that we did during that day. In Bob's Tetris study, a handful of the people had amnesia. So they couldn't remember that they'd played Tetris. And yet, Bob remembers the day that he found out whether they dreamt of Tetris pieces.

When I got the call from my student and he said, Bob, we got one. And he reported the dream reports, which was, oh, I'm seeing shapes. They're rectangles. They're turned on their side. I don't know where they're from. And I was just blown away. I mean, I sort of shouted to him, we've got it. We've got it.

And that was really, really exciting. And so we know that in their brains, inaccessible to them are memories of playing Tetris. Isn't that wild? So the memory exists to them, but they just can't access it. That's right. You can create a memory, you just can't remember the memory. Wow.

So, Tony. Yes. Did you burn your house down? Just can't remember it. Oh, my God. I reach into my handbag, brown big lighter. Bad, my God. I reach into my handbag, brown big lighter. Bad, bad lighter. So now research, like, it's at the point where it's trying to work out,

like, how does all this work? And so this is one idea, is that, like, so just, like, generally zooming out to how memory works is when you learn something new, like playing Tetris or anything, that memory is very fragile and it can be forgotten. So, for example, do you remember Bob's last name? Skuvnik or something. Yeah, with an S. Okay, it was Stickold, which obviously didn't stick in your head.

Now, the reason, I mean, just as an example, that you forgot that is because for the first few hours that you get something new, like a new memory forming, it's really, really fragile and it's delicate and it can be lost until your brain has had a chance to do what's called consolidate it. It's actually called filing, so... Yeah, that's right.

That's right. The Tony Lodge method. Yeah. And when you consolidate, you really, like, cement those neural pathways. Yeah. And so we know that sleeping is really important for memory consolidation. Yeah. And so one of that sleeping is really important for memory consolidation. And so one of

the big ideas around why we dream is that perhaps it plays a role in this, that perhaps it's boosting our memory. And so to really put this to the test, Bob's team did this study where one of his colleagues designed a virtual maze. And there's a doorway over there and there's a passage here and you can turn around and oh, there's another passage behind there and there's a passage here and you can turn around and oh, there's another passage behind you. There's a door that goes out into bright light. They get around 50 people to play the maze. Then they have a nap. They wake them up, ask them, did you dream about anything? What did you dream about? And then they were asked to play the maze again. And they basically wanted to see if you dreamt about the maze, did you do better at it compared to the people that didn't?

And they found that yes. I am so psyched because you know that the people who dream about it are the ones who get better. And so one purpose of dreaming could be to improve our memory. Really? Fascinating. I had never thought of a dream like that before, but that kind of makes more sense.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah and now not all of the studies find the same thing as Bob's did um but interestingly um there is better evidence to say that the dreams that you're having outside of REM sleep are playing a role in helping you to remember facts, mazes, stuff like that, which kind of opens the door to maybe our REM dreams having a different purpose. And one idea is that maybe REM dreams can help us to process emotional things in our lives. And so here's how that might work. So we barely ever dream of things as they actually happened in real life, like as an accurate replay. Doing that is super, super rare. What normally happens, like we mentioned, is you take memories from your day and then you like

jumble them up with other memories, maybe add some weird shit. And so the idea is that by actually doing that, by jumbling up memories and adding weird stuff, that actually might be helping our brain to think about the stuff that happened to us during the day, maybe some yucky stuff, in a different way, in a helpful way. And, you know, one of the main reasons that scientists think this is because there's a group of people who actually do dream of things as they happened in real life, and it's people with PTSD. So like a hallmark of post-traumatic stress disorder, not everyone with it, but a hallmark is that you will dream of the trauma

as like this accurate replay over and over again. And so like here's what Bob says about it. And they actually see the event replay as it happens. And that might be part of why they don't heal. The brain isn't able to make those new associations, to figure out a new way to think about what happened that helps them move forward. And researchers are now trying to figure out whether like targeting people's dreams when they have PTSD might be a way to actually help them heal. Wow.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's not a ton of research for this emotional processing theory, but, you know, there was some research in the 1980s looking into the dreams of people going through a divorce and it found that those who tended to have like really yucky dreams about their exes, they tended to get better faster. All this time, I have truly been a scientist. Do you feel like some of your dreams have helped you go through

difficult times? One million percent. Right. Yeah, absolutely. So in the last few years, I've lost a few grandparents, like natural causes, old age. When they finally passed away, it's actually a lot of admin and logistics, oh, you know, planning the funeral, what am I going to say? And I felt like all of the day was like a lot of logistics and stuff I like had to do. Yeah.

And so I didn't really get a chance to like have my good cry. And I reckon it was three or four nights after they'd passed away. It was like in my dream that I'd actually like burst into tears and wake up. Wow. Do you remember what you were dreaming about? Not really the dream, but I remember the waking up from the dream and being, it's not just like, oh, in the dream I was crying. Like I was physically had liquid coming out of my face. And so I just remember waking up in my bedroom and being like, oh my God, I'm like covered in tears.

Wow. And still being like quite sensitive and emotional about it. Yeah. Wow. And it's because it's like, and it wasn't until I was asleep that I could actually like fully process and just, you know, get it out. I think, you know, as we're winding down our Nodcast, I think what the research is telling us is that perhaps some dreams are there

to help us remember. Maybe some dreams are there to help us process the crap that's going on in our lives. And then there's still a lot of mystery here, which does leave us room to wonder if maybe there is some deeper truth buried in our dreams, even beyond what the science can tell us right now. And so I asked Bob, do you think that we should be searching for meanings in our dreams? It can be fun and it can be instructive to search for meaning in your dreams.

I mean, you shouldn't marry someone or divorce someone because of a dream and you shouldn't take a job or quit a job because of a dream. But it's just, it's your brain's wandering thoughts on a topic. And it's your brain. So it's probably useful. Now, it might be a dream about, you know, putting a collar on your mother. And you don't want to go hunting too much for meaning in it. You definitely don't. You don't want to go hunting too much for meaning in it. You definitely don't. You don't. Yeah.

When people spend a bit too much time trying to connect dots that may or may not be there. Not everything has some other meaning. Yes. So did I answer your dream questions? Yeah. Yeah. You're really sparking my scientific creativity, I think. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. It was awesome. Yeah. Good old Bob Stickhold. Yeah. That's right.

Never forget that guy's name. That's Science Versus. This episode has 93 citations. So if you want to learn more about the world of dreaming, just head on to our show notes and there's a link to the transcript with a link to all of our citations. We've been making this show for a long time, putting these fully cited transcripts in our episodes for a long time and still people will click on it and go,

oh my God, I can't believe how much work you guys put into every single episode. But we really, really do. We like to get the science right. If you want to come say hello to us on all the social media ways, I'm on TikTok. I'm at Wendy Zuckerman. Science Versus is also on Instagram at science underscore VS. We're on Facebook and Twitter. Just go search for us, Science Versus. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Joel Werner, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horne and Michelle Dang. We're edited by Blythe Terrell, fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard,

mix and sound design by Bobby Lord, music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka and Peter Leonard. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr Dylan Selserman, Dr Nourit Soffer, Professor Carolyn Watt, Dr Pilkirin Sikka, Professor Drew Dawson, Dr. Dylan Selserman, Dr. Nurit Sofa, Professor Carolyn Watt, Dr. Pilkirin Sikka, Professor Drew Dawson, Dr. Bishak Turka, Dr. Katya Vali, Dr. Delphine Udet, Dr. Sarah Skok, and Dr. Dan Rubin. A special thanks to Lauren Silverman, Stupid Old Studios, Andrew Paquette, The Zuckerman Family, and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original.

Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you do listen on Spotify though, follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications whenever a new episode pops up. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. I'll fact you next time.