Naina LimbekarĪccording to Wildman and McNamara, sleep scientists agree that most people are able to stay asleep when alarming or frightening images invade their dreams because of what’s called a fear extinction circuit in the mind, which dampens fear responses. Sleep is often considered a commodity or a luxury or something that you can compromise on, when really it’s a noncompromisable pillar of health. About 50 percent of children between the ages of three and six report frequent nightmares, and 2 to 8 percent of adults have problems with nightmares. A nightmare disorder, different from the occasional nightmare, happens when a person has frequent or recurring nightmares that interfere with sleep and mood and can bring notable distress in daily life. Wildman and McNamara have teamed up on research simulating the imagery that people see during dreams, specifically terrifying ones experienced by people having a nightmare. “But for human beings we really do need some type of system that allows us to function.” Wildman, a School of Theology professor of philosophy of religion and an expert in artificial, computer-simulated environments. “This wouldn’t be necessary for dumber species,” says Wesley J. But others disagree, pointing to a strong association between REM sleep and memory consolidation, which is when the brain processes and stores emotional memories so that they don’t preoccupy us while we’re awake. Some argue that dreams are nothing more than nonsense images that our brain scrambles together based on experiences from our waking hours. Whether dreams have any purpose has been debated and studied by sleep scientists. “Our bodies get weird, our muscles are paralyzed, and despite this upheaval in basic machinery, we’re forced to watch these dreams.” “Sleep represents a bizarre biological system,” says McNamara (CAS’86, MED’91). REM sleep is when the most vivid dreams occur and when brain activity heightens electrical signals during REM sleep fire at close to the same level they do when we’re awake. The fourth stage is called REM (short for rapid eye movement) sleep, which typically starts about 90 minutes after we nod off. This is when heart rate and breathing slow down, and many of the brain’s and body’s housekeeping processes occur. The first two stages are considered light sleep, followed by a period of deep sleep. Sleep typically follows four stages, all of which are important for feeling rested and restored. Brain “Washing” and Why We Have NightmaresĪt the School of Medicine, Patrick McNamara, an associate professor of neurology, studies a different kind of sleep mystery: nightmares. The more we can understand how and why we need sleep, she says, the more science will be able to address underlying problems and disorders that prevent people from getting enough of it. “Is it because you need to sleep so badly that your brain has many different ways to make it happen? Or are there a dozen different aspects to sleep and they are working together?” ![]() “Why are there a dozen different brain regions that would make you asleep or awake?” Lewis asks. Lewis says studies by other scientists have revealed dozens of networks in deep regions of the brain in humans and other animals that, when stimulated, act like switches, turning sleep on or off. While researchers like Lewis, a College of Engineering assistant professor of biomedical engineering and a faculty member at BU’s Center for Systems Neuroscience, have made strides in understanding what happens when we snooze, the precise workings of sleep still elude us. Poor sleep, for any reason, can put us at risk for serious health problems, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, weight gain, and hypertension. But about 70 million Americans have chronic sleep problems, including diagnosable disorders like insomnia, narcolepsy, restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea, and nightmare disorders, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is a healing time for the rest of the body as well, repairing heart and blood vessels and improving immune function.įor sleep to have its most healing effects, most adults need seven to eight hours each night, with the number of optimal hours needed by the body and brain varying slightly depending on a person’s age. While we sleep, our brain is busy creating and maintaining neural pathways that improve our memory, learning abilities, and cognitive functions that keep us alert the next day. Sleep is often referred to as the time for the body and brain to do some housekeeping, says Laura Lewis, a BU neuroscientist who studies how sleep operates in the brain. Laura Lewis, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering.
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