Each day we experience a tremendous number of emotions and engage in a variety of activities ranging from working, reading, watching TV, to interacting with others. So, it seems reasonable to question how on earth our minds cope with processing this immense amount of information. In answer to this, a lot of our experiences are processed while we are asleep and therefore in our dreams (Walker & Helm, 2009). I’m sure plenty of people recall dreams that they could immediately connect to past experiences or current worries; for instance, dreaming that you’ve turned up to your new job stark naked in anticipation of starting in a new workplace. Sleep is important in a number of ways for us to function psychologically; I am someone who has certainly felt the strain of running on minimal sleep. Interestingly, different stages of sleep have been found to contribute to different processes relating to our waking lives.
To explore this, Malinowski and Horton (2020) recruited 68 students and analysed the relationship between their dreams during different stages of the night and their waking life experiences during a 4 day period. The students kept a guided diary of their “waking experiences” for two days (days 1 and 3), which included eating, working, travelling, and hobbies. Each experience was rated by the student on the emotional intensity, how positive or negative it was, how stressful it was, how important the experience was to them personally, and how likely they thought they were to experience it again in the future. On these nights (nights 1 and 3) they were woken 4 times by a pre-programmed alarm clock to record their dreams. In the morning (on day 2 and 4) they went over their dreams and reflected on how related they were to their waking life overall. They were given a night off (night 2) to catch up on sleep – thankfully!
The recorded dreams were split into two groups: “early-night” dreams (from the first two awaking’s), and “late-night” dreams (from the last two awaking’s). There was a total of 173 early-night dreams and 177 late-night dreams from the participants.
It was found that early-night dreams focussed on recent past experiences and anticipated future events, while showing a clear connection to waking life. Whereas late-night dreams focussed on the distant past and were more fluid, creative, and associative than early-night dreams. Late-night dreams were also more emotional and hyperassociative, meaning they often featured one or more memory combined in a number of ways. For example, one memory source appearing as another (metaphoricity), one part of a waking memory appearing in the context of another (bizarreness), or memories from one period appearing alongside others from a different period (time orientation variance).
It might also be important to note that early-night dreams are related to the stage of sleep known as non-rapid-eye-movement (non-REM) sleep which helps to strengthen our long-term memories of specific events, situations, and experiences which are relevant to our future or past (Born & Wilhelm, 2012). While late-night dreams are related to the stage of sleep known as rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep which is responsible for reducing the emotional intensity associated with certain memories (Rosales-Lagarde et al., 2012).
A clear limitation of this study is the sample they used which was rather on the small side and only consisted of students, meaning it couldn’t be very representative of the population as students have different stressors and worries. Because of this it is hard to say whether these findings apply to the wider population.
Nevertheless, it is a common view that dreams could play a vital part in terms of our emotional and mental health and can help us to solve problems as well as deal with our emotions and thoughts (Desseilles & Duclos, 2013). These findings clearly support this view and should encourage everyone to prioritise getting a good amount of sleep each night in order to allow our minds to process the unimaginable amount of information they must deal with! This study also provides an interesting insight to anyone who wishes to find out what their dreams really mean, as we are all aware that dreams have a tendency to be a little peculiar at times.
References:
Desseilles, M., & Duclos, C. (2013). Dream and emotion regulation: insight from the ancient art of memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(6), 614.
Malinowski, J. E., & Horton, C. L. (2020). Dreams reflect nocturnal cognitive processes: Early-night dreams are more continuous with waking life, and late-night dreams are more emotional and hyperassociative. Consciousness and Cognition, 88, 103071.
Rosales-Lagarde, A., Armony, J. L., del Río-Portilla, Y., Trejo-Martínez, D., Conde, R., & Corsi-Cabrera, M. (2012). Enhanced emotional reactivity after selective REM sleep deprivation in humans: an fMRI study. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 6, 25.
Walker, M. P., & van Der Helm, E. (2009). Overnight therapy? The role of sleep in emotional brain processing. Psychological bulletin, 135(5), 731.