• Question: Why do get dreams in REM? Is it anything to do with what you have don in the day becuase why do we then get nightmares?

    Asked by anon-188255 to Alex on 5 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Reid

      Alex Reid answered on 5 Nov 2018:

      Hey thank you for the questions. It is a bit of a common misconception that we only dream during REM sleep, in fact that sleep stage used to be called ‘dream sleep’ but we changed the name because you can actually dream at all points in your sleep cycle. With REM sleep, however, dreams tend to be more visual and bizarre, which is why they tend to be the most memorable. You also get more REM sleep towards the end of the night just before you wake up, another reason why they might be more memorable.

      The other thing about REM sleep is that it appears to be particularly important for helping us process and consolidate emotional memories, particularly negative ones. This is probably because emotions tell us important things about situations and helped our ancestors survive. The combination of your most visual dreaming and emotional memory processing both occurring during REM sleep might help explain nightmares.

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