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Sleep helps us consolidate our memories. Sleep also helps us learn. During REM sleep, which is the dreaming stage of sleep, the brain stops releasing stress chemicals. Now a new study finds that as we dream we can even soothe our stressful associations to certain experiences.
Scientists scanned the brains of 35 subjects while they viewed emotionally arousing images. Half of the subjects viewed the images in the morning and again in the evening of the same day. The other half viewed the same images in the evening and then again the next morning after sleeping.
Those who slept between viewings reported a significant decrease in their emotional reaction to seeing the images the second time. And brain scans corroborated the self-reports, showing a reduction of activity in the amygdala, an area responsible for processing emotions.
The research was published in the journal Current Biology.
The researchers note that by processing emotional experiences during REM sleep, when norepinephrine levels are dramatically reduced, we feel less strongly about such experiences when we wake.
As Shakespeare knew when he said that sleep “knits up the ravell’d sleave of care” and was “the balm of hurt minds.”
—Christie Nicholson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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5 Comments
Add CommentYea, Shakespeare said this through the mouth of character *Macbeth*:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*The Tragedy of Macbeth: Extracted from Act II, Scene i
William Shakespeare
MACBETH.
I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,”--the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.*
Day time dreaming is called day dreaming. But some people dreams are ahiveable. Some people are dreaming about the things that they can not achive;but they will live untill the last day that they can get it.Finally they were fed up and understand it was a dream. Some dreams can come true.If the dreams are become true that is the happyness. there are good dreams and bad dreams. Nigth dreams are what you recall your hide brain.Dreaming is indication of your laps of sleep in some extent. There are good and bad dreaming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's probably that sleep makes you forget sth, both good and bad memory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the contrary nightmare are bringing out bad memories on surface to our conscious mind.We awake dreadfully released that was not reality but dream.I learned many thing .caused of my bad memories through bad dream.That is why Freud and Jung taken help of dreams to bringing out childhood traumas of patients
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI always feel like sleepy, maybe i need to spare some time to do it.
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