“Why it happens? There are two possible options:
The first, since we know that something bad is going to happen to us if we fall to the ground, a defense mechanism is activated. But there is another possibility: as your brain has never experienced what it means to crash from such a high altitude, you cannot dream about something you do not know”, explained Francisco Javier Segarra, clinical psychologist and member of the Chronobiology Working Group of the Spanish Sleep Society (SES).
In this way, our brain dreams about things that it has somehow noticed, and cannot imagine things that it does not know. Dreams are not random, “they practically always have to do with experiences related to our day to day, whether they are positive or negative.” In addition, it could be said that dreaming causes us multiple benefits in our wakefulness —unless we suffer from some type of nightmare disorder. But what are they and why?
The neurological explanation
Many times, those who have dreamed of this type of scenario have felt it in a very realistic way, to the point of waking up with the sensation of falling. According to different experts, this is something very recurring and has a scientific explanation, although it is necessary to clarify that the symbolic meaning differs from the physiological one.
According to studies in this field, dreams in which a fall is perceived or in which certain features of this are experienced during the first minutes of the sleep cycle have biological origins. This is because the brain creates an automatic impulse by which it wants to wake up the body and it perceives that the person is not in conscious control and wants to regain autonomy.
At what time of night do we dream
Before talking about the characteristics that our dreams can have, it is important to frame them within the phases that can occur in it. «When a person falls asleep, he enters a physiological state of relative lack of consciousness, so to speak, of inactivity of the voluntary musculature. During this disconnection process, our body does not stop, but many things happen, “says Segarra.
“Basically we differentiate between REM and non-REM sleep. In the latter, especially non-REM deep sleep, we have a very important characteristic: we secrete most of the growth hormone and this helps us to regenerate ourselves at a muscular and physical level,” says the expert.
On the other hand, during REM sleep is where dreams occur: «It seems that our brain does a kind of cleaning and filters the information that is necessary from that which is not, that which interests us from that which is not, and they produce as a kind of work to somehow maintain our emotional balance when we are awake. Our memory is consolidated and somehow, it is done as a kind of emotional ‘reset’ ».
According to Segarra’s words, it seems that this information organization work occurs above all when we are dreaming.
So that dreams, deep down, are a generation of stories that are normally a bit disconnected, where the things that happen to us during the day are mixed with the emotional content that they have. Somehow, they help our body to function better the next day”, Segarra explains.
What depends on whether a person remembers dreams more or less?
Dr. Rafael Pelayo, who is part of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Clinic —one of the best known in the world—, believes in his book How to sleep (Diana, 2023) that “if the fantastic events of our dreams occurred in the real life, they would be hard to forget. And yet, it is always difficult for us to remember what we dream of.
To be able to remember a dream, you have to remember it while awake. Specifically, as soon as a person wakes up. However, if this happens in the middle of REM sleep, there is an 80% chance that you will remember what you were dreaming about.
“Even people who say they hardly ever dream remember their dreams if you wake them up at this point,” Pelayo explains. While dreams may not be made to be remembered:
“He REM sleep only takes an hour or two of our total nightly sleep time. The fact that they are so difficult to remember could give us a clue to their possible role in the process of memory consolidation.”
Segarra agrees with Pelayo and considers that there is a logical explanation for why we more or less remember them:
“It will always depend on the moment in which we wake up. When we are sleeping, the only memory that works for us is very short term. Taking into account that the REM phase of sleep appears more or less every half hour during the night, the fact that we remember what we dream may be because we woke up right in the middle of the last dream or because we have many awakenings: I remember fragments of dreams because I’m waking up.”
The role of dreams: they strengthen our memory
Pelayo confirms that, although today it is still not possible to determine exactly if dreaming is a random consequence of some neurological function or if it has a purpose, “some scientists believe that it is part of the processing of emotions and memory that occurs during sleep. In this sense, he agrees that there is no doubt that when we dream, we relive memories of the past:
“Surely these are activated or sneak into the brain activity that we experience in the form of dreams. This approach, suggested by Dr. Robert Stickgold of Harvard (among others), is based on the fact that, when we dream, what actually happens is that our brain reactivates and modifies previously experienced memories and emotions. Which would explain why in dreams we mix old and new memories.
Research in the field of sleep also suggests that memory functions are reflected in dream content. “It has been observed, both in humans and in rodents, that the patterns of neuronal activity registered when a new task is learned in the waking state are reactivated during the following sleep”, indicates Pelayo.
“In addition, PET studies in humans have shown that brain regions that are activated when learning a new task are selectively reactivated in the underlying night’s sleep,” he adds. Thus, all these investigations reinforce the theory that sleep plays a very important role in the memory consolidation process.
Dreams enhance our creativity
Dreams also enhance creativity. “Neuroscience is beginning to understand the biological mechanisms that allow the brain to have creative thoughts, and the peak of many of these mechanisms occurs when we are asleep and dreaming,” says the Stanford doctor.
Why? Isn’t it during wakefulness, when we receive the most stimuli?
Indeed, but according to the specialist, while we are sheltered in sleep and especially while we dream, our brain takes all the information that we have been pondering during wakefulness and examines other parts of the brain in search of connections, thus creating a combination of new ideas. “Thanks to this mixture of neural activity during REM sleep, new ideas appear in our consciousness,” he adds.
They can help manage a problem and traumatic experiences
The physiologist Ángeles Bonmatí assures that for a time it was thought that dreams were a by-product of brain activity during the REM phase, “but today it is known that they have a function in themselves. For example, if a person dreams of solving a problem, it seems that he will solve it while awake with greater creativity and efficiency ».
As if this were not enough, Bonmatí adds that dreams are also relevant “when it comes to overcoming traumatic experiences, coping with the loss of a loved one, recovering from grief, etc. It seems that people who dream about it recover better than those who don’t.” All these findings suggest that dreams have a function in themselves related to a person’s well-being.
Indicators of stress: recurring dreams come from recurring thoughts
«Basically, the content of the dream is more or less related to our mood during the day. That is, if we go through a time of more stress or worry because we have personal or work problems, we are much more likely that at night, when we enter REM sleep, our brain has dreams, so to speak, anxious. Probably closely related to the subject at hand”, explains Segarra.
When a dream becomes recurring or corresponds to the same pattern for a while, this can also be an indication that something in our life is causing us stress or anxiety.
“Let’s say the brain goes into a mode where it somehow rehearses different situations that seem like they might prepare us to act in the most appropriate way possible for the real-life situation. Almost everyone has had a time in their life where they had these recurring dreams. They are of no importance unless they have an unpleasant content and therefore become a disorder of recurring nightmares. But the fact of having a period in which the same thing is dreamed periodically does not have much relevance. It is only related to periods of stress, emotional or work, etc., “says Bonmatí.
I have nightmares, should I worry?
Occasionally having nightmares does not have any special pathological significance, we have all experienced them from time to time. The problem comes when they last over time. “When they occur systematically, we speak of a nightmare disorder. Sometimes it is associated with a post-traumatic stress disorder, but it is true that there are people who do not have an apparently important picture of anxiety or depression and these appear without a clear reason, “Segarra confesses.
The clinical psychologist comments that it is an unknown issue, despite being relatively frequent in the population. “In addition, there is no specific treatment at the pharmacological level because we do not know very well what the cause is,” he stresses.
«The fact of having many nightmares can also be a symptom with some physical ailment. For example, those related to drowning or being buried alive could indicate obstructive sleep apnea, since it makes breathing difficult,” says Pelayo. The good news is that by treating this problem, the nightmares also disappear.
Yes, it is possible to redirect our dreams
The Stanford doctor points out that the first step to getting rid of nightmares is to eliminate any external factors that may disturb your sleep: “If snoring, outside noises, or any other disturbances wake you up while you were in a dream, it is much more likely that remember it. Going to bed with an overly full stomach or having heartburn can also trigger nightmares. For this reason, some people associate them with certain foods. If you have recurring nightmares, especially at the beginning of the night, do not eat anything two hours before going to bed.
Although, as noted above, there are no drugs to address a disorder caused by nightmares, psychological and behavioral techniques have been developed that somehow try to redirect these bad dreams. One of the therapies with more foundations and on which there are studies that confirm its effectiveness is therapy by imaging test. “They are designed to precisely redirect or ‘train’ the brain, so that when these appear, the same brain can redirect them to not so unpleasant dreams,” says Segarra.
