Dr. Matt Walker: The Science of Dreams, Nightmares & Lucid Dreaming | Huberman Lab Guest Series

[Music]

welcome to the hubman lab guest Series

where I and an expert guest discuss

science and science-based tools for

everyday

life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a

professor of neurobiology and

Opthalmology at Stanford school of

medicine today marks the sixth episode

in our sixth episode series all about

sleep with expert guest Dr Matthew

Walker today's episode focuses on sleep

and dreaming as well as lucid dreaming

we talk about what's happening in your

brain when you dream both mundane dream

as well as heavily emotionally Laden

dreams and we discuss how to think about

and perhaps even interpret the content

of your dreams and we talk about lucid

dreaming which are dreams that occur

while in sleep of course in which you

are aware that you are dreaming and

because Unfortunately they are

relatively common we also talk about

nightmares and both what to do about

nightmares as well as how to think about

nightmares this being the final episode

in the six episode series all about

sleep I put the call out on my social

media handles for any and all questions

about sleep that I could direct to Dr

Matthew Walker so as today's episode

closes I ask him those questions

focusing specifically on the questions

that were most frequently asked by you

the audience and he answers them in

Rapid succession before we begin I'd

like to emphasize that this podcast is

separate from my teaching and research

roles at Stanford it is however part of

my desire and effort to bring zero cost

to Consumer information about science

and science related tools to the general

public in keeping with that theme I'd

like to thank the sponsors of today's

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pillows and now for my conversation with

Dr Matthew Walker Dr Walker my day good

fellow Dr

hubman today is the Sixth and final

episode in the six episode series that

we've been recording on sleep during

episode one you told us about the

biology of sleep and some actionable

items to get the basics of sleep well

worked out for each of us and it's

highly particular to our individual

needs and you explained to define those

needs then you beautifully described

in-depth protocols for let's call it

optimizing one sleep and then a third

episode focused on caffeine napping and

also food intake and its impact on

sleep we talked about the relationship

between sleep and learning and memory

and

creativity and then of course in the

fifth episode just prior to this one you

beautifully described the literature and

actionable tools for connecting sleep

sleep to emotional health and mental

health as well as the relationship

between lack of sleep and certain mental

health challenges or

conditions today we are going to dive

into a truly exciting and fascinating

topic which is dreaming I can think of

fewer topics more intriguing than dreams

I know there's a lot of interest in

lucid dreaming that is one dreaming

while being aware that one is dreaming

you'll tell us more about that but I

think Dreams Just Intrigue and Fascinate

us for so many reasons but not the least

of which is that at some point we all

seem to have them and they seem to have

a relevance for our lives they're not

just epip phenomena as we say so today I

know you're going to explain what they

do and do not provide for us and I'm

really excited to dive into this topic

it's something that I've been fascinated

by and I know many people are fascinated

by so just to kick things off how do we

Define dreaming what is a dream what is

a dream

state you would think it's fairly simple

because when people say oh I had the

strangest dream last night everyone

seems to know what a dream and by the

way dreaming is is we take it for

granted we say oh I had a strange dream

last night just think about it though

last night both you and I and everyone

listening as long as they slept we all

became flagrantly

psychotic now now before you reject my

my diagnosis of your nightly psychosis

I'll give you five good reasons first

when we start to dream we see things

which are not there so we hallucinate

second we believe things that could not

possibly be true so we're delusional

third we get confused about time place

and person so we're suffering from

disorientation fourth we have these

wildly fluctuating emotions something

think that's psychiatrists called being

affectively

labile and then how wonderful you woke

up this morning and you forgot most if

not all of that dream experience so you

are suffering from

Amnesia if you were to experience any

one of those five symptoms while you're

awake we'd probably be seeking

psychological or psychiatric treatment

but for reasons that we still don't

fully understand that seems to be a

normal biological and psychological and

in fact and I'll describe the data

absolutely necessary life support

perhaps necessary set of experiences to

go

through so that's the peculiarity of

dreaming but how do we Define it one of

the loose definitions that we often use

in sleep science is that a dream is any

report of mental activity upon Awakening

so I'll come into the laboratory and

I'll wake you up and I'll say what was

going through your mind and if you just

say nothing think really then we note

that down as no dream

report but if you were to say well you

know what I was actually just thinking

about the next time you're going to come

in and wake me

up um then we would report that as a

dream but that's not really what most

people mean when they say I had this

strange dream what they're referring to

is dreaming that takes place during the

stage of sleep called rapid eye movement

sleep or REM sleep and during REM sleep

there we have these bizarre

hallucinogenic these Vivid these

narrative these emotion filled story

experiences those are the types of

reports that we get principally from Ram

sleep so if I were to go back to episode

one and say think about those different

stages of sleep light non-rm sleep deep

non-rm sleep and REM sleep when does

dreaming occur well if I wake you up

during stage two nonrem sleep that's one

of the lighter forms of non-rm early in

the night but especially later in the

night you typically will report a dream

maybe about 50% probability 50% of the

time I wake you up out of that stage no

report the other half yes if I wake you

up out to a deep non-r sleep stages

three and four where down to a 0 to 20%

chance that you'll report a dream so

very very unlikely if I wake you up out

of REM sleep somewhere between 80 to 90%

probability that you were going to

report a dream there's Nuance in that

REM sleep Story by the

way rapid eye movement sleep is defined

by those rapid eye movements but when

you're in that stage of sleep you're not

always having the eye movements they

come in these strange phases so though

you will be in REM sleep and we can

Define that with lots of different um

sensors on your brain and your body but

then there will be times when your eyes

are darting back and forth and times

when your eyes are not and when those

eyes are moving during REM sleep we call

that phasic REM sleep and when they're

not we call it tonic REM sleep don't

worry about the the

terminology when I wake you up out of

tonic R sleep when the eyes aren't

moving I'm around that 80% probability

if I wake you up out of real sleep when

your eyes are darting back and forth

there is 95 to 100% probability that

you're going to report a

dream some people theories in the past

have said well if that's the case then

presumably those eye movements are

tracking something in the dream if you

do careful analyses that just does not

seem to hold up there is some evidence

that that may be the case

but your eyes are moving back and forth

it seems that these are impulses that

are going to your eyes that don't have a

strong correlation with what it is that

you're dreaming visually in the scene

that's that's not the case but that's a

little bit of a definition of what

dreaming is and also when dreaming

occurs I should probably note by the way

that we human beings we seem to be

special in our REM sleep dreaming

amounts now I've just done a little bit

of a slight of hand when I say REM sleep

I'm going to infer that it's dreaming

but Charles nun um wonderful scientist

has looked at the proportion of REM

sleep across different mammals and what

he found was that we human beings are a

complete anomaly when it comes to our

relative amounts of REM sleep in other

words our dream

sleep he found that across most other

primates REM sleep was usually averaging

about 9% of the sleep

period however we human beings on

average including When We're Young will

have a REM sleep proportion of about 20%

so if you plot the amount of REM sleep

of primates in a graph they're all sort

of clustered around this mean and then

all of a sudden on the our right hand

side you've got this one single data

point that sticks out that's us human

beings and we don't fully understand why

it is that we have such exceptional

amounts of REM sleep now I've done a lot

of hand waving and written some theories

about why that is but it's still it's

still very

unclear the other thing and that's a

very I I can go very philosophical about

the functions of REM sleep and how it

changed as we made the transition as a

species from tree to ground because

don't forget as we mentioned in one of

our episodes when you're hanging like a

bird on a tree or you're resting on a

branch as a primate up in the trees and

you go into REM sleep you lose muscle

tone so it's quite a fragile state when

you're 30 foot up in the air and you've

got um gravity desperately wanting to

bring you and your your limbs down to

the ground but when we made the

transition down from tree to ground we

no longer had to worry about that did

that open up the opportunity for more

REM sleep to occur and that explains why

we human beings have that we don't know

REM sleep however does seem to be quite

fundamental and fundamental from a life

necessary perspective there were some

studies done back in the 1980s and there

are studies that have not really been

replicated and I I think I agree as to

why because ethically and and you know

they're right in that Gray Zone in fact

for me I find them quite uncomfortable

when I speak about them or even teach

them in class they took rats and they

deprived them of sleep totally and what

they found was that Rats on average will

die somewhere between about 13 to 17

days after total sleep deprivation in

other

words rats will die almost as quickly

from sleep deprivation as they will from

food deprivation it's that that

essential brutal but then they did

something different they said well what

about the different stages of sleep so

they selectively deprived them of either

non-rem sleep and REM

sleep the hypothesis was perhaps that

non-rm sleep is from an evolutionary

perspective a much older form of sleep

the first stage of sleep that came into

being was non-rm sleep and the way we

answer that is we look across philogyny

and these sort of different branches and

what we find is that in insects and in

reptiles amphibians and

fish they all seem to have non-rem sleep

but for the most part with a few

exceptions they don't seem to have REM

sleep but if you look at birds and

mammals they do have REM sleep and in

fact it seems as though REM sleep

evolved twice independently once in

Birds once in mammals which tells us

probably that it it's essential if it's

being forced through the evolutionary

pipe twice

independently so you would argue well if

I selectively deprived you of nonr the

older stage of sleep presumably that's

more life support necessary and REM

sleep REM sleep is the new kid on the

Block

evolutionarily they found the opposite

they found that if they selectively

deprive rats just of non-rem sleep they

did die but it took them longer they

died after about 60 days if you deprive

them of REM sleep dream sleep they died

after 40 days versus 60 days other words

this this new type of sleep REM sleep

seems to be on that basis maybe even

more important to supporting life than

non-r sleep it's super interesting and

as I recall from graduate school there

are certain patterns of brain activity

that occur during a rapid eye movement

sleep um maybe we could go a little bit

deeper into those patterns of activity I

know you touched on some of these

patterns in the first EP episode um the

thing that comes to mind here is PG

waves pwns geniculate occipital um pwns

being an area of the brain stem that is

chocka block full of different neurons

involved in basic functions rhythmic

breathing um eye movements um and basic

reflexive functions that preserve the

the well-being and life of the animal

and that the neurons there then um do

indeed connect to the thalamus this is

like egg like a shaped structure in the

middle of the brain where you have

something called the geniculate which is

a uh there's a auditory geniculate and a

and a visual geniculate but it projects

to this relay station for vision mainly

and hearing and then it goes up to the

occipital lobe the area in the back of

our brain that incited people as

responsible for conscious perception of

images and I was taught and I don't know

if this is um still true uh that based

on the work of people like um mer stad

and um folks like that that these Pon

geniculate occipital waves of activity

that were ongoing during sleep I think

during REM sleep um were essential for

resetting uh something essential about

brain function and wakefulness so that

you needed these pggo waves and that

maybe even the activation of the visual

pathway was part of the reasons why we

um often experience such robust uh

visual hallucinations during dreams um

what is thought about PG

are they related to rapid eye movement

sleep and um are they somehow the reset

um that we need um and indeed is

essential for life because as you

pointed out in the absence of rapid eye

movement sleep we

die it's a great demonstration of the

uniqueness of your brain I mean

essentially what we're asking is um this

is your brain on dreams explain and REM

sleep has many different brain features

to it the first of which is as we spoke

in the first episode your electrical

brain wave activity at the top of the

brain the cortex looks almost identical

to that which you have when you're awake

which is stunning because you're not

conscious you're lying completely still

no presence of muscle tone whatsoever

yet your brain seems to be just as on

fire with electrical activity as it is

when you're

awake coming down a step though there

are these unique pulses of electrical

almost like lightning bursts that come

up from the brain stem up to this

sensory relay Center in your brain

called the thalamus and then they were

initially recorded out in the back of

the brain in the visual cortex hence

this pgo waves describes the three sites

that I've just mentioned goes from the

brain stem the ponds up to the thalamus

a part of it called the geniculate and

then out to the back of the brain called

the ocip cortex

pgo what they found was that those

bursts of pgo wave activity were very

much linked to these rapid eye movements

so once you got this burst of a pgo wave

um this sort of brain Stam up into the

brain burst then you got one of these

rapid eye movements so it was linking

something there with the eye movements

and I told you that when you're having

these eye movements that's a state where

there's a high probability of dreaming

and is it a surprise then that the final

destination of that lightning bolt where

it sort of strikes is at the back of the

brain in the visual cortex probably not

there's also been some links with those

PJ waves and

learning not so much that those pgo

waves seem to consolidate memories in

other words they may not be critical for

sleep after learning but they seem to be

related almost to sleep and initial

learning and the more that animals learn

the greater the amount of pgo wave

activity they have when they go to

sleep so pjo waves are unique PJ waves

don't simply just hit the back of your

brain that we've now measured them in

all sorts of different cortical areas

and they seem to light up the lightning

splits as it were and it strikes all

sorts of cortical areas so then the

question was well let's take humans and

let's put them inside of brain scanners

let's allow them to fall into REM sleep

and then we'll start scanning the

brain what did we find it was very

interesting when you look at the brain

during REM sleep compared to let's say

non-rem sleep you see motor regions of

the brain lighting up you see visual

regions of the brain lighting up just as

we described you see memory related

structures lighting up like the

hippocampus and you see emotional

related structures like the amydala and

something called the anterior uh cortex

uh the anterior singular cortex I should

say so if I were to just show you an

expert a brain Imaging map with memory

centers related uh in terms of their

activity emotion centers visual centers

motoric centers and I were to say to you

Andrew this is a scan that we got from

an individual just describe the type of

experience that you think this this

person was having in the scanner you

would probably look at it and say well

they were probably recollecting things

from their past memory structures they

seem to be having a visual experience

but there was also probably movement

involved in that brain scanning

experiment and also there seems to be

some degree of emotionality to

it that

sounds strikingly similar to what we

know dreams are like with one exception

though and another part of the brain

bucked the trend of increased activation

during REM sleep that part of the brain

with a far left and right sides of your

frontal lobe something that we call the

dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex

terrible mouthful of word salad

essentially just means the far left and

right sides of your prefrontal cortex

those are very important for logical

rational thinking and decision making

those parts of the brain went down in

their activity almost as though they

were suppressed during REM sleep

dreaming so now let's go back to our map

you're having a visual experience it's

filled with movement and memories and

emotions but it's utterly bizarre

completely illogical and totally

irrational if that's not a perfect

neural definition of this thing called

Dreaming I don't know what is it's so

interesting we think of dreams or at

least I think of dreams as a

fragmented representation of real world

experiences from our recent past maybe

even the previous day you know sort of

meshed with um our distant past

experience and then of course our brain

is also a very good anticipatory machine

and somehow you know puts that into a

movie that um for all purposes when

we're in it we feel as if it's happening

in real time yeah then of course uh we

try and untangle what the meaning of all

that is uh I think people are really

intrigued by dreams um because they're

they just feel so real to us and yet we

know they're not of the same real that

is our waking experience and um and you

know throughout history people have um

alluded to the idea or have been

convinced of the idea that dreams are

meaningful and something we're going to

get into and I I should mention by the

way that your dreams based on those

brain pain scans still remained your own

you were the only person privy to the

experience of the dream itself I could

stick you in a scanner and I could say

you know were you having a visual dream

and was it you know filled with motor

activity and emotions and memories that

tells me how you're dreaming it doesn't

tell me what you're dreaming so at that

point you still had this degree of

security in privacy

no longer it seems there was a great

study done by a Japanese group using

very Advanced Brain imaging technology

and techniques such as multivoxel

pattern analysis again word salad but

it's a very clever technique and they

were able to start to understand exactly

what you Andrew huberman were dreaming

and they would know what you were

dreaming even before you woke up and

told us what you were dreaming and they

did a two-part experiment first they

showed you lots of very specific images

images of cars of women of houses of men

of dogs of cats of just a whole category

of different visual elements and your

brain was being scanned as you were

awake watching each of these and then

using this clever analysis they were

able to build up this very specific

pattern this very specific template of

activity that for you Andrew huberman

said he is now looking specifically at a

set of keys or he was looking at a car

or he was looking at a woman or a man or

a house and we knew ground truth in

terms of what your brain looks like when

it is seeing these different categories

and then they did something clever then

they let those individuals sleep and go

into sleep and then they started waking

them up and getting dream reports but

once they got the dream reports the

analysis sort of Team remained blind to

those reports what they did was almost

like a forensic team that goes hunting

for DNA at a crime scene they had the

DNA and they started going around and

searching to see if they could find a

DNA match but here they weren't using

the DNA they were using these templates

of a woman's face or a car or a house

and they would search through this

electrical this brain activity sort of

static of your dreams at night and find

these matches and then we could wake you

up get the dream report and see how well

did our brain performing a sort of

algorithm match with your actual

subjective report when you came out and

it was stunning how close so I could

tell you were dreaming but you were also

dreaming about a house and a car you're

dreaming about a woman turns out and we

started to want your dreams as I said

were your own but

now no longer because science can start

to reveal those what we can't yet do is

understand which specific woman in which

specific house so what you would

probably see my brain based on my uh own

proclivities lighting up is it would

just be full of cars probably sports

cars and then maybe another special uh

individual woman those two things would

be dominant but you wouldn't know that

I'm dreaming about the new Porsche

911 GT2 RS you can't tell that you can

just simply tell me he was dreaming

about a car so there is still some

distance to go I can't help but ask

based on what you just described when

people say things in their dreams when

they sleep talk um how Faithfully does

that report what's in the dream it

doesn't at all and the reason is because

when you sleep talking or sleep walking

or even sleep eating you're not dreaming

because you're not in dream sleep this

is one of the fallacies that

sleepwalking or sleeptalking you're you

know stop dreaming wake up you're

dreaming you're waking someone out of

the very depths of deep non-rm sleep and

these different things sleep walking

sleep talking sleep eating um sleep um

there's sleep Associated sex behavior

all of these things are what we call

parasomnias Par meaning sort of around

somnia obviously sleep so these are

things that happen around sleep but

they're not quite in sleep because when

you have those you are launched from

Deep non-rm Sleep up to wakefulness but

you don't make it all the way to

wakefulness and so you act out these

very rote routine reflexive behaviors

you just repeat certain words you lift a

cup to your mouth go over to the

refrigerator

so they are not faithful to the dream

because if I were to gently wake you as

you're sleeptalking and say what was

going through your head you'll say

nothing at all and you don't report a

dream I'd like to take a brief break and

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huberman earlier in this series You

describ Beautiful experiments by Matt

Wilson others at MIT um who explored

neural activity within the brain within

the hippocampus in particular an area

associated with memory

formation in which the

neurons in the hippocampus fire in the

same sequence as they did during a

particular daytime activity that

preceded that night's sleep but they do

so at a much more rapid rate sometimes

they play in Reverse Etc yeah um this

raises the question of first of all is

that sort of neural replay of events

from the prior day is that also

associated with Dreaming or more

specifically is that Dreaming or is

dreaming that and that's really to raise

the larger question which is what is

dreaming for what is the function of

dreaming so what we know is that Matt

Wilson's data during nonrapid ey mve and

sleep the brain was replaying those

memories 10 to 20 times faster

so but when you go into REM sleep it's

down to 0 five times so listening to

this podcast now and you hit that speed

button and you drop it down to 0.5 that

seems to be the replay speed during REM

sleep we've not yet been able to confirm

that in human beings but if we did does

that mean we can explain the time time

differences that seem to happen in the

dream state that time is longer in the

dream world than it is in the waking

world I think that's

fascinating but you're right it does

point us more towards the question

though of what are the functions of this

state called Dreaming and we can get on

to whether or not dreaming is a very

faithful recapitulation of our waking

experiences and I'll give you a spoiler

now

no but I'll give you the data in a

second but the functions of dreaming

come back to some of the functions of

REM sleep that we described in an

earlier episode those two related

functions in the episode on learning in

memory um was that one function of REM

sleep seems to be creativity associating

memories together so that you can come

up with these wonderfully Divine

solutions to problems you couldn't

answer when you're awake the second came

in our last episode about emotional and

mental wellness and we spoke about this

theory that we put forward that REM

sleep is a form of overnight therapy and

we described the evidence supporting

that

therapy so I would say that those are

the two leading theories of REM sleep

and Associated dreaming but I perhaps

didn't give you the full story there

there is a Twist in both of those

stories I told you that when you are in

REM sleep and you're dreaming the next

day you are better able to assimilate

and Associate memories and come up with

these creative Insight

Solutions it turns out that sleep is

necessary for that and not just sleep

but dream related sleep REM sleep is

necessary for that but it's not

sufficient you not only have to be

asleep and dreaming to get those

benefits you also have to be dreaming of

the very things

that you are trying to solve the next

day there's a great study by a scientist

called Robert stick gold at Harvard and

he had a whole group of individuals

learn a virtual Maze and they were

dropped down in different locations of

the Maze and they had to try to get out

of the Maze and gradually when you're

dropped down in different locations you

do that enough times you start to build

up this mental map of the Maze and then

he let one half of those participants

take a 9 minute nap and the other half

remained awake and then some hours later

they tested them on the Maze and they

measured how quickly were you able to

navigate and get out of the maze that

was the outcome measure and sure enough

just as we described those people who

slept versus those who didn't they were

better able to navigate The Maze after

they had slept versus those who remained

awake but then they went back and they

separated those individuals who were

napping into two classes because as they

were napping they were waking them up

intermittently and getting dream reports

from them and what they found was that

those people who slept and still had

dream reports but those dreams were not

related to The Maze they didn't show an

improvement but those individuals who

slept and who dreamt but also dreamt of

the specific maze elements themselves

they were the only subset of people of

participants who showed the benefit and

that's a beautiful demonstration that

yes you need to sleep to get creative

benefits and in fact seemingly have

dream sleep but you also need to be

dreaming about specific

things is that rule true for the second

function of REM sleep dreaming this

overnight therapy benefit yes it does

seem to be true there were some great

Studies by a scientists who sadly passed

away now Rosaline cartright and she was

looking at different patient populations

who had undergone really painful

difficult emotional experiences for

example a very bitter painful

divorce and she would at the time that

those individuals were going through

this difficult challenge she would be

recording their sleep looking at their

different stages of sleep and she was

collecting dream reports from them and

then she would track them and their

progression clinically over the next

year and what she found was that some of

those participants about 50% of them

ended up getting clinical remission from

the depression that was instigated by

the painful experience they'd gone

through the other half did not get

clinical remission from their depression

they remained depressed and then she

used those two classes to go back and

have a look at the sleep and dream

reports and what she found was some

differences in REM sleep but more

interestingly were the differences in

the dreams both of those sets of

individuals were dreaming at the time of

going through those difficult emotional

experiences some of them however were

dreaming of that challenging experience

others were not those who dreamt but

also dreamt of the problematic

experience were the ones who went on to

get clinical resolution from their

depression those who dreamed but did not

dream of those events seem to be the

ones who did not get clinical remission

from their depression in other words

here once again is this new rule that

when it comes to Dreaming it's not just

about sleep and it's not just about

dreaming it's about dreaming of the

specific things that you're trying to

get the functional benefit from whether

that's creativity and insight or whether

it's emotional resolution and over night

therapy both of them seem to depend very

much on the expression of dreaming of

specific things itself and we'll come on

to why that's maybe relevant when we

speak about Lucidity too what you just

said is very reassuring at least to me

because uh when I'm going through a

challenging phase um which somehow seems

to happen periodically in my life at a

frequency that uh let's just say keeps

me dreaming um about things um You're

Not Alone by the way I'm sure I'm not

which is no no I didn't mean that I just

mean that there are lots of people who

can resonate with that so thank you for

being vulnerable and sharing yeah yeah

it's um one of these things where I you

know put my head down on the pillow fall

asleep and um on you know assuming I can

get good sleep amidst those those real

life events which is something that um

sometimes is the case sometimes is not I

always dream about things related to

those events or those events in

particular and I'm a longtime

practitioner of of um writing down my

dreams when I wake up from them um or as

we discussed in an earlier episode I'll

um my phone is on airplane mode at night

typically I'll grab my phone and I'll

hit the voice memo um button yeah or

function rather and I'll just you know

in my groggy state with my eyes closed

so I'm not getting any light in my eyes

I'll say you know I'll describe what I

can recall of the dream then I'll

sometimes go back and listen to those um

those recordings and they've provided me

Insight um

and in some cases a path to Solutions so

I'm 100% on board the fact that our

dreams can help us resolve challenges in

our waking day what's always fascinating

to me though is how the dreams are not a

one forone representation of what

happened during the day it's you know I

think symbolism is a is a is a Hallmark

feature of of dreams you know um and

that's uh something I know we're going

to talk about you know in terms of dream

interpretation and much has been made of

this um throughout history um so it

seems that when we're asking what are

the functions of dreaming one of them is

to resolve uh challenges from our

daytime experience um it's emotional

first aid yeah that's beautifully put

and in an earlier episode on learning

memory and creativity you uh described

how specific sleep stages and perhaps

dreams themselves are involved in the

consolidation of of memories from

daytime experiences or things that we're

trying try to learn from daytime

experiences and then in the episode on

sleep and emotions it was made very

clear that rapid eye movement sleep is a

time in which we get a a sort of um

therapy that is a disentangling of the

emotional load of a given experience

from The Experience um so to me it just

seem so clear like dreams are critical

sleep is critical but I think one

question that Still Remains unresolved

at least for me is are dreams really

there to just be a replay our waking

lives with some Distortion because when

the conscious mind is asleep the

unconscious mind can kind of throw

things up to the surface in ways that U

you know don't seem so obvious like you

know symbolism analogy some of us are

more visual than others um you know are

there any rules about the way that

dreams convert our waking experiences

into dream content there are and the

short answer to your question do we

simply go into sleep start dreaming and

then rewind the videotape and Replay in

a faithful

recapitulation the waking day in our

dreaming night and the answer is no and

here again uh the scientist I mentioned

before Robert stickgold um with uh raw

fossy they looked at this question and

it was a very difficult study to do they

did what we call experience sampling

during the day

and they would give you sort of like a

little beeper and they would set it to

go off multiple times throughout the day

and then you would write down what it is

that you were experiencing right in that

moment and again they were trying to

build up this sort of time lapse

photography as it were of your waking

day experience and then they would bring

people in and they would start to record

their dreams at night and then they

would match those two and ask what is

the degree of overlap what is the ven

diagram proportion or percentage of

those two things aligning and what they

found was that there was really only

about

2% of your dreaming life that was a very

faithful replay and reiteration of your

Waking

Life however what they did find was

something even more interesting to me

which comes back to this idea of

overnight therapy they found that there

is something that runs through like a

red thread narrative from your Waking

Life into your dreaming life that is

emotional concerns and people of

significance if there is anything in

terms of an algorithm that seems to

overlap and predict where those two vend

diagrams sort of collide it really is in

the emotional personal significance

space once again pointing us to perhaps

a re

affirmation that a key function of

dreaming is about dealing with our

waking experiences and particularly the

things that are Salient to us okay so

clearly there's a functionality to

Dreaming but what should we make of the

specific content of our dreams really

meaning should we interpret our dreams

or should we allow anyone else to

interpret our dreams there are scores of

books out there websites programs

there's a long history of this in

classic

psychoanalysis what about this dream

interpretation

business I mean it really started you

have to give credit in some ways to

Freud although if you look back at very

ancient cultures so much of their

artwork so much of the sort of left

imprint on the world suggests that they

were fascinated by dreams and use dreams

and gods of dreams so we've always been

thinking about what are these things

called dreams and can we interpret them

but it was really Freud who put his

seminal works together in

1899 and then published it in

1901 um called the interpretation of

dreams and it's probably one of his if

not his most famous text

and you can unfairly sum it up as um you

know if it's not one thing it's your

mother when it comes to to Freud but in

some ways Freud with his interpretation

attempt in my mind was 50% right and a

100%

wrong because until the moment that

Freud came

along we left the interpretation and the

instigation of our dreams to things

outside of us maybe it was there were

comments that it was due to our soul or

it was from the gods on high that they

would descend down these these dream

manifestos to us but Freud full credit

was the first person to put dreams front

and center into this thing called the

brain the mind so in some ways Freud

shifted dream science from really more

of a sort of spiritual

philosophical you know condition to very

much a

neuroscience it was of the mind and

therefore of the brain and earlier he

had he had tried to describe the neural

patterns and he had these beautiful

drawings of neuronal circuits that could

try to explain what was going on but

Neuroscience was so anemic at the time

in terms of its knowledge he had no

chance to do what we can do now so in

some ways it's very unfair of me to

criticize him as his theory being

non-scientific it is also non-scientific

in the very strict sense of the word

when we create create a scientific

theory just as though he created his

interpretation of Dreams

Theory we allow that theory to be

testable which is to say that a

scientific theory is only a scientific

theory if it can be falsified or

supported but Freud's theory was not a

scientific theory it was not something

that you could test and therefore it was

not

able to be falsified or affirmed and in

some ways it was

Freud's simultaneous downfall and his

utter genius it's the reason that Freud

remains to this day because we we can't

put him in way in a box and say we've

disproven him but we equally will never

be able to prove him and therefore he's

been in some ways let go in hard science

as being representative

his theory which we don't need to get

into which was um called disguised

censorship was really a very

interesting proposition which was that

there was something about our dreams

that was veiled and masked and Freud

believed that he understood the

decryption code to our dreams and if you

tell him your dream he has the special

filter that he can pull that dream

through the filter and magically out on

the other side is the true meaning of

that

dream there are several problems with

that uh Theory not least of which I

think you know at the time if you look

at his writings it seemed that Freud was

probably doing enough cocaine to kill a

small horse at the time but we'll put

that aside for a second uh the the issue

there is that it's not very replicable

as an analysis method and there was a

fascinating um study that was I remember

from a conference I I should check to

see if it's been fully published and

they did something clever they took the

Freudian method and they took a single

Dream from one individual and they had

three Freudian

psychoanalysts analyze that dream so it

was the same dream but three different

analysts now in a scientific protocol if

it's a scientifically rigorous

assessment tool you would get back the

very same answer from that measure

mement technique all three times or very

similar so for example a carbon dating

machine if I were to take a fossil and

put it in a carbon dating machine and

then another another one and another one

for the most part they're probably going

to return something that's much more

similar than different in terms of the

carbon date of that fossil why because

it's been very well validated and

replicated that's what you want from a

scientific method and Tool but when they

gave this single dream the f as it were

to these three different interpreters

the three different carbon dating

machines as it were they all came up

with completely different

interpretations and so that's not

necessarily a reliable valid method so

in that sense we've abandoned and let go

of Freud as being relevant or

meaningful however I personally and I

think if you look at the

data I don't mean that to suggest that

you should not try to think about and

quote unquote interpret your dreams and

the term interpret when it comes to

dreams is so loaded so I tend to I would

just simply say see if you can

really deconstruct some of your dreams I

think dreaming just as we've spoken

about is a very solid window into the

things that you should be concerned

about from your Waking Life it's very

obvious that what whatever it is that we

typically dream are the things that our

brain is telling us the human being this

is the stuff that's essential this is

the stuff you need to work through this

is please pay attention to me and any

amount of journaling or deliberation

digestion citation of that specific

dream is going to be beneficial to you

because in my mind a life unexamined is

not a life life well lived and that

isn't just applicable to your Waking

Life it's especially applicable to your

dreaming life now does that mean I

suggesting that everyone should race out

and start cataloging and and uh

interpreting their dreams not

necessarily but I am saying that if you

wish to do that I as a scientist based

on the data I'm not telling you that

that's whoy and non-scientific I think

it's very valid it's just that some of

the Freudian principles I think we've

being able to dislocate ourselves from I

wholeheartedly agree with what you just

said um and I've spoken about dreams and

their possible relevance to clinician

psychiatrist such as Paul KY and others

um some who have more of a

psychoanalytic training than others but

certainly folks like Paul um know a ton

of Neuroscience they understand

pharmacology they understand family

systems models uh dialectical uh therapy

and so many other man is he's

extraordinary

he's not extraordinary he's

extraordinary he is extraordinary and um

in part because he can synthesize across

all these different domains of

Psychiatry psychology Neuroscience Etc

as opposed to just be existing in one

Silo like psychoanalysis or um or

psychopharmacology so and there are

others um although few as um as as

extraordinary as Paul which is why we

hosted him on the series here and one of

the things that has come up in the

discussions with Paul and others um with

similar training about dreams is

that dreams seem to present us with

emotional states and scenarios for which

there's a lot of um swapping in and out

of of identity so for instance the

notion of symbols within dreams is a

long-standing conversation and I think

one of the mistakes as I understand it

is to assume that every time there's an

animal in your dream that it represents

children or that every time it's a

particular kind of animal it represents

you know uh you know your boss or

something right sometimes a cigar is

just a cigar right right uh on the other

hand it's very clear that within our

dreams there's rarely a completely

linear one forone relationship with what

happened in the daytime um of real

experience so there seems to be a

swapping in and out and there I just

sort of zoom out and forgive me for

going long here but I think um this

would be a good fod for for exploring

this a bit more deeply you know one of

the best um descriptions of brain

function that I've ever heard is from

the Nobel prize winning neuroscientist

Richard Axel at Columbia who often talks

about the brain creating abstractions of

the outside world so if I were to take a

photo of your face for instance and then

show you that photograph you'd say yeah

that's me but if I Were A Painter I

might um you know swap some of the

positions of of um components of your

face and show it to you and you might

say well that doesn't look like me and

I'd say but that's my abstraction of

your face so to me it makes sense

because I understand the rules by which

I made those swaps and moves there's

some algor gorithms or rules that are

are known to me so there's a s

preservation of real world to the

abstraction and that's really what our

brain does all the time it attempts to

Faithfully represent the the uh the

world around us but it is indeed an

abstraction and when it comes to the

colors of things or the position of

objects it's as one for one as our brain

is capable of um but when it comes to

ideas to feelings to our relationships

to other people the brain abstracts

those in a in its own little neural

Symphony of this is the relationship to

my dog this is the relationship to my

friend and colleague Matt Walker so it

makes sense that in dreams those

algorithms could be different they could

be faster or slower um but they could

also be entirely different and I don't

think we yet know what the algorithms of

transformation of real world experience

to dream experience are and once we do

and I think somebody we will understand

those through electrical recordings and

MRI type um uh experiments and some of

the experiments you talked about earlier

point to this and so I think it's

entirely reasonable to assume that we

each have our own unique abstraction

algorithms so that indeed we can have

consistent representation of real world

experiences in symbols but that it's not

going to be the same for everybody

correct right your way of abstracting

your real life to your dream life could

be entirely unique to you and mine could

be entirely unique to me making it very

difficult for a third party to come in

and say okay Matt here's what your dream

means but you can know what your dream

means if you explore your dreams over

time not just that one dream does that

make sense it makes total sense because

in some ways there is no one who knows

your own

autobiography by definition than you

than yourself now I'm not suggesting

that having that interpretation Guided

by someone who also understands the

emotional problems that you're having

and also sees your blind spots which is

what a really good therapist can do can

then help with that interpretation but

you're right because my representation

of information in the brain is going to

be very biased by also what I've

experienced in the past and how that

past experience augments and modulates

the current representation of that

information and thus the meaning of it

for me the unique

individual and you're also right to say

that it's

somehow you know it's almost as though

you're squ inting your eyes when you're

in dream sleep in terms of the true

vision of things things get a little bit

wacky and distorted this bizarre nature

We There is some very interesting data

and it comes back to what we described

earlier the neurochemistry of the REM

sleep State I told you that during REM

sleep levels of neur adrenaline are at

Flor levels neur adrenaline is shut off

one of the things if you sort of drop

neur adrenaline onto neural Circ

it will very much increase what we call

the signal to noise and this is why

noradrenaline when it's released or if

you administer it to an animal you can

become very you can become almost um

more directed you're much more Divergent

you're focused in attending and it's

really there you're very blinkered

you're very focused but when that goes

away the neural circuits become a little

bit more Loosey Goosey and I also told

you that the other chemical if there is

a neurochemical that defines REM sleep

dreaming it's this thing called

acetycholine and acetycholine seems to

do the opposite it seems to inject a

little bit more noise relative to the

signal so in other words your brain

circuits are neurochemically modulated

when you dream to inject almost what we

would think of as fuzzy logic and this

is why I think the analogy that we spoke

about in a previous epe episode holds

that when you are awake and you're given

some information you produce the most

obvious links and obvious associations

because you're very much blinkered and

you have nor adrenaline on board but

when you go into dream sleep the it's

almost like the Google search when

you're awake you go straight to page one

and it's very related but do that same

search when you're in the dream state

and it you know you go straight to page

you know 35

and it's an utterly bizarre page and you

think hang on a second this got nothing

to do with the search term when you read

it you think well a squint my eyes kind

of does it's very distant very

non-obvious but that's a very smart

connection that as a waking brain I

never would have put together so I think

neurochemically we can start to

understand it but I think this is a very

good important Point were you could

almost say the very best person to

interpret your dreams

it's probably

you I want to take a brief break and

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huberman some dreams we'd rather not

have here I'm specifically referring to

nightmares uh I've had one

nightmare countless times throughout my

life um it's I won't share what it is um

it's not a real world experience or at

least it's not a one for one of real

world experience but I've had this

nightmare since I was a kid I have it

seldom these days but every time it

starts again I'm like oh no and there's

a bit of Lucidity to it where I'm like I

hear him again been working on this one

a while um as you can imagine but given

what we understand about the

relationship between real world

experiences and dreams what should we

make of the fact that we have nightmares

so let's just start there the phenomenon

of nightmares does it represent

something that troubled Us in the

daytime and that we're trying to work

out in our sleep um and then maybe we

can get into some of the specifics

around

why regardless of whether or not the

answer to that question is yes or no

that we would have this thing called

nightmares especially given that there's

all this Machinery to make sure that we

don't move and the nor adrenaline is low

in the brain While We're Dreaming um

seems like there's all all sorts of

mechanisms to try and ensure that our

dreams are very pleasant or at least

neutral but um nightmares suck but um so

I'd love to know me that t-shirt please

so I'd love to know that they uh serve

some utility so nightmares how do we

Define a nightmare in sort of science

clinically it's a little bit tricky but

usually the way we Define it is it's a

strongly unpleasant dream that causes

some time of

daytime um

displeasure so in other words some type

of daytime dysfunction or

distress so everyone can have a bad

dream but when you go up into your

Waking Life and about your waking day it

doesn't seem to bother you too much and

maybe we'll just say that's a bad dream

when it really becomes a nightmare is

when I almost think of it as though you

wake up and that blanket of strong

nightmare emotion is still wrapped

around you and you can feel it you can

just know that my emotional state is

still heavy and I know exactly where it

came from and it was from that Nightmare

and throughout the day you don't seem to

be able to drobe yourself from that

cloaked affect of The Nightmare it

drenches you almost that's where it

really starts to become unpleasant and

we actually do have a clinical category

it's called nightmare disorder and the

way we typically Define that is the same

thing as I said a very unpleasant dream

that causes some type of daytime

distress and it's happening at least

once a week at that point we start to

move it into this category of nightmare

disorder what are nightmares doing if

anything at all there are at least two

theories one is that it's simply the

system failing the system gone wrong and

we're not processing we're not moving

through things and therefore nightmares

are maladaptive they're not warranted

they're not normative the other is that

no they are adaptive and they are

meaningful and it's us really trying to

go to a very specific pain point and we

continue to process it over and over

perhaps to the point where we get

resolution but sometimes we just don't

so it keeps cropping

up we don't have good data to

disambiguate those two right now so I

think it still remains at least I don't

know of any data that tells me are they

functional or are they

maladaptive even when we get that answer

in some ways it doesn't change the fact

that it still leaves a patient with

nightmares with recurring

nightmares so then what do you do about

that how do we is there any treatment

for people out there if they're under

this distress is there hope and for a

long time there really wasn't very much

hope at all you just had to go through

it but recently there was a a method

that was developed and it's very

effective and it is called

IRT which stands for image rehearsal

therapy and its basis comes back to

something that in fact we um I think

hopefully published the first evidence

and humans of um some years ago now

called memory reconsolidation

so in our episode on learning and memory

we said that there is at least sort of

two main steps of memory first you have

to imprint and learn the memory lay down

that memory Trace but then that memory

is very fragile and vulnerable to being

overwritten by competing information

knocked out of place and for you to hold

on to that memory you have to go through

a second step called memory

consolidation a very slow process it's

like a very slow pressing of the save

button because it's biological it

requires Pro prot synthesis and all of

that good stuff but that always struck

me as a strange model because it's the

equivalent of opening up a Word document

you type out all of the information into

it and then you hit the save Buton so

I've encoded imprinted the information

that I've hit save and saved it and then

I close that file and then the next day

I come back or some days later and I

double click on that file again because

I want to edit it I either want to add

to it or I want to revise it and change

it but according to that model it's been

logged in place and you could never edit

that word document that seems like a

profoundly useless way to store

information and what we learned is that

every time in subsequent days when you

reactivate which is to say when you

recollect the memory that has been

Consolidated it opens that memory file

back up to once again being plastic and

malleable so you can go in and update

the information in that memory store and

then the next night you consolidate it

again in other words you reconsolidate

it so it's memory updating and there is

a very clear mechanism in the human

brain that allows us to do this memory

updating iteratively time and time

again this comes back to nightmare uh

disorders this therapy image rehearsal

therapy or IR will have you sit down

with a therapist and at first you'll

describe the nightmare that you're going

through and you'll write that narrative

down and then working with a therapist

you will agree to think about a more

neutral ending to that that nightmare so

let's say that I was involved in a very

um very difficult car crash was just

horrific and every night since I'd say

at least once a week I just continue to

have the the nightmare of the car crash

I know that I'm traveling towards the

junction I apply the brakes the brakes

have failed I am just looking around I'm

trying to maneuver but nothing is going

to change this I go through the red

light and someone sideswipes me and

that's the end and I relive that time

and time again and it's awful so you

with the therapist or I with a therapist

would then start to say well what about

the alternative iio I depress The Brak

and the brakes don't work but gradually

I think well I'm just going to reach

over to the handbrake and I'm going to

gradually apply the handbrake and that

slowly is going to bring the car to a

nice safe stop and then I'm going to

call the emergency services the car is

going to get towed I don't go through

the

junction I survive everything's

fine so you rehearse this alternate

ending and you keep going through that

rehearsing that and then you go to sleep

the next night and you'll probably have

a high chance of that nightmare again

but if you keep doing that once you've

got that alternative ending essentially

what you're trying to do is every time

you reactivate the memory of the trauma

car crash and then you rehearse this

alternate ending it's like me going into

the word document and editing the

section that was really horrific and bad

and replacing it with something that's

neutral or even positive and over time

then I sleep and I will consolidate that

memory I'll come back back the next day

and I'll do some more editing and more

updating and Time After Time After Time

gradually you dissipate the narrative

that is fixed inside of the brain and

the nightmare frequency decreases in

proportion now it's not effective for

100% of patients if if you look at the

data on average it's about two out of

every three people so about 66% of

people will benefit which if you look at

some Medical Treatments that's that's a

great treatment that's still very

effective there was a very recent study

from um uh Sophie Schwarz and her

colleagues at the University of Geneva

that did an even more ingenious study

and they were able to nudge the

effectiveness of that treatment from 66%

up to

92% and they used an additional memory

related research tool we've uh come up

with in sleep science and it's called

TMR or targeted memory reactivation and

here's how it goes I'm going to have you

learn a set of associations have you

ever played that card game I think in

America it's called memory which is very

apt where you get a deck of cards and it

has two of the same items two houses two

cars two fire engines two cattles and

you Shuffle the cards and then you put

them face down in a big Square in a big

Matrix and over time you have to turn

over one card and it's a kettle and then

I'm just going to randomly pick another

card and it's a fire engine H okay but

gradually you start to learn where each

one of the purs are

located so what's clever about that is

we would do that type of what's called a

Pur Association me memory test you have

you you learn these Pur Associates and

then we test you after night of sleep

and you're better however if for as

you're turning those items over I play a

congruent sound so let's say you turn

over the fire engine and then when you

turn over the other fire engine I'm

going to start playing a fire engine

noise in the background so I'm bonding

the association of the memory card purs

with this tone with this congruent sound

and then a kettle I turn over a kettle I

turn over the other Kettle and it's

whistling and then when you let people

sleep at night if you start replaying

those same tones at a subway sub

Awakening threshold so you're not waking

people up and you bring them back and

let's say that you only do those sound Q

reactivations for half of the memories

that you've done and the other half you

leave untouched so with within an

individual you have a unique within

individual control you test them on the

things that you didn't reactivate at

night and those that you

did it's almost like uh creating a

bespoke playlist at night where you say

look I learned all of this information

during the day or wouldn't this be

wonderful and then here is the stuff

that I really think personally to me I

want to remember well it turns out I'd

been tagging that with particular music

and then at night I replay that music

and the next day it turns out that those

things I reactivated are much more

strongly Consolidated by way of sleep

than those things I didn't so that's the

basic method of what we call TMR

targeted memory

reactivation what they did was something

very clever they had them go through

this process of the image rehearsal

therapy they were rehearsing the

alternate ending but about every 10

seconds they were playing them this very

pleasing piano chord in the background

and they were just bonding the

association of the new outcome ending to

the nightmare with this Pleasant piano

chord and then sure enough in the

subsequent weeks afterwards Not only was

that person day after day doing the

diligent therapy practice of rehearsing

the memory whilst the piano tone was

playing but then at night they would

wait until they went into REM sleep

which is the state we think the

emotional therapy begins and they would

start to Replay that same piano chord

over and over again and sure enough

those people who had image rehearsal

therapy standard they improved by about

60% in their nightmare frequency

reduction those people who did that plus

the memory reactivation at night it

drove it from 66% all the way up to

92% so now modern day Neuroscience with

its techniques is starting to overlap

with classical Clinical Psychology and

we're developing these next Forefront of

methods that really harness and

fine-tune the brain's ability to undergo

effective therapy it's incredible I mean

I think that we've known about classical

conditioning for a long time and the uh

you know the the case of Pavlov's dogs

is the most you know known of those um

am I right in recalling that um this

pair dissociation

way of bringing about certain memories

or strengthening certain memories in

sleep can also be accomplished with

odors um that it's not just the playing

of tones during specific experiences but

also for instance if one were to pair a

particular odor with a certain uh novel

memory event in the daytime or attempt

to learn something new that if that odor

is then infused into the room of the

sleeping person later that night that

somehow the the memories would be

strengthened do I have that correct

there's nothing wrong I've said it

before I'll say it again nothing wrong

with your memory that was one of the

seminal papers that started this whole

movement and what they did was they had

them learn this kind of Pur associate

card test but they were wearing this

Mass almost looks like a fighter pilot

mask and they were either puffing up

inert air that was that didn't smell at

all or they were perusing this very

pleasant Rose scent because smell in

particular has a very unique

relationship with our memory in part

because we emerged you know from animals

that would principally use smell as

their navigational tool I think everyone

has had this experience where you Bond a

certain cologne or a certain perfume

with a particular individual so they

were puffing The Rose perfume up the

nose of these participants and then when

they went into sleep they started to

reperfuse that Rose odor

now what was clever also about the

experiment you could say well look just

anytime you get something that smells

puffed up your nose your memory is going

to be better now the initial experiment

had them learning the information when

they're awake with the rose scent

getting pushed up the nose and then when

they slept they had the rose odor again

another group did had learning but they

had no rose smell pushed up their nose

to bond with the information at the time

of learning when they were awake and

then when they slept they also had Rose

odor stuffed up their nose and they

showed no additional benefit so it's not

just enough to have Rose odor at night

you need to have made the initial bonded

familiar connection with the novel

information that you're learning to get

the subsequent targeted memory

reactivation benefit and you could then

think well practical tools what should I

do maybe you know when I'm learning for

studying for a test I should blaze up my

you know my most preferred incense and

I'm I have a particular proclivity to

green tea incense it turns out and maybe

then before I go to bed at night I get a

couple of sticks and I you know Blaze

them back up took my head on the pillow

turn the light out however do not do

that because it's probably a desperate

fire hazard so do not listen to me but

you could think about doing something

along those lines perhaps anyway um so

that's targeted memory reactivation yeah

um it's a perf segue for what I wanted

to talk about next which is lucid

dreaming um but um before we move to

lucd Dreaming I'm wondering whether or

not there's a an opportunity here to

construct an experiment maybe even a

protocol of sorts to

uncouple the negative experience of

nightmares to our daily experience could

you so for instance we're talking about

pair dissociation based on odors or

sound replayed in sleep to um sort of

nudge um or conjure particular daytime

memories to the surface in the form of

dream sleep yeah but we also know that

one can uncouple um associations so for

instance um if one experienced something

negative and maybe this is being

attempted in the in the realm of of

trauma therapy um and that experience

was paired with a particular odor it

would be hard to do with visual cues and

sleep or sound

um could one um attempt to introduce a

sort of a competing sound you know set

up a sort of a collision um uh stimulus

so that in sleep the the dream would no

longer contain the the scary content or

it would be less scary or is this

exactly the wrong approach because if we

believe that the nightmares are serving

some functional purpose allowing us to

work through what you really don't want

to do right okay great then we answer

the question well no I I think it's I

think it's unclear right now but you're

on the right line because there is

something that we have in in learning in

memory called fear

Extinction and let's say that I were to

sort of classic pavlovian learning

Pavlov's dogs let's say I show you a

specific image on the screen and then

you hear a specific tone and then you

get an electric shock I show you the

stimulus on the screen you hear the

specific tone and then you get an

electrical shock that I don't show you

the S stimulus on the screen but you do

still hear the tone and then what

happens is that you have a braced

response to the electrical shock and

there's all sorts of combinations in

between of that but essentially I

condition you to learn that these things

seem to be associated with a negative

outcome the inverse being the pavlovian

dog which is that you ring a bell you

show the dog some food and it salivates

you ring the bell show the dog some food

and it salivates and then you ring the

bell you don't give it some food and it

still salivates because it knows that

the Bell precedes the the meat being

shown and I actually mixed my um my

order around there in my own experiment

to begin with but then there's something

different that you can do you can start

to perhaps change the sound or the

bonded connection and then you don't

start getting the shock anymore so that

same ringing of the Bell now is no

longer consistently associated with the

food and gradually you decondition the

dog such that after some time it learns

oh I started to learn that the Bell

predicted food but now it no longer does

and it takes some time to remove that

and that's what we call Extinction

you've induced an association and then

you gradually extinguish it by way of

that alternate Training Method

so the question then became could we use

that type of method but during sleep

could we train you up on a fear memory

and then just begin the early signs of

extinguishing of deconditioning you but

then we don't do that very much we wait

until sleep and we continue the

deconditioning protocol and sure enough

sleep seems to be as if not more

effective at extinguishing those fear

memories than when you enact the

protocol during wakefulness so here is a

very good example of where you can use

this sleep dependent memory processing

tapestry this opportunity to harness not

just to strength them memories that you

wish to keep but start to extinguish

memories you wish to remove and so I

think it's a very exciting it's right on

the cusp of what we're starting to do

right now but I love it because I think

some people would like to experience

certain dreams and other people would

like to uh not experience certain

nightmares which reminds me of a a tool

that Rick Rubin taught me um I don't

know of any experiments that uh support

this directly but I've tried this and

and it certainly has worked first time

and every time which is Rick said um if

you wake up from a dream and you want to

remember your dream and you or and or

you found it Pleasant or interesting lay

there completely still with your eyes

closed and it will come to you um

whereas if you wake up from a nightmare

which many people do and um in a state

of anxiety and you have a hard time kind

of shaking the the disturbing AFF effect

associated with that nightmare to move

your body get up and move your body and

maybe even flip some lights on something

that normally I don't suggest in the

middle of the night but waking up from a

nightmare can be quite quite um

disturbing and it can be um disturbing

enough that it makes it difficult to

fall back asleep um so and by the way

he's he's he's right I I don't know if

he's read the science or it's he's just

it's knowing Rick he's probably just

because he's so Yoda likee he's probably

intuited Supernatural levels of insight

tens of thousands of scientific articles

but he's absolutely right one of the

ways if you really wish to remember your

dreams is not just jump up out of bed

and start trying to write them down

don't lie in bed keep your eyes closed

and gradually rehearse that dream over

and over in your mind almost as though

you're scoring it into the etched

surface your memory Trace more and more

and gradually when you've re sort of

capitulated and pieced back the jigsaw

puzzle then gradually open your eyes

start to dictate start to write down but

don't do it immediately because as soon

as you start doing it it begins to float

away it begins to dissolve in a way

that's you you sort of you know you're

running and you're trying to reach your

hand out F exactly that's why I use the

The Voice Memos last night I woke up in

the middle of the night from a dream and

I decided to turn on voice memos and I

remember thinking I'll remember this in

the morning and I remember you never

remember this in the

morning that is a perfect segue for

lucid dreaming which is uh the awareness

that we are dreaming well in a dream uh

is lucid dreaming real can we train

ourselves to lucid dream and what is the

value of lucid dreaming is it just a fun

um game we can play is there any

is there any reason we should attempt to

lucid dream if we don't already or

encourage more lucid dreaming or even

any reason we shouldn't perhaps um lucid

dreaming you beautifully gave the

definition Loosely defined lucid

dreaming is that you simply know that

you're dreaming whilst you are dreaming

so in other words as the dream is

unfolding you gain awareness of ah this

is a dream but I'm still dreaming at

that moment by science definition you

are in a state of Lucidity but most

people don't really mean that when they

say oh I'm a lucid dreamer they mean yes

I'm I become aware that I'm Dreaming as

I am dreaming and then I take over the

Reigns of control and then starting to

decide exactly what it is you dream and

how you dream so now I'm on the ground

and I'm walking through a park and I

decide that I just want to take off and

I want to fly over the river or I want

to fly out over San Francisco Bay and

take a tour so I decide to start flying

that is what most people think of as

lucid

dreaming if you were to think about it

this thing called Dreaming as we've

described is utterly absurd as a state

based on its psychotic kind of Nature

and characteristics to then start to say

it's that idiotic and strange and

bizarre but PS I can also take control

of it and decide what I want to do with

it injects a whole dose of disbelief

into a process that's already

unbelievable by itself so science for a

while just thought this is charlatan

type stuff that these people claim that

they can control their dreams how can

you ever prove that because don't forget

when you go into rem's sleep and you

dream you are paralyzed so I can't just

wake up and say I was lucid dreaming

that's not proof I have to in some ways

be able to demonstrate that I'm lucid

dreaming as I begin to become Lucid but

I can't because I can't communicate with

you as the

scientist well it turns out that you can

one of the things we spoke about in the

first episode is that yes you get these

rapid eye movements but think about what

that means I told you that when you

dream your brain paralyzes all of your

voluntary muscles so that you can dream

and dream safely and you don't act out

your dreams with the exception that at

least two muscle groups your extraocular

muscles that move your eyes and your

inner ear muscles for some reason they

are spurred from the paralysis so you

can still move otherwise you could never

have rapid eye

movements so the eyes all of a sudden

because we have electrodes up top and

below and left and right sides we can

measure what you're doing with your eyes

during sleep in fact we have to do this

to determine are you awake or are you in

REM sleep the brain activity by itself

doesn't tell us that we measure your

muscle activity and if you lose muscle

activity and your brain is very active

and the eye channels that we're

recording start to show these darting

back and forth signals we know you're in

Ram sleep that's how we Define it so

that then suggested to us we can use the

eye movements to create a form of Morse

code signaling from the participant to

the

experiment and so let's say that with

this claimed Lucid dreamer who comes to

my sleep center we'll create a very

specific greed upon code which is that

as you start dreaming I can see that and

when you become Lucid in that dream

firstly give me three leftward flicks of

your eyes we never see that in dreaming

it's a very deliberative act and then

when you say okay I'm I've started the

lucid dreaming and you've agreed with

the experiment that you're then going to

start um moving your hands you're going

to start to move your right hand well

when you start to move your right hand

give me four flicks to the right and

when you're moving your left hand in the

dream give me four flicks to the left

and so there we create this very

specific instigation

code but then how does that help help us

well we can have you sleeping in a brain

scanner and before the brain scanning

session when you sleep I have you just

go into the brain scanner awake and I

say move your left hand and your right

motor cortex is going to be lighting up

and then I'm going to say move your

right hand and your left motor cortex is

going to be lighting up and for you and

me I build up a very unique map of your

left hand motor memory representation

and your right hand motor memory

representation and if it's the left hand

as I said it's the right side of the

brain if it's the right hand it's the

left side of the brain so now I've got

ground truth as to where your hand

representation is on your motor cortex

in my brain scanner and then I'm going

to put you back in the brain scanner let

you go into sleep let you start dreaming

then you give me three left flicks good

this person has now become lucid and now

he's doing four rightward flicks which

which means he's clasping his right hand

over and over again and then he gives me

four leftwood flicks which means he

switched over he's now using his left

hand in his dream by the way I'm looking

at the participant inside of the brain

scanner through the glass and of course

they're not moving their hand why

because they're paralyzed but in the

dream they are claiming based on their

eye movements that they are moving their

hands we bring them back out of the

brain scanner and we analyze their brain

scans during the period when they said

I'm moving my right hand I'm moving my

left hand what did we see sure enough we

saw the same and we being the Royal wi

it's a great study by a German group

sure enough you see exactly the same

pattern it was scientific groundtruth

evidence that when a lucid dreamer

claims they are doing something in the

dream the brain scans that we received

confirmed that indeed that's exactly

what was happening it's just that none

of the signal is being sent out to the

periphery to the limbs because there's

that that um cut off at the spinal cord

descending inhibition yeah at the level

of the alphao neurons if your spinal

cord incredible so here we are talking

about lucid dreaming which is a kind of

mixed level of Consciousness dreaming of

course but also Lucidity that is an

awareness that one is dreaming now in

just about every one of the five

episodes leading up to this sixth

episode in this series you emphasize the

key importance of deep sleep and rapid

eye movement sleep and in many ways some

of the problems that arise from waking

up in the middle of the night too many

times or being in Shallow sleep as

opposed to Deep Sleep lucid dreaming it

seems is a kind of a case of light sleep

because of one's awareness or is it so

that's one the first question and then

just very quickly an anecdote when I was

a kid I used to read these like boy life

magazines and those kind of things I for

what they called but in the back they

would have these um these ads for for

products like x-ray glasses or you know

or um or sea monkeys which turned out to

be Brian shrimp what a disappointment

that was um and um I thought they were

monkeys on the on the package they were

little monkeys but they were Brian

shrimp

um there was a product advertised that I

in fact purchased which was an ey mask

that had a little blinking red light in

one corner and it said learn to lucid

dream and the idea was that you would

put this thing on and look at the red

light just prior to going to sleep and

then you go to sleep with this thing on

and then at some point in your sleep you

would see or think that you saw the red

light flashing and the idea was that

because you were in the ey mask you're

in enough of a dream that you would be

able to link the waking State

recognition of the light Etc okay people

get

it I purchased that product I used it I

thought perhaps there was an effect

quote unquote where I could lucid dream

but I wouldn't consider myself an avid

Lucid dreamer although sometimes I am

aware that I'm dreaming and usually it's

in um pleasant dreams in which case I'm

usually like yeah let's keep this going

things like flying and and being you

know particularly talented in a sport

that in my Waking Life I had minimal

Talent things like that okay so is lucid

dreaming a case of shallow sleep and

therefore something to

avoid or is lucid dreaming something

quite different and is there any

advantage to learning to lucid dream or

enhancing one's amount of lucid dreaming

and if so how should one go about that

so I'll take the question should you be

lucid dreaming and I think I can argue

it both sides right now and we don't

have a very clear answer yet the first

side is if you take a step back and ask

from an evolutionary perspective let's

assume for for want of a better worth

that lucid streaming is helpful it's

meaningful and that we should engage in

it if that's the case that it confers

some type of evolutionary benefit then

you would expect that a lot of people

would be doing it but if you look at the

statistics somewhere between maybe just

10 to 20% of the population are natural

lucid dreamers and so from an

evolutionary perspective I could say

well if it was so powerful it was so

meaningful because we know everyone

sleeps and for the most part we can say

that almost everyone dreams if that's

the case then those must clearly serve a

purpose but the fact that very few

people are lucid dreamers doesn't that

tell us that it isn't necessarily

beneficial so from that perspective I

can play those numbers there is an

inherent flaw in my argument there

however because that assumes based on

the argument I've just given you that we

have stopped evolving and of course we

have not and so perhaps that 10 to 10 to

20% of the population who are natural

lucid dreamers are at the Forefront of

homonid

evolution and they're the next Super

rate we shouldn't be worried about AI we

should be worried about the lucid dreams

because they're going to come and take

over the world so I can argue it from

that perspective which is just a

philosophical argument it doesn't have

weighted data to it but there is some

data some individuals have asked the

question is there any changes to your

sleep or even the benefits of sleep when

you are a lucid dreamer versus not and

what's interesting is that for some

papers that have been published after

nights when people report lucid dreaming

they wake up and they don't feel as

restored they don't feel as refreshed by

their sleep in the morning suggest just

as you sort of hinted at the that the

lucid dreaming state is associated with

perhaps a less deep or more shallow form

of REM sleep or a more active state of

REM sleep perhaps too active so that

it's fatiguing and depleting and upon

Awakening you don't get that memory and

that body that brain and body

reset there are however a few papers

that have not found

that result so I think right now we

don't truly know if the Lucid state is

associated with unrefreshing sleep and

unrest of sleep but if that proves true

then I think that that's one argument

the other argument I would put forward

against it from that perspective would

be think about what we've said regarding

the functions of dreaming memory

processing but particularly emotional

therapy to gift us mental

health if we then come along and say

presumably you know nature through

millions of years of evolution has come

up with this this blueprint Manifesto of

exactly what should be served up on the

dream menu this

evening that's there's a reason for that

and that reason has been sculpted over

millions of years to become wonderfully

optimal for us and our emotional mental

health and then we come along in the

space of a lifetime and perhaps you

could argue a little bit humoristic we

think h i perhaps know a little bit

better than a couple of million years of

evolution I'm going to push those things

off the rank ordering chart of what gets

served up into my dreams and I'm going

to supersede that and decide what I

would prefer to be dreaming about and

again I think that there's no good

evidence that you could argue that that

isn't true but equally that it is true

we just don't know yet it if that is the

case that lucid dreaming does produce

unrest of sleep in some ways it also

begs the question well what is happening

in your brain during lucid dreaming is

there anything in your brain that would

explain why you don't feel

refreshed and early studies looking at

lucid dreamers when we put them inside

of a brain scanner I told you at the

start of this episode dream sleep has a

unique brain signature memory regions

emotion regions motor regions and visual

Regions they're all lighting up but then

there's this one part of your brain that

does the opposite which is the lateral

uh left and right sides of your

prefrontal cortex The Logical rational

thinking controlling regions of your

brain those go

offline but early studies demonstrated

that the activity including the

electrical activity over those frontal

regions

would be down as you were in non lucid

dreaming but then when people rise back

up and said now I'm lucid dreaming with

those leftward flicks that activity was

brought back

online which makes a lot of mechanistic

sense which is all of a sudden the part

of your brain that prevented you from

having rational logical control has been

re-engaged and as a consequence you

yourself can re-engage in volitional

dictation of the outcome of what you're

dreaming some studies however have not

replicated that finding because when

they looked at it and they took out some

uh sort of what we call these um

covariates or these confounding factors

and I can bore you with what that

principle is it removed that result and

all of a sudden the prefrontal cortex

went back to seemingly being nonactive

they did find an alternate result what

they found is that the electrical

activity of the brain when you go into a

lucid dreaming State seems to be a bit

more frenetic a bit more active versus

non-lucid dreaming states of electrical

brain activity and if that's the case if

the cortex which is already active is

forced to become even more frenetically

active when you are in this lucid dream

state is that part of the reason that

when you wake up from the lucid dreaming

and you go about your day your brain

just doesn't seem to be at the same

operating ability because it's being

fatigued above and beyond it's like

saying I do a standard workout and I

always go to you know one or two reps

before failure but now as I'm lucid

dreaming I am constantly going to

complete muscle failure and then the

next few days if you go and do a workout

and I've been listening you and I have

been trading workouts I don't want to do

an Andrew hubman workout trust me you

are this man is mine are short short and

sweet this I I'm well let we'll work out

at some point together but it's it's

almost as though then no big surprise

that after you do a legs day if I were

to wake you up the next day and say

you're back doing legs she said I can't

do that I'm toast I'm host my legs are

done and that's what we think could

perhaps explain why you get that fatigue

does that make some sense makes very

good sense and you know in the absence

of of better language to put to it I've

long thought that one of the best things

about sleep is that we are not engaging

our frontal cortex that much in sleep um

and as we talked about in an earlier

episode The frontal cortex during waking

is responsible for things such as the

suppression of reflexes I mean it has to

do that according to context of a

situation it's a lot of work um and the

frontal cortex does a great number of

other things as well but

I think one of the most wonderful things

about sleep is that we get re release

and um a break from all of that analysis

of duration path and outcome you know

what's how long is something going to

take what path is it do I need to take

in order together what's the outcome

going to be all that analysis of things

past present and future it's work it's

it's mental it's mental work and I think

that if if you tell me and I think you

just did that lucid dreaming involves

any kind of um encroachment of

duration path outcome type of analysis

into my sleep my personal preference is

going to be to not lucid dream I'd

rather just have very robust perhap you

know dreams of different kinds and try

to make sense of them once I wake up but

it's so tempting though isn't it because

like you I've had those experience I

remember an amazing dream where I was

snowboarding and I'm I am a below

average

snowboarder and all of a sudden I was

just taking jump and I was doing all

sorts of X game you're sha white I was

it was unbelievable and I felt so and I

was so happy in the moment and I

remember waking up and just thinking

firstly I'm sad I'm waking up right and

second that was

Sublime and all I want to do tomorrow

night is go back and now I'm going to

switch my snowboard out for a dirt bike

and I'm going to do the dirt bike X

Games version of it and going to be

doing all sorts of Superman can't get

greedy with Mother Nature know know she

body slams you I get it I know if people

out there are are you know enjoying it

or wanting to do that um and by the way

I didn't answer I'm so sorry your um red

light question which is if you wanted to

do it how can you do it if you're not

doing it already there are in fact two

scientific methods that have been

developed one of them actually has a

vague whiff of relationship ship to the

light device although that's one of

those things where if you know if a

friend sent it to me or a random person

said oh Dr I've seen this in the back of

a magazine do you think it works I would

just say please go and spend your $199

on something that is going to I think I

was about 11 or 12 years old I think it

cost something like I $10.99 or

something which at the time for me was a

lot of money but I had a paper rout I

had a paper route back then and I had a

little little bit of of a a disp I

income but um it was cool cuz it was it

was probably one of my first experiments

I've been running experiments since I

was a kid but but I I think self

experimentation can be fun provided you

can see that but sorry coming back to

your red light the two methods one of

them is something called the mild

technique which stands for the pneumonic

induction of lucid dreaming m i l d

pneumonic just meaning a memory based

technique induction obviously what we're

trying to induce something and what is

it we're trying to induce lucid dreaming

and it's a very simple technique which

is that you consistently rehearse before

bed this notion that I will remember my

dreams and I will instigate control in

my dreams and you do this and it sounds

just so hokey and non-scientific sure

enough you do this over and over again

the probability that you will loci a

dream increases I think the better one

maybe the more effective one is called

the reality testing method and it was

probably made famous in a brilliant

movie if you haven't seen it everyone

should watch it it's called Waking Life

and it is an amazing Richard linklater

uh the director it just for the

philosophy alone in it it will blow your

mind it's exceptional but it's a

beautiful tretis on dreaming and lucid

dreaming

and in that they describe a method where

during the waking day you are constantly

perhaps you can set an alarm and you're

constantly reminded to go over to let's

say the wall and flip the light switch

on and off on and off on and off and

sure enough what happens the lights go

on and off why because it's the real

world and it complies and it's complicit

with the laws of

physics so you do this time and time

again and you start to train yourself

that at unique moments throughout your

waking experience you always go over and

you test some version of reality and it

or it could just be I'm going to press

my hand into something solid and this

table is resisting my hand right now as

I'm pressing and I just keep doing that

and then at some point it becomes

routine enough that you start to do that

same thing when you are dreaming but now

when I press my hand against the table

or press my hand against the wall my

hand goes straight through the wall or I

flip the light switch on and off and the

lights do nothing and all of a sudden

that's my cue to

say I'm not awake am I I'm I'm dreaming

and therefore at that point I gain

Lucidity and it increases the

probability so those are the two methods

that people have used and statistically

scientifically they do seem to have some

degree of success I love it I love it I

personally I'm going to opt to not

encourage lucid dreaming because I'm and

myself because I'm I'm working on

getting my sleep deeper and longer uh

through the night with uh fewer waking

episodes we will get that we will get

there using the tools described in the

previous and this episode of the uh of

the series that we're doing here my

sleep's been excellent at times pretty

good at other times and and lousy at

others which I think makes me well

qualified um to talk about tools for

sleep because I feel like I've come at

it from every level of of performance

very much and by the way um Shield swort

in hand I'm right there by your side

we'll we'll make it happen don't worry

well thank you uh

truly okay so

sadly we are nearing the end of this six

episode series and here we are in the

sixth

episode however last night before

leaving the studio I decided to put out

a word on social media on X AKA Twitter

and on

Instagram asking people what questions

they have about sleep and I made it very

Broadband you know I said ask anything

you want about sleep Matt Walker will

will do his best to answer and of course

we had thousands and thousands and

thousands of questions um and we're

grateful let's push on through till dawn

which completely violates every one of

the six EP I'm they'll benefit we'll

we'll struggle however we were able to

um bin those responses into most

frequently Asked uh most frequently

liked Etc and so while we can't ask

every question of you uh what I thought

would be fun and very informative uh for

the listeners is to ask 10 of the most

popular questions um and fingers on

buzzers no confering here we go and

these are questions for which I I think

there are practical answers um and so