Dreams with SP

[SuperDreamer]

I went on Netflix the other day to feed my craving for dream science. I came across a Nova movie about dreams. It says SP is your body's way of protecting you and other's from yourself from the consequences of acting out your dreams. The scientists said that when someone dreams they show the very same neurological activity as if someone was actually performing this activity. They tested this with mice. They could also prove it with people who have a SP disorder and they do act out their dreams. Anyways what I thought was interesting was that they put a mouse through a maze all day long with a device that would capture its brain's electrical activity. They left the device on as the mouse entered nREM sleep. They compared the scatter plots of brain waves and they found something interesting. The mouse's brain had started to piece together random "photographs" of the dream's movements while it was awake. They knew this because the brains electrical activity was exactly the same as some of the electrical activity as when the mouse was going through the maze. They then could point to which piece of the maze the mouse was picturing in its mind. What was even more interesting is they said they knew the mouse was analyzing the data. They knew this because when the mouse entered REM, the scatter plots aligned exactly the same. The mouse was dreaming about going through the maze again. Now how we can apply this is also interesting. When you do something over and over and over throughout the day. When we enter nREM sleep our brain pieces together little bits of important information and analyzes them. You may not consciously be aware of it but your brain says you are going over important things thoughout the day. They described the REM state as though someone was trying to predict the future or find a way they could do something better as they did the day before. Since it is the same electrical activity, LDing about shooting a basketball, playing golf, driving, or any physical activity could actually make a person more coordinated without having to do the actual activity. Let me know what you think I can send you a link to the documentary if you'd like. It also explains why siblings can all have similar dreams without even talking about them. I found it extremely interesting. It definitely just makes you crave dream science even more. But I was definitely satisfied with the results! Title of the doc: Nova: What are Dreams?

[dutchraptor]

Thats very intresting, I've always suspected this anyways. Certainly makes it seem like dreams are for more than just sorting out your memory, maybe they do have a function for practising and learning.

[SuperDreamer]

Agreed! Thanks for the feedback!