What Are Dreams?
A
Thousands of years ago, dreams were seen as messages from the
gods, and in many cultures, they are still considered prophetic. In
ancient Greece, sick people slept at the temples of Asclepius, the
god of medicine, in order to receive dreams that would heal them.
Modern dream science really begins at the end of the 19th century
with Sigmund Feud, who theorized that dreams were the
expression of unconscious desires often stemming from
childhood. He believed that exploring these hidden emotions
through analysis could help cure mental illness. The Freudian
model of psychoanalysis dominated until the 1970s when new
research into the chemistry of the brain showed that emotional
problems could have biological or chemical roots, as well as
environmental ones. In other words, we weren’t sick just because
of something our mothers did (or didn’t do), but because of some
imbalance that might be cured with medication.
B
After Freud, the most important event in dream science was the
discovery in the early 1950s of a phase of sleep characterized by
intense brain activity and rapid eye movement (REM). People
awakened in the midst of REM sleep reported vivid dreams, which
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led researchers to conclude that most dreaming took place during
REM. Using the electroencephalograph (EEG), researchers could
see that brain activity during REM resembled that of the waking
brain. That old them that a lot more was going on at night than
anyone had suspected. But what, exactly?
C
Scientists still don’t know for sure, although they have lots of
theories. On one side are scientists like Harvard’s Allan Hobson,
who believes that dreams are essentially random. In the 1970s,
Hobson and his colleague Robert McCarley proposed what they
called the “activation-synthesis hypothesis’” which describes how
dreams are formed by nerve signals sent out during REM sleep
from a small area at the base of the brain called the pons. These
signals, the researchers said, activate the images that we call
dreams. That put a crimp in dream research; if dreams were
meaningless nocturnal firings, what was the point of studying
them?
D
Adult humans spend about a quarter of their sleep time in REM,
much of it dreaming. During that time, the body is essentially
paralyzed but the brain is buzzing. Scientists using PET and fMRI
technology to watch the dreaming brain have found that one of
the most active areas during REM is the limbic system, which
controls our emotions. Much less active is the prefrontal cortex,
which is associated with logical thinking. That could explain why
dreams in REM sleep often lack a coherent storyline (some
researchers have also found that people dream in non-REM sleep
as well, although those dreams generally are less vivid.) Another
active part of the brain in REM sleep is the anterior cingulate
cortex, which detects discrepancies. Eric Nofzinger, director of the
Sleep Neuroimaging Program at the University of Pittsburgh
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Medical Center, thinks that could be why people often figure out
thorny problems in their dreams. “As if the brain surveys the
internal milieu and tries to figure out what it should be doing, and
whether our actions conflict with who we are,” he says.
E
These may seem like vital mental functions, but no one has yet
been able to say that REM sleep or dreaming is essential to life or
even sanity. MAO inhibitors, an older class of antidepressants,
essentially block REM sleep without any detectable effects,
although people do get a “REM rebound” – extra REM – if they
stop the medication. That’s also true of selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac, which reduce dreaming by a
third to a half. Even permanently losing the ability to dream
doesn’t have to be disabling. Israeli researcher Peretz Lavie has
been observing a patient named Yuval Chamtzani, who was
injured by a fragment of shrapnel that penetrated his brain when
he was 19. As a result, he gets no REM sleep and doesn’t
remember any dreams. But Lavie says that Chamtzani, now 55, “is
probably the most normal person I know and one of the most
successful ones.” He’s a lawyer, a painter and the editor of a puzzle
column in a popular Israeli newspaper.
F
The mystery of REM sleep is that even though it may not be
essential, it is ubiquitous – at least in mammals and birds. But that
doesn’t mean all mammals and birds dream (or if they do, they’re
certainly not – talking about it). Some researchers think REM may
have evolved for physiological reasons. “One thing that’s unique
about mammals and birds is that they regulate body temperature”,
says neuroscientist Jerry Siegel, director of UCLA’s Center for Sleep
Research. “There’s no good evidence that any coldblooded animal
has REM sleep.” REM sleep heats up the brain and non-REM cools
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it off, Siegel says, and that could mean that the changing sleep
cycles allow the brain to repair itself. “It seems likely that REM
sleep is filling a basic physiological function and that dreams are a
kind of epiphenomenon,” Siegel says – an extraneous byproduct;
like foam on beer.
G
Whatever the function of dreams at night, they clearly can play a
role in therapy during the day. The University of Maryland’s Clara
Hill, who has studied the use of dreams in therapy, says that
dreams are a ‘backdoor’, into a patient’s thinking. “Dreams reveal
stuff about you that you didn’t know was there,” she says. The
therapists she trains to work with patients’ dreams are, in essence,
heirs to Freud, using dream imagery to uncover hidden emotions
and feelings. Dreams provide clues to the nature of the more
serious mental illness. Schizophrenics, for example, have poor-
quality dreams, usually about objects rather than people. “If you’re
going to understand human behavior,” says Rosalind Cartwright, a
chairman of psychology at Rush University Medical Center in
Chicago, “here’s a big piece of it. Dreaming is our own storytelling
time – to help us know who we are, where we’re going and how
we’re going to get there.” Cartwright has been studying
depression in divorced men and women, and she is finding that
“good dreamers,” people who have vivid dreams with strong
storylines, are less likely to remain depressed. She thinks that
dreaming helps diffuse strong emotions. “Dreaming is a mental-
health activity,” she says.
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