NOVA Explores Dreams Tonight on PBS

The TV program NOVA will explore the world of dreams tonight. “What Are Dreams?” will premiere on your local PBS station.

Leading dream researchers will explain how they study the world of sleep and dreams. And they’ll attempt to answer some of the most intriguing questions about why we dream.

Do dreams improve memory? Do they enhance our creativity? Do they help us solve problems? Are they crucial to our survival?

The program also will focus on the sleep disorders that seem to bring dreams to life. Nightmare disorder. Sleepwalking. REM sleep behavior disorder.



You can watch a two-minute preview of the program online. You also can read a transcript of the program.

NOVA also accepted questions about sleep and dreams. Harvard sleep researcher Robert Stickgold, PhD, provided answers on the NOVA Web site.

Earlier this month the Sleep Education Blog reported that a researcher had proposed a “theory of protoconsciousness” to explain dreams. Studies also have provided some support for the “threat simulation theory.”

Learn more about dreaming and dream theories.

Why Do We Dream?

A new paper suggests that the purpose of dreams may be more than just psychological.

Author Dr. J. Allan Hobson proposes a “theory of protoconsciousness.” He is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Hobson writes that REM sleep provides “a virtual reality model of the world.” Most dreams occur during this sleep stage.

He thinks that dreams have a functional use. They allow the brain to get tuned up for wakefulness.

“It helps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,” Hobson told the New York Times. “Dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness.”

This dream theory fits within his broader concept of the purpose of sleep. He summarized his perspective in the title of a 2005 paper: “Sleep is of the brain, by the brain and for the brain.”

Recently Hobson was the co-author of a study in the journal Sleep that investigated lucid dreaming. Results suggest that lucid dreaming is a “unique, hybrid state of sleep;” it involves features of both REM sleep and wakefulness.

In 2008 Hobson and colleagues explored similarities between the normal mental state of dreaming and the abnormal mental state of psychosis. They reported that normal dreaming and schizophrenic thinking share a common degree of “cognitive bizarreness.”

Other dream theories abound: Dreams depict your emotions. They reflect the issues and concerns of your life. They act as a defense mechanism by simulating waking threats.

Read more about interpreting dreams and why we sleep on the Sleep Education Blog. Learn more about dreams and nightmares on SleepEducation.com.

Image by Cornelia Kopp

Dreams, Nightmares and 9/11

Today marks the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Nearly 3,000 days have passed -- almost one for each of those taken from us,” President Obama said at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Pentagon. “But no turning of the seasons can diminish the pain and the loss of that day.”

Did that pain and loss affect our dreams in the days and weeks after 9/11? A study published in the journal Sleep in 2008 offers some answers.

The study involved 11 men and 33 women. For years they had been keeping a written record of all their dreams. Each participant submitted written accounts of 20 dreams for the study. These were the last 10 dreams they recorded before 9/11 and the first 10 dreams recorded after the attacks.

The 880 dreams were analyzed for features such as central image, intensity, emotion and vividness. They also were scored for content involving attacks, tall buildings and airplanes.

Results show a significant increase in the presence and intensity of a central image in dreams after 9/11. The researchers conclude that this change springs from an increased emotional arousal after 9/11.

Surprisingly, there was no increase in dream content involving airplanes or tall towers. There also were no “replay dreams.” None of the 440 post-9/11 dreams portrayed the events that were replayed time and again on television.

But there was a trend in these dreams to more content involving attacks. The dreamer was almost always the victim or potential victim. Attacks involved animals or monsters, violent criminals or battle scenes.

In these results the authors find support for the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming. The theory states that dreams are guided by the emotion of the dreamer. The central imagery of the dream depicts the dreamer’s emotion.

Earlier this week the Sleep Education Blog reported that smells can affect the emotional content of dreams. In May the blog reported on treatments for recurring nightmares.

Read more about the study of dreams and 9/11 on SleepEducation.com. Learn about dreams and nightmares and nightmare disorder.

Image by Brian Boyd

Big Dreams: From Google to Monster

Dreams have no meaning? Don’t tell that to Larry Page. Or Jeff Taylor.

Page recently said that a dream sparked the idea that became the world’s largest search engine. This is how the Google co-founder explained it in his commencement address at the University of Michigan:

You know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don't have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning? Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and...I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming.

His conclusion? “When a really great dream shows up, grab it!”



Page’s story sounds a lot like Taylor’s. The Monster.com founder recently told Roger Ziegler about his dream:

I woke up from the dream and sketched out the entire idea. The idea for a happy monster logo and the concept of ‘big, not scary,’ the design of the buyer-seller marketplace which is still in place to this day and a really important patent, all came out of that dream.

Ziegler added that Taylor keeps a dream journal next to his bed. This allows him to write ideas down when he wakes up.

How about you? Do you write down “big ideas” that you get from your dreams?

Read more about interpreting dreams on the Sleep Education Blog. Learn more about dreams and nightmares on SleepEducation.com.

How Sleep Disorders May Affect Your Dreams

Sleep disorders can reduce both the quantity and quality of your sleep. Can they also affect your dreams?

A new review examined the current research. Only a small number of studies have focused on this subject. But results suggest that a couple of common sleep disorders may have an impact on your dreams.

People with insomnia are more likely to recall their dreams. The content of their dreams tends to reflect current stressors.

Breathing-related dreams are rare in people with sleep apnea.

People with narcolepsy tend to have bizarre dreams with a negative tone. This may be related to their disrupted sleep cycles.

The complex process of sleep involves multiple stages that make up a sleep cycle. Each complete cycle lasts about 90 to 110 minutes. Most adults will go through four to six cycles in a full night of sleep.

Most dreams occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This tends to be the final stage of the sleep cycle in normal adult sleep.

But people who have narcolepsy tend to go quickly into REM sleep. These events are called sleep-onset REM periods (SOREMPs).

Overall, the studies in the review support the “continuity hypothesis” of dreaming. This states that dreams reflect the issues and concerns of your life.

Image by Magdalena Swebodzinska

Survivor: Reinterpreting Dreams with the Threat Simulation Theory

In 2000 Finnish researcher Antti Revonsuo proposed a new theory for interpreting dreams. It has become known as the “Threat Simulation Theory.”

The theory proposes that dreaming is a defense mechanism. It serves a biological function by simulating threatening events. The theory suggests that the brain selects waking events that pose a threat to your safety.

Then during the majority of dreams your brain simulates these events over and over again. The threats are replayed in various combinations.

In this way the brain is able to practice how it perceives threats. It also “rehearses” threat avoidance.

A 2006 study tested this theory using a sample of 212 recurrent dreams. It provided some support for the theory. Sixty-six percent of the dream reports contained one or more threats.

These threats tended to put the dreamer in danger. Dreamers tended to take reasonable defensive or evasive actions.

But less than 15 percent of the dreams depicted realistic situations that would be critical for survival when awake. Also, dreamers rarely succeeded in fleeing the threat.

The theory also suggests that your “threat simulation system” would be highly active if you live in a dangerous environment. It would be less active if you live in relative safety.

A 2005 study supported this proposal. It analyzed the dream reports of Kurdish and Finnish children. Results show that severely traumatized children had more dreams. These dreams included a higher number of threatening events.

But a 2008 study contradicted these findings. It tested the theory using 208 people who live in a high-crime area of South Africa. Their dreams were compared with those of people who live in a low-crime area in Wales.

The people in South Africa had more exposure to a recent life-threatening event. But they reported fewer threat dreams. Overall less than 20 percent of dreams featured realistic survival threats. Less than two percent of dreams included an escape from a threat.

A new review analyzed the results of these and other studies. It concludes that there is strong support for the theory.

Learn more about dreams and nightmares on SleepEducation.com.

Sleep Through the Centuries

Sleep has been around for…well, for centuries. So have sleep disorders. And remedies for sleep problems.

An exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., explores 17th-century beliefs and ideas about sleep. “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream” pulls back the covers on sleep in Renaissance England.

Topics include preparing for sleep. (Use a bed and bedding that are less likely to attract “vermin.”) How to sleep. (Sleep was divided into “first” and “second” sleeps.) Theories about sleep. (It may be the product of digestion.) Sleep aids. (There were numerous recipes to treat insomnia.)

And dreams. The exhibit shows that – like today – people in the 17th century were fascinated by dreams and nightmares. What they are. Why we have them. What they mean. How to control them.

A New York Times review calls it an “entrancing exhibition.” The Times also has a slideshow of images from the exhibit.

The exhibition continues through May 30. Visit the Folger Web site for an online tour.

Are You Dream Deprived?

Sleep deprivation can have a severe impact on your health and well-being. Sleeping less than seven hours per night increases your risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and depression.

The Times in London reports that sleep loss also may cause you to suffer from “dream deprivation.” The article suggests that healthy dreaming is vital to your overall mental wellness.

Is the article right - do dreams really matter? It depends on who you ask.

Some believe dreams have symbolic meaning or predict future events. Others see dreams as random, meaningless information.

New theories suggest that dreaming helps your brain process both old memories and new information. The brain may use dreams to help you adapt to events in your life.

What do you think? Are you suffering from dream deprivation? How important are dreams to you? Do you even remember your dreams when you wake up in the morning?

Planes, Dreams & Relationships: When Dreaming is Believing

You’re sleeping during the night before a scheduled plane trip. Suddenly you wake up from a dream about a plane crash.

Do you still get on the plane the next day? Or do you change your travel plans because of the dream?

New research examines this and other questions about dreams. The results of six studies provide a look at how dreams affect our daily lives.

The plane crash study involved 182 commuters at a Boston train station. Results show that a dream of a plane crash is more likely to affect travel plans than a change in the U.S. government’s national threat level.

What if a plane crash had actually occurred on their route the night before their trip? Both the plane crash and the dream would produce a similar level of anxiety.

Another one of the studies shows that dreams may affect how you respond to other people. What if you had a dream in which a friend protected you rather than betrayed you?

Would the dream affect your relationship with this person? People in the study reported that they would have greater affection for the friend because of the dream.

But dreams may only reinforce what we already believe. Study subjects were told that they’d had a dream about a person they know.

They considered a pleasant dream to be more important if the person was someone they liked. An unpleasant dream was more meaningful if they disliked the person.

“People attribute meaning to dreams when it corresponds with their pre-existing beliefs and desires,” lead author Carey Morewedge said in a prepared statement.

One of the studies also examined how people from different cultures tend to interpret their dreams. It involved students from the U.S., India and South Korea.

The majority of students in each culture shared the same general belief about dreams. They believe that dreams reveal hidden truths about themselves and the world.

How important are dreams to you? Do your dreams have an effect on your daily life?