Understanding and Using Dreams to Learn and to Forget

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.920 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.680 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.880 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.900 | This podcast is separate from my teaching

00:00:17.680 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:00:19.680 | It is, however, part of my desire

00:00:21.200 | to bring you zero cost to consumer information

00:00:23.480 | about science and science-related tools.

00:00:25.820 | In keeping with that theme,

00:00:28.000 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:02:58.720 | Today, we're going to talk about dreaming,

00:03:01.280 | learning during dreaming, and unlearning during dreaming,

00:03:05.520 | in particular, unlearning of troubling emotional events.

00:03:09.960 | Now, my interest in dreaming goes way back.

00:03:12.460 | When I was a child, I had a friend

00:03:15.240 | and he came over one day and he brought with him a mask

00:03:18.860 | that had a little red light in the corner.

00:03:21.160 | He had purchased this thing through some magazine ad

00:03:24.040 | that he had seen.

00:03:25.480 | And this mask was supposed to trigger lucid dreaming.

00:03:30.240 | Lucid dreaming is the experience of dreaming during sleep,

00:03:34.040 | but being aware that one is dreaming.

00:03:37.120 | And in some cases, being able to direct

00:03:39.440 | one's dream activities.

00:03:41.600 | So if you're in a lucid dream and you want to fly,

00:03:44.600 | for instance, some people report being able to initiate

00:03:47.920 | that experience of flying or to contort themselves

00:03:51.360 | into an animal or to transport themselves

00:03:54.320 | to wherever they want within the dream.

00:03:56.580 | I tried this device.

00:03:58.680 | The way it worked is you put on the mask

00:04:01.640 | during the waking state, wide awake,

00:04:03.640 | and you'd look at the little light flashing in the corner.

00:04:06.800 | And then you'd also wear it when you went to sleep at night.

00:04:08.800 | And indeed, while I was asleep,

00:04:10.360 | I could see the red light presumably through my eyelids,

00:04:13.400 | although for all I know, I had opened my eyes.

00:04:16.000 | I don't know, I was asleep.

00:04:17.400 | And then because I was dreaming

00:04:19.240 | and I was experiencing something very vivid,

00:04:22.440 | I was able to recognize that I was dreaming

00:04:24.720 | and then start to direct some of the events

00:04:26.180 | within that dream.

00:04:27.440 | Now, lucid dreaming occurs in about 20% of people.

00:04:30.580 | And in a small percentage of those people,

00:04:32.840 | they lucid dream almost every night.

00:04:34.800 | So much so that many of them report their sleep

00:04:37.440 | not being as restorative as it would be otherwise.

00:04:41.360 | Now, all of this is to say that lucid dreaming and dreaming

00:04:46.120 | are profound experiences.

00:04:48.140 | We tend to feel extremely attached to our dream experience.

00:04:53.140 | This may explain the phenomenon

00:04:55.000 | of people who have a very intense dream,

00:04:56.900 | they need to somehow tell everybody about that dream

00:04:59.080 | or tell someone about that dream.

00:05:00.280 | I don't really know what that behavior is about,

00:05:02.740 | but sometimes we wake up and we feel so attached

00:05:05.520 | to what happened in this state that we call dreaming,

00:05:08.020 | that there seems to be an intense need

00:05:09.440 | to share it with other people,

00:05:10.520 | presumably to process it and make sense of it.

00:05:13.280 | Now, numerous people throughout history

00:05:14.780 | have tried to make sense of dreams

00:05:16.140 | in some sort of organized way.

00:05:18.560 | The most famous of which of course is Sigmund Freud,

00:05:20.920 | who talked about symbolic representations in dreams.

00:05:23.620 | A lot of that has been kind of debunked,

00:05:25.700 | although I think that there's some interest

00:05:28.660 | in what the symbols of dreaming are.

00:05:31.100 | And this is something that we'll talk about

00:05:32.500 | in more depth today,

00:05:33.560 | although not Freudian theory in particular.

00:05:38.300 | So I think in order to really think about dreams

00:05:42.060 | and what to do with them

00:05:43.220 | and how to maximize the dream experience

00:05:46.960 | for sake of learning and unlearning,

00:05:49.440 | the best way to address this

00:05:50.940 | is to look at the physiology of sleep,

00:05:52.880 | to really just what do we know concretely about sleep?

00:05:56.760 | So first of all, as we get sleepy,

00:05:59.140 | we tend to shut our eyes

00:06:02.060 | and that's 'cause there are some autonomic centers

00:06:04.160 | in the brain, some neurons that control closing

00:06:06.520 | of the eyelids when we get sleepy.

00:06:08.220 | And then we transition into sleep.

00:06:10.060 | And sleep, regardless of how long we sleep,

00:06:12.900 | is generally broken up into a series of 90 minute cycles,

00:06:16.340 | these ultradian cycles.

00:06:18.780 | So early in the night,

00:06:21.140 | these 90 minute cycles tend to be comprised

00:06:23.780 | more of shallow sleep and slow wave sleep.

00:06:26.720 | So stage one, stage two, et cetera,

00:06:28.420 | and what we call slow wave sleep.

00:06:29.880 | I'll go into detail about what all this means in a moment.

00:06:32.460 | And we tend to have less so-called REM sleep,

00:06:35.520 | R-E-M sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement sleep.

00:06:38.780 | And I'll talk about rapid eye movement sleep in detail.

00:06:41.340 | So early in the night, a lot more slow wave sleep

00:06:44.180 | and less REM.

00:06:45.940 | For every 90 minute cycle that we have

00:06:48.760 | during a night of sleep,

00:06:50.680 | we tend to start having more and more REM sleep.

00:06:55.180 | So more of that 90 minute cycle is comprised of REM sleep

00:06:58.660 | and less of slow wave sleep.

00:07:00.460 | Now, this is true regardless of whether or not

00:07:02.300 | you wake up in the middle of the night to use the restroom

00:07:04.720 | or your sleep is broken.

00:07:06.220 | The more sleep you're getting across the night,

00:07:09.780 | the more REM sleep you're going to have.

00:07:11.900 | And REM sleep and non-REM, as I'll refer to it,

00:07:15.700 | have distinctly different roles in learning and unlearning,

00:07:18.520 | and they are responsible for learning and unlearning

00:07:20.800 | of distinctly different types of information.

00:07:23.300 | And this has enormous implications

00:07:26.580 | for learning of motor skills,

00:07:29.060 | for unlearning of traumatic events

00:07:31.500 | or for processing emotionally challenging

00:07:33.660 | as well as emotionally pleasing events.

00:07:36.380 | And as we'll see, one can actually leverage

00:07:39.200 | their daytime activities

00:07:41.080 | in order to access more slow wave sleep

00:07:43.620 | or non-REM sleep as we'll call it,

00:07:45.960 | or more REM sleep depending on your particular emotional

00:07:49.400 | and physical needs.

00:07:50.660 | So it's really a remarkable stage of life

00:07:52.560 | that we have a lot more control and power over

00:07:55.240 | than you might believe.

00:07:56.920 | We'll also talk about lucid dreaming.

00:07:58.520 | We're also going to talk about hallucinations

00:08:00.760 | and how drug induced hallucinations

00:08:03.080 | have a surprising similarity to a lot of dream states

00:08:06.480 | and yet some really important differences.

00:08:09.100 | Okay, so let's start by talking about slow wave sleep

00:08:13.140 | or non-REM sleep.

00:08:14.740 | Now I realize that slow wave sleep and non-REM sleep

00:08:17.500 | aren't exactly the same thing.

00:08:18.940 | So for you sleep aficionados out there,

00:08:21.060 | I am lumping right now, as we say in science,

00:08:23.220 | there are lumpers and there are splitters, and I am both.

00:08:26.300 | Sometimes I lump, sometimes I split.

00:08:28.460 | For sake of clarity and ease of conversation right now,

00:08:31.800 | I'm going to be a lumper.

00:08:32.860 | So when I say slow wave sleep,

00:08:34.580 | I mean non-REM sleep generally,

00:08:36.940 | although I acknowledge there is a distinction.

00:08:39.700 | Slow wave sleep.

00:08:41.620 | So slow wave sleep is characterized

00:08:44.420 | by a particular pattern of brain activity

00:08:47.500 | in which the brain is metabolically active,

00:08:50.440 | but that there's these big sweeping waves of activity

00:08:53.380 | that include a lot of the brain.

00:08:55.800 | If you want to look this up there,

00:08:57.660 | you can find evidence for sweeping of waves

00:09:01.520 | of neural activity across association cortex,

00:09:04.820 | across big swaths of the brainstem,

00:09:07.660 | the so-called pons geniculate occipital pathway.

00:09:11.900 | This is brainstem thalamus, and then cortex

00:09:16.900 | for those of you that are interested,

00:09:18.680 | although more of that is going to occur in REM sleep.

00:09:21.780 | Now, the interesting thing about slow wave sleep

00:09:24.180 | are the neuromodulators that tend to be associated with it

00:09:28.120 | that are most active and least active

00:09:30.060 | during slow wave sleep, and here's why.

00:09:32.900 | To remind you, neuromodulators are these chemicals

00:09:36.380 | that act rather slowly, but their main role

00:09:39.660 | is to bias particular brain circuits to be active

00:09:42.900 | and other brain circuits to not be active.

00:09:45.020 | These are like the music playlist.

00:09:46.860 | So think of neuromodulators,

00:09:49.100 | and these come in the names of acetylcholine,

00:09:51.140 | norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine.

00:09:53.300 | Think of them as suggesting playlists on your audio device.

00:09:57.980 | So classical music is distinctly different

00:10:01.580 | in feel and tone and a number of other features

00:10:05.060 | from like third wave punk or from hip hop, right?

00:10:10.060 | So think of them as biasing toward particular genres

00:10:13.220 | of neural circuit activity, okay?

00:10:15.580 | Mellow music versus really aggressive fast music

00:10:19.020 | or rhythmic music that includes lyrics

00:10:21.820 | versus rhythmic music that doesn't include lyrics.

00:10:24.260 | That's more or less the way to think

00:10:25.980 | about these neuromodulators, and they are associated

00:10:29.180 | as a consequence with certain brain functions.

00:10:31.480 | So we know for instance, and just to review,

00:10:33.620 | acetylcholine in waking states is a neuromodulator

00:10:37.160 | that tends to amplify the activity of brain circuits

00:10:39.680 | associated with focus and attention.

00:10:42.300 | Norepinephrine is a neuromodulator

00:10:44.020 | that tends to amplify the brain circuits

00:10:45.780 | associated with alertness and the desire to move.

00:10:49.580 | Serotonin is the neuromodulator that's released

00:10:52.760 | and tends to amplify the circuits in the brain and body

00:10:55.660 | that are associated with bliss

00:10:57.380 | and the desire to remain still.

00:10:59.580 | And dopamine is the neuromodulator that's released

00:11:03.120 | and that's associated with amplification

00:11:05.620 | of the neural circuits in the brain and body

00:11:07.260 | associated with pursuing goals and pleasure and reward, okay?

00:11:11.940 | So in slow wave sleep, something really interesting happens.

00:11:16.940 | There's essentially no acetylcholine.

00:11:19.740 | Acetylcholine production and release and action

00:11:22.760 | from the two major sites, which are in the brainstem,

00:11:26.400 | which from a nucleus, it's a parabigeminal nucleus,

00:11:29.500 | if you really want to know,

00:11:30.940 | or from the forebrain, which is nucleus basalis,

00:11:34.500 | and you don't need to know these names,

00:11:35.720 | but if you like, that's why I put them out there.

00:11:38.340 | Acetylcholine production plummets.

00:11:40.840 | It's just almost to zero.

00:11:42.900 | And acetylcholine, as I just mentioned,

00:11:44.900 | is associated with focus.

00:11:46.820 | So you can think of slow wave sleep

00:11:48.440 | as these big sweeping waves of activity through the brain

00:11:51.160 | and a kind of distortion of space and time

00:11:53.640 | so that we're not really focusing on any one thing.

00:11:56.720 | Now, the other molecules that are very active at that time

00:12:01.440 | are norepinephrine, which is a little bit surprising

00:12:04.140 | 'cause normally in waking states,

00:12:05.980 | norepinephrine is going to be associated

00:12:07.800 | with a lot of alertness and the desire to move.

00:12:10.880 | But there's not a ton of norepinephrine around

00:12:13.800 | in slow wave sleep, but it is around.

00:12:15.400 | So there's something associated

00:12:16.840 | with the movement circuitry going on in slow wave sleep.

00:12:20.280 | And remember, this is happening

00:12:21.360 | mostly at the beginning of the night.

00:12:22.960 | Your sleep is dominated by slow wave sleep.

00:12:25.440 | So no acetylcholine, very little norepinephrine,

00:12:28.920 | although there is some, and a lot of serotonin.

00:12:31.680 | And serotonin, again, is associated with this desire,

00:12:34.880 | the sensation of kind of bliss or wellbeing,

00:12:37.340 | but not a lot of movement.

00:12:38.400 | And during sleep, you tend not to move.

00:12:41.120 | Now, in slow wave sleep, you can move.

00:12:43.060 | You're not paralyzed, so you can roll over.

00:12:45.600 | If people are going to sleepwalk,

00:12:47.520 | typically it's going to be during slow wave sleep.

00:12:50.300 | And what studies have shown

00:12:53.220 | through some kind of sadistic experiments

00:12:56.380 | where people are deprived specifically of slow wave sleep,

00:12:59.780 | and that can be done by waking them up

00:13:02.140 | as soon as the electrode recordings show

00:13:04.180 | that they're in slow wave sleep,

00:13:05.720 | or by chemically altering their sleep

00:13:08.360 | so that it biases them away from slow wave sleep.

00:13:11.080 | What studies have shown is that motor learning

00:13:13.600 | is generally occurring in slow wave sleep.

00:13:18.080 | So let's say the day before you go to sleep,

00:13:20.680 | you were learning some new dance move,

00:13:23.620 | or you were learning some specific motor skill,

00:13:26.300 | either a fine motor skill or a course motor skill.

00:13:29.340 | So let's say it's a new form of exercise

00:13:32.360 | or some new coordinated movements.

00:13:34.640 | This could be coordinated movement

00:13:36.360 | at the level of the fingers,

00:13:37.540 | or it could be coordinated movement

00:13:38.380 | at the level of the whole body and large limb movements.

00:13:41.520 | It could involve other people,

00:13:42.580 | or it could be a solo activity.

00:13:44.340 | Learning of those skills

00:13:47.440 | is happening primarily during slow wave sleep

00:13:50.740 | in the early part of the night.

00:13:52.600 | In addition, slow wave sleep has been shown to be important

00:13:56.060 | for the learning of detailed information.

00:13:59.200 | Now, this isn't always cognitive information.

00:14:01.360 | We're going to talk about cognitive information,

00:14:02.880 | but the studies that have been done along these lines

00:14:05.560 | involve having people learn very detailed information

00:14:09.840 | about very specific rules

00:14:11.360 | and the way that certain words are spelled.

00:14:13.680 | They tend to be challenging words.

00:14:15.360 | So if people are tested in terms of their performance

00:14:20.360 | on these types of exams

00:14:22.240 | and they're deprived of slow wave sleep,

00:14:24.440 | they tend to perform very poorly.

00:14:26.560 | So we can think of slow wave sleep

00:14:28.420 | as important for motor learning, motor skill learning,

00:14:31.880 | and for the learning of specific details

00:14:34.380 | about specific events.

00:14:36.400 | And this turns out to be fundamentally important

00:14:39.200 | because now we know that slow wave sleep

00:14:43.000 | is primarily in the early part of the night

00:14:45.040 | and motor learning is occurring primarily early in the night

00:14:48.400 | and detail learning is occurring early in the night.

00:14:51.720 | Now, for those of you that are waking up

00:14:53.440 | after only three, four hours of sleep,

00:14:55.240 | this might be informative.

00:14:56.680 | This might tell you a little something

00:14:58.560 | about what you are able to learn and not able to learn

00:15:01.320 | if that were to be the only sleep that you get,

00:15:03.660 | although hopefully that's not the only sleep that you get.

00:15:06.460 | But we're going to dive deep into how it is

00:15:09.780 | that one can maximize motor learning

00:15:12.440 | in order to extract, say, more detail information

00:15:16.520 | about coordinated movements

00:15:18.780 | and how to make them faster or slower.

00:15:20.820 | So that might be important for certain sports.

00:15:22.760 | It might be almost certainly important for certain sports.

00:15:25.820 | It's going to be important for any kind

00:15:29.400 | of coordinated movement, like say learning to play the piano,

00:15:32.160 | or for instance, how to learn synchronized movements

00:15:37.160 | with somebody else.

00:15:38.580 | So maybe I mentioned the example of dance earlier.

00:15:41.420 | If you, like me, a few years ago,

00:15:43.760 | I set out to learn tango

00:15:45.620 | because I have some Argentine relatives and I was abysmal.

00:15:49.300 | I need to return to that at some point.

00:15:51.300 | I was just abysmal.

00:15:53.700 | And one of the worst things

00:15:54.840 | about being abysmal at learning dance

00:15:56.260 | is that there's somebody else

00:15:57.100 | has to suffer the consequences also.

00:15:59.140 | So I don't know, maybe in a month on neuroplasticity,

00:16:02.920 | I'll explore that again as a self-experimentation.

00:16:06.180 | But the key things to know are slow-wave sleeps involved

00:16:09.260 | in motor learning and detailed learning.

00:16:11.820 | There's no acetylcholine around at that time,

00:16:14.340 | has this big amplitude activity

00:16:16.500 | sweeping throughout the brain.

00:16:18.060 | And that there's the release of these neuromodulators,

00:16:20.620 | norepinephrine and serotonin.

00:16:23.040 | And again, that's all happening early in the night.

00:16:25.740 | So athletes, people that are concerned about performance,

00:16:29.640 | if you happen to wake up after just a couple hours

00:16:32.800 | of three, four hours of sleep

00:16:35.100 | because you're excited about a competition the next day,

00:16:38.120 | presumably if you've already trained the skills

00:16:42.000 | that you need for the event,

00:16:43.460 | you should be fine to engage in that particular activity.

00:16:47.380 | Now, it's always going to be better

00:16:49.260 | to get a full night's sleep.

00:16:51.180 | And a full night's sleep for you is six hours,

00:16:53.880 | then it's always going to be better

00:16:55.060 | to get more sleep than it is to get less.

00:16:57.780 | However, I think some people get a little bit

00:17:01.960 | overly concerned that if they didn't get

00:17:03.560 | their full night's sleep before some sort of physical event,

00:17:06.220 | that their performance is going to plummet.

00:17:07.840 | Presumably if you've already learned what you need to do

00:17:11.140 | and it's stored in your neural circuits

00:17:13.700 | and you know how to make those coordinated movements,

00:17:15.740 | what the literature on slow wave sleep suggests

00:17:17.680 | is that you would be replenished,

00:17:19.280 | that the motor learning and the recovery from exercise

00:17:21.780 | is going to happen early in the night.

00:17:24.340 | So we'll just pause there and kind of shelve that

00:17:27.000 | for a moment and then we're going to come back to it.

00:17:28.900 | But I want to talk about REM sleep

00:17:30.620 | or rapid eye movement sleep.

00:17:32.740 | REM sleep and rapid eye movement sleep,

00:17:35.520 | as I mentioned before, occurs throughout the night,

00:17:37.960 | but you're going to have more of it.

00:17:39.460 | A larger percentage of these 90 minute sleep cycles

00:17:42.000 | is going to be comprised of REM sleep

00:17:44.020 | as you get toward morning.

00:17:46.600 | REM sleep is fascinating.

00:17:48.160 | It was discovered in the '50s

00:17:49.680 | when a sleep laboratory in Chicago,

00:17:53.000 | the researchers observed that people's eyes

00:17:55.260 | were moving under their eyelids.

00:17:56.840 | Now, something very important that we're going to address

00:18:00.100 | when we talk about trauma later

00:18:02.480 | is that the eye movements are not just side to side,

00:18:05.360 | they're very erratic in all different directions.

00:18:08.040 | One thing that I don't think anyone,

00:18:09.760 | I've never heard anyone really talk about publicly

00:18:11.940 | is why eye movements during sleep, right?

00:18:15.120 | Eyes are closed and sometimes people's eyelids

00:18:17.040 | will be a little bit open and their eyes are darting around,

00:18:18.940 | especially in little kids.

00:18:20.200 | I don't suggest you do this.

00:18:21.460 | I'm not even sure it's ethical,

00:18:22.560 | but it has been done where you pull back the eyelids

00:18:25.160 | of a kid while they're sleeping

00:18:26.120 | and their eyes are kind of darting all over the place.

00:18:28.200 | I think people do this to their passed out friends

00:18:29.960 | at parties and things like that.

00:18:31.280 | So again, I don't suggest you do it,

00:18:33.400 | but I'm telling you it because it's been done before

00:18:35.960 | and therefore you don't have to do it again.

00:18:38.480 | But rapid eye movement sleep is fascinating

00:18:41.600 | and occurs because there are connections

00:18:44.200 | between the brainstem, an area called the pons,

00:18:48.240 | and areas of the thalamus and the top of the brainstem

00:18:52.880 | that are involved in generating movements

00:18:55.420 | in different directions, sometimes called saccades.

00:18:57.520 | Although sometimes during rapid eye movement sleep,

00:18:59.360 | it's not just rapid, it's kind of a jittery side to side

00:19:01.880 | thing and then the eyeballs kind of roll.

00:19:03.520 | It's really pretty creepy to look at if you see.

00:19:06.080 | So what's happening there is the circuitry

00:19:09.600 | that is involved in conscious eye movements

00:19:11.400 | is kind of going haywire, but it's not haywire.

00:19:13.540 | It's these waves of activity from the brainstem

00:19:17.180 | up to the so-called thalamus,

00:19:18.680 | which is an area that filters sensory information

00:19:21.560 | and then up to the cortex.

00:19:23.520 | And the cortex, of course,

00:19:24.840 | is involved in conscious perceptions.

00:19:27.440 | So in rapid eye movement sleep,

00:19:29.500 | there are a couple of things that are happening

00:19:30.740 | besides rapid eye movements.

00:19:33.320 | The main ones are that they're, I should say,

00:19:36.440 | in contrast to slow wave sleep.

00:19:39.180 | In REM sleep, serotonin is essentially absent, okay?

00:19:44.180 | So this molecule, this neuromodulator

00:19:46.900 | that tends to create the feeling of bliss and wellbeing

00:19:49.920 | and just calm, placidity is absent, all right?

00:19:54.840 | So that's interesting.

00:19:56.320 | In addition to that, norepinephrine,

00:19:59.920 | this molecule that's involved in movement and alertness

00:20:02.660 | is absolutely absent.

00:20:04.320 | It's probably one of the few times in our life

00:20:09.020 | that epinephrine is essentially at zero activity

00:20:12.820 | within our system.

00:20:14.000 | And that has a number of very important implications

00:20:17.020 | for the sorts of dreaming that occur during REM sleep

00:20:20.640 | and the sorts of learning that can occur

00:20:23.160 | in REM sleep and unlearning.

00:20:24.500 | First of all, in REM sleep, we are paralyzed.

00:20:27.440 | We are experiencing what's called atonia,

00:20:30.360 | which just means that we're completely laid out

00:20:32.760 | and paralyzed.

00:20:34.040 | We also tend to experience whatever it is

00:20:36.920 | that we're dreaming about as a kind of hallucination

00:20:40.540 | or a hallucinatory activity.

00:20:42.640 | Long ago, I looked into hallucinations and dreaming.

00:20:47.480 | I was just fascinated by this in high school.

00:20:49.760 | And there's some great books on this if you're interested

00:20:51.840 | in exploring the relationship between hallucinations

00:20:55.120 | and dreaming, the most famous of which are from a guy,

00:20:58.700 | researcher at Harvard, Alan Hobson.

00:21:02.400 | I wrote a book called "Dream Drugstore"

00:21:05.480 | and talked all about the similarities between drugs

00:21:07.680 | that induce hallucinations and dreaming in REM.

00:21:10.500 | So you can explore that if you like.

00:21:12.440 | So in REM, our eyes are moving,

00:21:14.460 | but the rest of our body is paralyzed

00:21:16.560 | and we are hallucinating.

00:21:18.280 | There's no epinephrine around.

00:21:21.000 | Epinephrine doesn't just create a desire

00:21:24.040 | to move and alertness.

00:21:25.700 | It is also the chemical signature of fear and anxiety.

00:21:30.700 | It's what's released from our adrenal glands

00:21:34.780 | when we experience something that's fearful or alerting.

00:21:38.560 | So if a car suddenly screeches in front of us

00:21:40.620 | or we get a troubling text message,

00:21:42.840 | adrenaline is deployed into our system.

00:21:44.600 | Adrenaline is epinephrine.

00:21:46.120 | Those are equivalent molecules.

00:21:48.440 | And epinephrine isn't just released from our adrenals.

00:21:51.200 | It's also released within our brain.

00:21:53.320 | So there's this weird stage of our life

00:21:56.560 | that happens more toward morning that we call REM sleep

00:22:00.000 | where we're hallucinating

00:22:02.340 | and having these outrageous experiences in our mind,

00:22:05.840 | but the chemical that's associated with fear and panic

00:22:10.160 | and anxiety is not available to us.

00:22:13.560 | And that turns out to be very important.

00:22:16.880 | And you can imagine why that's important.

00:22:19.040 | It's important because it allows us to experience things,

00:22:23.640 | both replay of things that did occur

00:22:26.440 | as well as elaborate contortions of things

00:22:29.240 | that didn't occur.

00:22:31.080 | And it allows us to experience those

00:22:33.160 | in the absence of fear and anxiety.

00:22:36.520 | And that it turns out is very important

00:22:39.760 | for adjusting our emotional relationship

00:22:42.460 | to challenging things that happened to us

00:22:44.980 | while we were awake.

00:22:46.800 | Those challenging things can sometimes be in the form

00:22:49.600 | of social anxiety or just having been working very hard

00:22:54.480 | or concern about an upcoming event.

00:22:56.960 | Or sometimes people report, for instance,

00:22:59.480 | dreams where they find themselves late to an exam

00:23:02.560 | or naked in public or in some sort of situation

00:23:07.560 | that would be very troubling to them.

00:23:10.240 | And that almost certainly occurs during REM sleep.

00:23:14.900 | So we have this incredible period of sleep

00:23:17.920 | in which our experience of emotionally laden events

00:23:22.400 | is dissociated, it's chemically blocked

00:23:25.640 | from us having the actual emotion.

00:23:28.940 | Now, probably immediately some of you are thinking,

00:23:31.380 | well, what about nightmares?

00:23:32.320 | I have nightmares and those carry a lot of emotion

00:23:34.500 | or sometimes I'll wake up in a panic.

00:23:36.460 | Let's consider each of those two things separately

00:23:38.520 | because they are important in understanding REM sleep.

00:23:42.660 | There's a good chance that nightmares are occurring

00:23:45.820 | during slow wave sleep.

00:23:47.880 | There are actually some drugs

00:23:49.720 | that I don't suggest people take,

00:23:51.080 | in fact, so much so I'm not going to mention them,

00:23:53.240 | that give people very kind of scary or eerie dreams

00:23:58.240 | and this kind of feeling that things are pursuing them

00:24:02.060 | or that they can't move when they are being chased.

00:24:06.480 | That's actually a common dream that I've had

00:24:08.060 | as I guess it's more or less a nightmare,

00:24:10.180 | the feeling that one is paralyzed and can't move

00:24:12.720 | and is being chased.

00:24:13.560 | A lot of people have said,

00:24:14.660 | oh, that must be in REM sleep because you're paralyzed

00:24:17.580 | and so you're dreaming about being paralyzed

00:24:19.280 | and you can't move.

00:24:20.580 | I think that's probably false.

00:24:22.060 | The research says that because norepinephrine

00:24:24.800 | is absent during REM sleep,

00:24:26.320 | it's very unlikely that you can have

00:24:27.600 | these intense fearful memories.

00:24:29.740 | So those are probably occurring in slow wave sleep.

00:24:32.240 | Although there might be instances

00:24:33.520 | where people have nightmares in REM sleep.

00:24:36.260 | The other thing is some people experience,

00:24:39.440 | certainly I've had this experience of waking up

00:24:42.240 | and feeling very stressed about whatever it was

00:24:45.620 | that I happened to be thinking about

00:24:46.940 | or dreaming about in the moments before.

00:24:49.660 | And that's an interesting case of an invasion

00:24:53.060 | of the dream state into the waking state.

00:24:55.740 | And the moment you wake up, epinephrine is available.

00:24:59.300 | So the research on this isn't fully crystallized,

00:25:02.640 | but most of it points in the direction

00:25:05.020 | of the experience of waking up and feeling very panicked,

00:25:09.220 | maybe, I wanna highlight may,

00:25:11.560 | but maybe that you were experiencing something

00:25:14.700 | that was troubling in the daytime,

00:25:17.580 | you're repeating that experience in your sleep.

00:25:20.160 | Epinephrine is not available

00:25:21.680 | and therefore the brain circuits associated

00:25:24.160 | with fear and anxiety are shut off

00:25:27.160 | and so you're able to process those events.

00:25:29.860 | And then suddenly you wake up

00:25:31.360 | and there's a surge of adrenaline of epinephrine

00:25:34.240 | that's now coupled to that experience.

00:25:36.360 | So nightmares very likely in slow wave sleep

00:25:39.040 | and that kind of panic on waking from something

00:25:41.700 | very likely to be an invasion of the thoughts and ideas,

00:25:45.360 | however distorted in REM sleep invading the waking state.

00:25:49.920 | In fact, that brings to mind something

00:25:52.260 | that I've mentioned once before,

00:25:53.440 | but I wanna mention again, this atonia,

00:25:55.720 | this paralysis that we experienced during sleep

00:25:58.360 | can invade the waking state.

00:26:00.320 | Many people report the experience of waking up

00:26:03.880 | and being paralyzed.

00:26:05.480 | They're legitimately waking up, it's not a dream.

00:26:07.880 | Waking up and being paralyzed and it is terrifying.

00:26:11.720 | I've had this happen before.

00:26:13.040 | It is, I can tell you, terrifying to be wide awake

00:26:16.520 | and as far as I could tell, fully conscious,

00:26:19.500 | but unable to move.

00:26:21.040 | And then generally you can jolt yourself out of it

00:26:23.620 | in a few seconds, but it is quite frightening.

00:26:26.640 | Now, some people actually experience waking up,

00:26:30.820 | being fully paralyzed and hallucinating.

00:26:34.320 | And there is a theory in the academic

00:26:37.680 | and scientific community at least,

00:26:39.420 | that what people report as alien abductions

00:26:42.460 | have a certain number of core characteristics

00:26:45.400 | that map quite closely, eerily similarly

00:26:48.640 | to these experiences.

00:26:50.920 | A lot of reports of alien induction

00:26:52.760 | involve people being unable to move,

00:26:55.040 | seeing particular faces, hallucinating extensively,

00:26:59.360 | feeling like their body is floating

00:27:00.840 | or they were transported.

00:27:03.000 | This is very similar to the experience

00:27:05.960 | of invasion of atonia into the waking state,

00:27:08.520 | waking up and still being paralyzed,

00:27:10.440 | as well as the hallucinations that are characteristic

00:27:13.420 | of dreaming in REM sleep.

00:27:15.140 | Now, I'm not saying that people's alien abductions

00:27:18.900 | were not legitimate alien abductions, how could I?

00:27:21.120 | I wasn't there and if I was there, I wouldn't tell you

00:27:24.840 | 'cause that would make me an alien

00:27:26.460 | and I wouldn't want you to know.

00:27:28.180 | But it is quite possible that people are experiencing

00:27:32.880 | these things and they are an invasion of the sleep state

00:27:35.980 | into the waking state and they can last several minutes

00:27:38.800 | or longer and because in dreams,

00:27:40.980 | space and time are distorted,

00:27:42.640 | our perception of these events could be

00:27:44.520 | that they lasted many hours and we can really feel

00:27:47.340 | as if they lasted many hours when in fact,

00:27:49.840 | they took only moments.

00:27:51.160 | And we're going to return to distortion of space and time

00:27:53.260 | in a little bit.

00:27:54.480 | So to just recap where we've gone so far,

00:27:58.680 | slow wave sleep early in the night,

00:28:00.920 | it's been shown to be important for motor learning

00:28:03.720 | and for detail learning.

00:28:05.640 | REM sleep has a certain dream component

00:28:08.480 | when which there's no epinephrine,

00:28:10.520 | therefore we can't experience anxiety, we are paralyzed.

00:28:13.800 | Those dreams tend to be really vivid

00:28:16.280 | and have a lot of detail to them.

00:28:18.520 | And yet in REM sleep, what's very clear is that the sorts

00:28:22.640 | of learning that happen in REM sleep are not motor events,

00:28:25.720 | it's more about unlearning of emotional events.

00:28:29.120 | And now we know why, because the chemicals available

00:28:31.480 | for really feeling those emotions are not present.

00:28:36.480 | Now that has very important implications.

00:28:40.880 | So let's address those implications from two sides.

00:28:43.560 | First of all, we should ask what happens

00:28:45.320 | if we don't get enough REM sleep?

00:28:47.380 | And a scenario that happens a lot

00:28:49.640 | where people don't get enough REM sleep is the following.

00:28:52.680 | I'll just explain the one that I'm familiar with

00:28:55.020 | 'cause it happens to me a lot,

00:28:56.640 | although I figured out ways to adjust.

00:28:59.940 | I go to sleep around 10, 30, 11 o'clock,

00:29:02.880 | I fall asleep very easily,

00:29:04.560 | and then I wake up around three or 4 a.m.

00:29:08.480 | I now know to use a NSDR, a non-sleep deep rest protocol,

00:29:12.960 | and that allows me to fall back asleep.

00:29:15.000 | Even though it's called non-sleep deep rest,

00:29:16.680 | it really allows me to relax my body and brain

00:29:19.400 | and I tend to fall back asleep and sleep till about 7 a.m.

00:29:22.700 | during which time I get a lot of REM sleep.

00:29:26.320 | And I know this because I've measured it

00:29:28.400 | and I know this because my dreams tend to be very intense

00:29:31.240 | of the sort that we know is typical of REM sleep.

00:29:34.520 | In this scenario,

00:29:37.700 | I've gotten my slow wave sleep early in the night

00:29:40.580 | and I've got my REM sleep toward morning.

00:29:42.640 | However, there are times when I don't go back to sleep.

00:29:46.040 | Maybe I have a flight to catch, that's happened.

00:29:48.000 | Sometimes I've got a lot on my mind

00:29:49.340 | and I don't go back to sleep.

00:29:50.800 | I can tell you, and you've probably experienced it,

00:29:53.920 | that the lack of REM sleep tends to make people

00:29:56.860 | emotionally irritable.

00:29:58.500 | It tends to make us feel as if the little things

00:30:01.480 | are the big things.

00:30:02.820 | So it's very clear from laboratory studies

00:30:05.920 | where people have been deprived selectively of REM sleep

00:30:09.560 | that our emotionality tends to get a little bit unhinged

00:30:12.960 | and we tend to catastrophize small things.

00:30:16.040 | We tend to feel like the world is really daunting.

00:30:19.800 | We're never going to move forward in the ways that we want.

00:30:22.300 | We can't unlearn the emotional components

00:30:24.560 | of whatever it is that's been happening,

00:30:26.520 | even if it's not traumatic.

00:30:28.780 | The other thing that happens in REM sleep

00:30:30.540 | is a replay of certain types of spatial information

00:30:34.260 | about where we were and why we were in those places.

00:30:37.220 | And this maps to some beautiful data and studies

00:30:40.180 | that were initiated by a guy named Matt Wilson at MIT

00:30:43.780 | years ago showing that in rodents,

00:30:45.980 | and it turns out in other non-human primates and in humans,

00:30:49.340 | there's a replay of spatial information during REM sleep

00:30:52.980 | that almost precisely maps to the activity

00:30:56.460 | that we experienced during the day

00:30:57.560 | as we move from one place to another.

00:30:59.260 | So here's a common world scenario.

00:31:00.900 | You go to a new place,

00:31:02.700 | you navigate through that city or that environment.

00:31:05.600 | This place doesn't have to be at the scale of a city.

00:31:08.040 | It can be a new building,

00:31:09.280 | could be finding particular rooms, new social interaction.

00:31:12.940 | You experience that and if it's important enough,

00:31:16.520 | that becomes solidified a few days later

00:31:19.360 | and you won't forget it.

00:31:20.320 | If it's unimportant, you'll probably forget it.

00:31:23.480 | During REM sleep, there's a literal replay

00:31:26.680 | of the exact firing of the neurons that occurred

00:31:29.660 | while you were navigating that same city

00:31:31.480 | you're building earlier.

00:31:32.720 | So REM sleep seems to be involved in the generation

00:31:35.760 | of this detailed spatial information.

00:31:38.680 | But what is it that's actually happening in REM sleep?

00:31:42.980 | So there's this uncoupling of emotion,

00:31:44.880 | but most of all what's happening in REM sleep

00:31:47.320 | is that we're forming a relationship

00:31:49.680 | with particular rules or algorithms.

00:31:52.740 | We're starting to figure out based on all the experience

00:31:56.060 | that we had during the day,

00:31:57.400 | whether or not it's important that we avoid certain people

00:32:00.560 | or that we approach certain people.

00:32:01.940 | Whether or not it's important that when we enter a building

00:32:06.200 | that we go into the elevator and turn left

00:32:09.660 | where the bathroom is, for instance.

00:32:11.140 | These general themes of things and locations

00:32:13.780 | and how they fit together.

00:32:15.360 | And that has a word, it's called meaning.

00:32:18.160 | During our day, we're experiencing all sorts of things.

00:32:20.600 | Meaning is how we each individually piece together

00:32:25.600 | the relevance of one thing to the next, right?

00:32:28.560 | So if I suddenly told you that this pen

00:32:32.320 | was downloading all the information to my brain

00:32:34.720 | that was important to deliver this information,

00:32:36.900 | you'd probably think I was a pretty strange character

00:32:38.980 | because typically we don't think of pens

00:32:40.700 | as downloading information into brains.

00:32:43.040 | But if I told you that I was getting information

00:32:44.940 | from my computer that was allowing me to say things to you,

00:32:49.260 | you'd say, well, that's perfectly reasonable.

00:32:50.820 | And that's because we have a clear

00:32:52.560 | and agreed upon association with computers

00:32:54.780 | and information and memory.

00:32:57.040 | And we don't have that same association with pens.

00:33:00.180 | You might say, well, duh.

00:33:01.660 | But something in our brain

00:33:05.260 | needs to solidify those relationships

00:33:07.340 | and make sure that certain relationships don't exist.

00:33:10.380 | And it appears that REM sleep is important for that

00:33:12.580 | because when you deprive yourself or people of REM,

00:33:16.020 | they start seeing odd associations.

00:33:18.300 | They tend to lump or batch things.

00:33:20.960 | I know this from my own experience,

00:33:22.600 | if I've ever been sleep deprived,

00:33:24.020 | which unfortunately happens too often

00:33:25.700 | because I'm terrible with deadlines, pull an all-nighter,

00:33:29.660 | the word the starts to look like it's spelled incorrectly.

00:33:33.420 | And the is a very simple word to spell,

00:33:36.240 | but things start to look a little distorted.

00:33:38.960 | And we know that if people are deprived of REM sleep

00:33:42.020 | for very long periods of time, they start hallucinating.

00:33:44.820 | They literally start seeing relationships

00:33:47.660 | and movement of objects that isn't happening.

00:33:50.340 | And so REM sleep is really where we establish

00:33:53.620 | the emotional load, but where we also start discarding

00:33:57.100 | of all the meanings that are irrelevant.

00:33:59.260 | And if you think about emotionality,

00:34:01.380 | a lot of over-emotionality or catastrophizing

00:34:05.360 | is about seeing problems everywhere.

00:34:07.920 | And you could imagine why that might occur

00:34:09.980 | if you start linking the web of your experience

00:34:12.900 | too extensively.

00:34:14.160 | It's very important in order to have healthy emotional

00:34:17.120 | and cognitive functioning, that we have fairly narrow

00:34:19.820 | channels between individual things.

00:34:21.580 | If we see something on the news that's very troubling,

00:34:24.260 | well, then it makes sense to be very troubled.

00:34:26.580 | But if we're troubled by everything

00:34:28.120 | and we start just saying, everything is bothering me

00:34:30.560 | and I'm feeling highly irritable

00:34:32.020 | and everything's just distorting and troubling me,

00:34:35.140 | chances are we are not actively removing the meaning,

00:34:40.140 | the connectivity between life experiences

00:34:42.940 | as well as we could.

00:34:43.860 | And that almost always maps back to a deficit in REM sleep.

00:34:48.100 | So REM sleep is powerful and has this amazing capacity

00:34:52.180 | to eliminate the meanings that don't matter.

00:34:56.380 | It's not that it exacerbates the meanings that do matter,

00:34:59.580 | but it eliminates the meanings that don't matter.

00:35:01.900 | And that bears a striking resemblance

00:35:04.420 | to what happens early in development.

00:35:06.840 | This isn't a discussion about early in development,

00:35:09.300 | but early in development, the reason a baby

00:35:11.440 | can't generate coordinated movements

00:35:13.620 | and the reason why children can get very emotional

00:35:17.080 | about what seems like trivial events

00:35:19.020 | or what adults know to be trivial events,

00:35:20.780 | like, oh, the ice cream shop is closed

00:35:23.180 | and they just kind of, and then the kid just dissolves

00:35:25.340 | into a puddle of tears and the parents go,

00:35:28.900 | okay, well, it'll be open again another time.

00:35:31.580 | Children, one of the reasons that they can't

00:35:34.620 | generate coordinated movement or place that event

00:35:37.380 | of the ice cream shop being closed into a larger context

00:35:40.540 | is because they have too much connectivity.

00:35:42.940 | And much of the maturation of the brain and nervous system

00:35:45.700 | that brings us to the point of being emotionally stable,

00:35:48.580 | reasonable, rational human beings

00:35:50.780 | is about elimination of connections between things.

00:35:54.040 | So REM sleep seems to be where we uncouple

00:35:57.360 | the potential for emotionality between various experiences.

00:36:02.360 | And that brings us to the absolutely fundamental relationship

00:36:07.440 | and similarity of REM sleep to some of the clinical practices

00:36:12.440 | that have been designed to eliminate emotionality

00:36:15.120 | and help people move through trauma

00:36:17.360 | and other troubling experiences,

00:36:19.240 | whether or not those troubling experiences

00:36:20.860 | are a death in the family or of a close loved one,

00:36:24.160 | something terrible that happened to you or somebody else,

00:36:26.740 | or an entire childhood or some event

00:36:30.600 | that in your mind and body is felt as

00:36:33.740 | and experienced as bad, terrible, or concerning.

00:36:37.460 | Many of you perhaps have heard of trauma treatments

00:36:40.560 | such as EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing,

00:36:45.560 | or ketamine treatment for trauma,

00:36:49.700 | something that recently became legal

00:36:51.700 | and is in fairly widespread clinical use.

00:36:56.220 | Interestingly enough, EMDR and ketamine

00:36:59.740 | at kind of a core level,

00:37:01.660 | bear very similar features to REM sleep.

00:37:06.660 | So let's talk about EMDR first.

00:37:09.700 | EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing,

00:37:12.760 | is something that was developed by a psychologist,

00:37:15.060 | Francine Shapiro.

00:37:17.000 | She actually was in Palo Alto.

00:37:18.740 | And the story goes that she was walking,

00:37:25.040 | not so incidentally in the trees and forest behind Stanford,

00:37:29.580 | and she was recalling a troubling event in her own mind.

00:37:32.580 | So this would be from her own life.

00:37:34.500 | And she realized that as she was walking,

00:37:36.700 | the emotional load of that experience

00:37:38.700 | was not as intense or severe.

00:37:41.220 | She extrapolated from that experience

00:37:46.620 | of walking and not feeling as stressed

00:37:49.460 | about the stressful event

00:37:51.060 | to a practice that she put into work with her clients,

00:37:54.740 | with her patients,

00:37:56.160 | and that now has become fairly widespread.

00:37:58.680 | It's actually one of the few behavior treatments

00:38:02.260 | that are approved by the American Psychological Association

00:38:04.920 | for the treatment of trauma.

00:38:06.320 | What she had her clients and patients do

00:38:10.580 | was move their eyes from side to side

00:38:13.640 | while recounting some traumatic or troubling event.

00:38:17.020 | Now this was of course in the clinic,

00:38:18.720 | and I'm guessing that she removed the walking component

00:38:21.160 | and just took the eye movement component to the clinic

00:38:24.280 | because while it would be nice to go on therapy sessions

00:38:27.960 | with your therapist and take walks,

00:38:29.300 | it has, there are certain boundaries to that

00:38:31.960 | such as confidentiality.

00:38:34.200 | If there are a lot of people around,

00:38:35.520 | the person might not feel as open to discussing things

00:38:38.360 | or weather barriers and things like that.

00:38:40.880 | If it's raining or hailing outside, it gets tough to do.

00:38:43.680 | Why eye movements?

00:38:46.420 | Well, she never really said why eye movements,

00:38:49.100 | but soon I'll tell you why the decision

00:38:52.720 | to select these lateralized eye movements

00:38:55.160 | for the work in the clinic was the right one.

00:38:58.280 | So these eye movements, they look silly.

00:39:00.960 | I'll do them because that's why I'm here.

00:39:04.060 | They look silly, but they basically involve

00:39:07.360 | sitting in a chair and moving one's eyes from side to side,

00:39:10.880 | not while talking, but for me,

00:39:14.360 | and then recounting the events.

00:39:17.120 | So it's sometimes talking while moving the eyes,

00:39:19.720 | but usually it was moving the eyes from side to side

00:39:21.640 | for 30, 60 seconds,

00:39:23.140 | then describing this challenging procedure.

00:39:26.440 | Now, as a vision scientist who also works on stress,

00:39:31.360 | when I first heard this, I thought it was crazy, frankly.

00:39:36.600 | People would ask me about EMDR

00:39:38.280 | and I just thought, that's crazy.

00:39:40.040 | I went and looked up some of the theories

00:39:41.600 | about why EMDR might work.

00:39:43.860 | And there were a bunch of theories.

00:39:46.360 | Oh, it mimics the eye movements during REM sleep.

00:39:49.240 | That was one, turns out that's not true.

00:39:51.680 | And I'll explain why.

00:39:53.080 | The other one was, oh, it synchronizes the activity

00:39:55.740 | on the two sides of the brain.

00:39:57.480 | Well, sort of, I mean, when you look into both sides

00:40:00.360 | of the binocular visual field,

00:40:01.600 | you activate the visual cortex,

00:40:03.120 | but this whole idea of synchrony

00:40:05.500 | between the two sides of the brain

00:40:06.860 | is something that I think modern neuroscience

00:40:08.640 | is starting to, let's just say gently or not so gently,

00:40:13.640 | move away from this whole right brain, left brain business.

00:40:18.880 | It turns out, however, that eye movements of the sort

00:40:21.760 | that I just did and that Francine Shapiro took

00:40:24.160 | from this walk experience and brought to her clients

00:40:26.600 | in the clinic are the sorts of eye movements

00:40:30.700 | that you generate whenever you're moving through space,

00:40:33.180 | when you are self-generating that movement.

00:40:35.520 | So not so much when you're driving a car,

00:40:37.840 | but certainly if you were riding a bicycle

00:40:39.640 | or you were walking or you were running,

00:40:41.680 | you don't realize it,

00:40:42.520 | but you have these reflexive subconscious eye movements

00:40:44.780 | that go from side to side.

00:40:46.600 | And they are associated with the motor system.

00:40:49.240 | So when you move forward, your eyes go like this.

00:40:52.080 | There've been a number of studies showing

00:40:53.660 | that these lateralized eye movements helped people

00:40:56.780 | move through or dissociate the emotional experience

00:41:00.340 | of particular traumas with those experiences

00:41:03.720 | such that they could recall those experiences

00:41:06.160 | after the treatment and not feel stressed about them

00:41:09.400 | or they didn't report them as traumatic any longer.

00:41:12.160 | Now, the success rate wasn't 100%,

00:41:14.080 | but they were statistically significant in a number of studies

00:41:17.480 | and yet there are still some critics of EMDR

00:41:20.200 | and frankly, for a long time, I still thought,

00:41:23.040 | well, I don't know, this just seems like kind of a hack.

00:41:25.420 | It just seems like kind of a,

00:41:26.920 | this is something that for which we don't know the mechanism

00:41:28.840 | and we can't explain.

00:41:30.080 | But in the last five years,

00:41:33.760 | there have been no fewer than five

00:41:36.400 | and there's a sixth on the way,

00:41:37.960 | high quality peer-reviewed manuscripts published

00:41:40.680 | in Journal of Neuroscience, Neuron, Cell Press Journal,

00:41:44.580 | Excellent Journal, Nature, Excellent Journal.

00:41:48.520 | These are very stringent journals and papers

00:41:51.520 | showing that lateralized eye movements

00:41:53.680 | of the sort that I just did,

00:41:55.100 | and if you're just listening to this,

00:41:56.160 | it's just sweep that moving the eyes from side to side

00:41:58.280 | with eyes open, that those eye movements,

00:42:00.800 | but not vertical eye movements,

00:42:02.960 | suppress the activity of the amygdala,

00:42:06.560 | which is this brain region that is involved

00:42:09.760 | in threat detection, stress, anxiety, and fear.

00:42:14.280 | There are some forms of fear that are not amygdala dependent,

00:42:16.540 | but the amygdala, it's not a fear center,

00:42:19.260 | but it is critical for the fear response

00:42:23.560 | and for the experience of anxiety.

00:42:25.480 | So that's interesting.

00:42:26.380 | We've got a clinical tool now

00:42:29.360 | that indeed shows a lot of success

00:42:32.080 | in a good number of people,

00:42:33.820 | where eye movements from side to side

00:42:36.000 | are suppressing the amygdala.

00:42:37.360 | And the general theme is to use those eye movements

00:42:40.180 | to suppress the fear response

00:42:42.120 | and then to recount or repeat the experience

00:42:46.260 | and over time uncouple the heavy emotional load,

00:42:50.240 | the sadness, the depression, the anxiety,

00:42:52.160 | the fear from whatever it was that happened

00:42:55.000 | that was traumatic.

00:42:56.320 | This is important to understand

00:42:58.000 | because I'd love to be able to tell somebody

00:43:01.400 | who had a traumatic experience

00:43:02.720 | that they would forget that experience.

00:43:04.640 | But the truth is you never forget the traumatic experience.

00:43:07.640 | What you do is you remove the emotional load.

00:43:10.040 | Eventually it really does lose its potency.

00:43:13.980 | The emotional potency is alleviated.

00:43:16.600 | Now, EMDR, I should just mention,

00:43:19.100 | tends to be most successful for single event

00:43:21.800 | or very specific kinds of trauma that happen over and over

00:43:25.000 | as opposed to say an entire childhood or an entire divorce.

00:43:29.040 | They tend to be, it tends to be most effective

00:43:31.900 | for single event kinds of things, car crashes, et cetera,

00:43:35.580 | where people can really recall the events

00:43:37.940 | in quite a lot of detail.

00:43:39.940 | So it's not for everybody and it should be done,

00:43:42.840 | if it's going to be done for trauma,

00:43:44.380 | it should be done in a clinical setting

00:43:46.100 | with somebody who's certified to do this.

00:43:49.040 | But that bears a lot of resemblance to REM sleep, right?

00:43:52.120 | This experience in our sleep where our eyes are moving,

00:43:55.400 | moving, excuse me, although in a different way,

00:43:57.900 | but we don't have the chemical epinephrine

00:44:00.580 | in order to generate the fear response

00:44:02.820 | and yet we're remembering the event

00:44:04.840 | from the previous day or days.

00:44:06.780 | Sometimes in REM sleep,

00:44:07.740 | we think about things that happened a long, long time ago.

00:44:10.740 | So that's interesting.

00:44:12.260 | And then now there's this new treatment,

00:44:14.100 | this chemical treatment with the drug ketamine,

00:44:17.540 | which also bears a lot of resemblance

00:44:20.100 | to the sorts of things that happen in REM sleep.

00:44:23.820 | Ketamine is getting a lot of attention now

00:44:26.340 | and I think a lot of people

00:44:27.300 | just don't realize what ketamine is.

00:44:29.860 | Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic.

00:44:33.460 | It is remarkably similar to the drug called PCP,

00:44:38.440 | which is certainly a hazardous drug for people to use.

00:44:43.440 | Ketamine and PCP both function to disrupt the activity

00:44:48.980 | of a particular receptor in the brain

00:44:51.560 | called the NMDA receptor, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor.

00:44:56.820 | This is a receptor that's in the surface of neurons

00:45:00.140 | or on the surface of neurons

00:45:01.700 | for which most of the time it's not active.

00:45:05.580 | But when something very extreme happens

00:45:09.220 | and there's a lot of activity in the neural pathway

00:45:11.780 | that impinges on that receptor,

00:45:13.860 | it opens and it allows the entry of molecules, ions,

00:45:18.860 | that trigger a cellular process

00:45:22.340 | that we call long-term potentiation.

00:45:24.840 | And long-term potentiation translates

00:45:27.060 | to a change in connectivity

00:45:29.240 | so that later you don't need that intense event

00:45:32.200 | for the neuron to become active again.

00:45:34.780 | Let me clarify a little bit of this.

00:45:36.400 | The NMDA receptor is gated by intense experience.

00:45:40.260 | One way you can think about this

00:45:42.040 | is typically I walk in my home,

00:45:43.760 | I might make some food and sit down at my kitchen table

00:45:46.580 | and I don't think anything about explosions.

00:45:50.920 | But were I to come home one night,

00:45:52.620 | sit down to a bowl of chicken soup

00:45:54.660 | and there was a massive explosion,

00:45:57.500 | the neurons that are associated with chicken soup

00:45:59.580 | in my kitchen table would be active

00:46:02.280 | in a way that was different than they were previously

00:46:05.640 | and would be coupled to this experience of explosions

00:46:08.700 | such that the next time and perhaps every other time

00:46:12.260 | that I go to sit down at the kitchen table,

00:46:13.820 | no matter how rational I am

00:46:15.740 | about the origins of that explosion,

00:46:17.480 | maybe it was a gas truck that was down the road

00:46:19.980 | and there's no reason to think it's there today,

00:46:21.420 | but I would have the same experience.

00:46:23.560 | Those neurons would become active

00:46:24.780 | and I'd get an increase in heart rate,

00:46:26.500 | I'd get an increase in sweating, et cetera.

00:46:29.300 | Ketamine blocks this NMDA receptor

00:46:32.500 | and prevents that crossover and the addition of meaning

00:46:36.740 | to the kitchen table, kitchen soup, excuse me,

00:46:39.440 | chicken soup explosion experience.

00:46:41.720 | So how is ketamine being used?

00:46:43.820 | Ketamine is being used to prevent learning of emotions

00:46:47.900 | very soon after trauma.

00:46:49.840 | So ketamine is being stocked

00:46:51.680 | in a number of different emergency rooms

00:46:53.220 | where if people are brought in quickly

00:46:55.620 | and these are hard to describe even,

00:46:57.800 | but a horrible experience of somebody seeing a loved one

00:47:01.480 | next to them killed in a car accident

00:47:03.160 | and they were driving that car.

00:47:05.240 | This isn't for everybody, certainly,

00:47:07.300 | and you need to talk to your physician,

00:47:08.900 | but ketamine is being used

00:47:10.640 | so they might infuse somebody with ketamine

00:47:12.860 | so that their emotion, it can still occur,

00:47:16.500 | but that the plasticity,

00:47:18.580 | the change in the wiring of their brain

00:47:21.220 | won't allow that intense emotion

00:47:23.700 | to be attached to the experience.

00:47:25.420 | Now, immediately you can imagine

00:47:26.720 | the sort of ethical implications of this, right?

00:47:29.220 | Because certain emotions need to be coupled to experiences.

00:47:32.700 | I'm not saying that people should be using ketamine

00:47:34.520 | or shouldn't be using ketamine,

00:47:35.500 | certainly not recreationally, it's quite dangerous.

00:47:38.500 | It can be lethal and like PCP,

00:47:41.780 | it can cause pretty dramatic changes

00:47:43.900 | in perception and behavior.

00:47:45.420 | But in the clinical setting,

00:47:47.020 | the basis of ketamine assisted therapies

00:47:49.980 | is really to remove emotion.

00:47:52.480 | And I think the way I've been hearing about it

00:47:54.980 | talked about in the general public

00:47:56.620 | is a lot of people think it's a little bit more like

00:47:58.860 | the kind of psilocybin trials or the MDMA trials

00:48:02.120 | where it's about becoming more emotional

00:48:04.460 | or getting in touch with a certain experience.

00:48:06.660 | Ketamine is about becoming dissociative

00:48:09.420 | or removed from the emotional component of experience.

00:48:12.420 | So now we have ketamine,

00:48:14.260 | which chemically blocks plasticity

00:48:16.380 | and prevents the connection

00:48:18.380 | between an emotion and an experience.

00:48:20.780 | That's a pharmacologic intervention.

00:48:22.140 | We have EMDR, which is this eye movement thing

00:48:25.320 | that is designed to suppress the amygdala

00:48:27.520 | and is designed to remove emotionality

00:48:29.820 | while somebody recounts an experience.

00:48:31.860 | And we have REM sleep where the chemical epinephrine

00:48:35.960 | that allows for signaling of intense emotion

00:48:40.180 | and the experience of intense emotion

00:48:42.060 | in the brain and body is not allowed.

00:48:44.020 | And so we're starting to see a organizational logic,

00:48:47.740 | which is that a certain component of our sleeping life

00:48:50.880 | is acting like therapy.

00:48:52.780 | And that's really what REM sleep is about.

00:48:55.900 | So we should really think about REM sleep

00:48:59.080 | and slow wave sleep as both critical,

00:49:01.340 | slow wave sleep for motor learning and detailed learning,

00:49:03.740 | REM sleep for attaching of emotions

00:49:05.780 | to particular experiences,

00:49:07.420 | and then for making sure that the emotions

00:49:11.260 | are not attached to the wrong experiences

00:49:13.740 | and for unlearning emotional responses

00:49:16.320 | if they're too intense or severe.

00:49:18.580 | And this all speaks to the great importance

00:49:21.280 | of mastering one's sleep,

00:49:23.080 | something that we talked about in episode two of the podcast

00:49:26.620 | and making sure that if life has disruptive events,

00:49:30.780 | either due to travel or stress

00:49:33.160 | or changes in school or food schedule,

00:49:37.140 | something that we talked about in episodes three and four,

00:49:39.600 | that one can still grab a hold and manage one's sleep life.

00:49:44.520 | Because fundamentally the unlearning of emotions

00:49:48.500 | that are troubling to us

00:49:50.860 | is what allows us to move forward in life.

00:49:52.660 | And indeed the REM deprivation studies show

00:49:54.900 | that people become hyper-emotional,

00:49:56.980 | they start to catastrophize.

00:49:58.780 | And it's no surprise therefore

00:50:01.580 | that sleep disturbances correlate

00:50:03.980 | with so many emotional and psychological disturbances.

00:50:08.180 | It's just by now it should just be obvious

00:50:10.980 | why that will be the case.

00:50:12.540 | In fact, the other day I was in a discussion

00:50:14.300 | with a colleague of mine who's down in Australia,

00:50:17.480 | Dr. Sarah McKay, I've known her for two decades now

00:50:20.900 | from the time she was at Oxford.

00:50:23.320 | And Sarah studies, among other things,

00:50:25.620 | menopause in the brain.

00:50:27.020 | And she was saying that a lot of the emotional effects

00:50:31.860 | of menopause actually are not directly related

00:50:34.700 | to the hormones.

00:50:35.540 | There've been some really nice studies showing

00:50:37.140 | that the disruptions in temperature regulation in menopause

00:50:40.980 | map to changes in sleep regulation

00:50:44.400 | that then impact emotionality

00:50:46.860 | and an inability to correctly adjust the circuits

00:50:50.540 | related to emotionality.

00:50:52.220 | And I encourage you to look at her work.

00:50:54.020 | We'll probably have her as a guest on the podcast

00:50:55.700 | at some point in the future

00:50:56.700 | 'cause she's so knowledgeable about those sorts of issues

00:50:59.600 | as well as issues related to testosterone

00:51:01.560 | and in people with all sorts

00:51:03.440 | of different chromosomal backgrounds.

00:51:05.680 | So sleep deprivation isn't just deprivation

00:51:10.260 | of energy, it's not just deprivation of immune function.

00:51:13.820 | It is deprivation of self-induced therapy

00:51:17.580 | every time we go to sleep, okay?

00:51:19.740 | So these things like EMDR and ketamine therapies

00:51:23.180 | are in clinic therapies,

00:51:25.300 | but REM sleep is the one that you're giving yourself

00:51:27.620 | every night when you go to sleep,

00:51:29.600 | which raises, I think, the other important question,

00:51:32.740 | which is how to get and how to know

00:51:35.060 | if you're getting the appropriate amount

00:51:36.300 | of REM sleep and slow wave sleep.

00:51:38.140 | So that's what we'll talk about next.

00:51:39.900 | So how should one go about getting the appropriate amount

00:51:44.420 | of slow wave sleep and REM sleep

00:51:46.460 | and knowing that you're getting the right amount?

00:51:48.980 | Well, short of hooking yourself up to an EEG,

00:51:52.340 | it's going to be tough to get exact measurements

00:51:55.620 | of brain states from night to night.

00:51:58.680 | Some people nowadays are using things like the aura ring

00:52:01.460 | or a whoop band or some other device

00:52:03.580 | to measure the quality and depth

00:52:05.260 | and duration of their sleep.

00:52:06.320 | And for many people, those devices can be quite useful.

00:52:09.920 | Some people are only gauging their sleep

00:52:13.200 | by way of whether or not they feel rested,

00:52:15.880 | whether or not they feel like they're learning

00:52:17.520 | and they're getting better or not.

00:52:19.240 | There are some things that one can really do.

00:52:22.820 | And the first one might surprise you

00:52:25.300 | in light of everything I've said

00:52:26.440 | and probably everything you've heard about sleep.

00:52:29.440 | There was a study done by a Harvard undergraduate,

00:52:33.520 | Emily Hoagland, who was in Robert Strickgold's lab

00:52:38.520 | at the time.

00:52:39.920 | And that study explored how variations

00:52:44.920 | in total sleep time related to learning

00:52:47.680 | as compared to total sleep time itself.

00:52:53.480 | And to summarize the study, what they found

00:52:56.960 | was that it was more important

00:53:00.100 | to have a regular amount of sleep each night

00:53:04.700 | as opposed to the total duration.

00:53:08.300 | In other words, and what they showed

00:53:10.620 | was that improvements in learning or deficits in learning

00:53:15.620 | were more related to whether or not you got six hours,

00:53:18.060 | six hours, five hours, six hours.

00:53:20.340 | That was better than if somebody got, for instance,

00:53:25.000 | six hours, 10 hours, seven hours, four or five hours.

00:53:30.940 | So you might say, well, that's crazy

00:53:32.320 | because I thought we were just all supposed

00:53:33.560 | to get more sleep and there's more REM towards morning.

00:53:35.920 | Turns out that for sake of learning new information

00:53:39.680 | and performance on exams in particular,

00:53:42.440 | that's what was measured, limiting the variation

00:53:47.020 | in the amount of your sleep is at least as important

00:53:50.980 | and perhaps more important

00:53:53.100 | than just getting more sleep overall.

00:53:55.720 | And I think this will bring people great relief,

00:53:58.480 | many people great relief who are struggling

00:54:01.120 | to quote unquote get enough sleep.

00:54:03.200 | Remember a few episodes ago,

00:54:05.080 | I talked about the difference between fatigue and insomnia.

00:54:10.080 | You know, fatigue tends to be when we are tired,

00:54:13.080 | insomnia tends to lead to a sleepiness during the day

00:54:16.480 | when we're falling asleep.

00:54:17.840 | And you don't want that.

00:54:18.880 | You don't want either of those things really.

00:54:21.120 | But I found it striking that the data from this study

00:54:25.560 | really point to the fact that consistently getting

00:54:28.440 | about the same amount of sleep

00:54:31.280 | is better than just getting more sleep.

00:54:33.920 | And I think nowadays so many people

00:54:35.160 | are just aiming for more sleep

00:54:36.720 | and they're rather troubled about the fact

00:54:38.320 | that they're only getting five hours

00:54:40.060 | or they're only getting six hours in some cases.

00:54:43.240 | It may be the case that they are sleep deprived

00:54:46.520 | and they need more sleep,

00:54:47.960 | but some people just have a lower sleep need.

00:54:50.180 | And I find great relief personally in the fact

00:54:53.400 | that consistently getting for me about six hours

00:54:57.100 | or six and a half hours is going to be more beneficial

00:54:59.860 | than constantly striving for eight or nine

00:55:01.880 | and finding that some nights I'm getting five

00:55:03.680 | and sometimes I'm getting nine and varying around the mean.

00:55:06.600 | As I recall, and I think I'm going to get this

00:55:08.940 | precisely right, but if not, I know that I'm at least close.

00:55:12.000 | For every hour variation in sleep,

00:55:15.400 | regardless of whether or not it was more sleep

00:55:17.420 | than one typically got,

00:55:19.240 | there was a 17% reduction in performance

00:55:23.440 | on this particular exam type.

00:55:25.880 | And so this is powerful.

00:55:27.660 | This means that we should strive

00:55:29.180 | for a regular amount of sleep.

00:55:31.680 | And for some of us, that means falling asleep

00:55:33.620 | and waking up and going back to sleep.

00:55:34.920 | For some people it means falling asleep

00:55:36.760 | and waking up and not getting back to sleep.

00:55:39.740 | Now, ideally you're getting the full compliment

00:55:42.560 | of slow wave sleep early at night

00:55:44.580 | and sleep toward morning, which is REM sleep,

00:55:46.840 | which brings us to how to get more REM sleep.

00:55:49.560 | Well, there are a couple of different ways,

00:55:51.760 | but here's how to not get more REM sleep, all right?

00:55:56.760 | First of all, drink a lot of fluid

00:55:59.560 | right before going to sleep.

00:56:00.880 | One of the reasons why we wake up

00:56:02.320 | in the middle of the night to use the bathroom

00:56:04.200 | is because when our bladder is full,

00:56:06.880 | there is a neural connection,

00:56:08.480 | literally a set of neurons and a nerve circuit

00:56:10.840 | that goes to the brainstem that wakes us up.

00:56:13.760 | And actually some people that I know

00:56:17.600 | and I won't be mentioned,

00:56:18.800 | actually use this to try and adjust for their jet lag

00:56:21.380 | when they're trying to stay awake.

00:56:22.320 | Having to use the bathroom, having to urinate

00:56:24.600 | is one of the most anxiety-evoking experiences

00:56:27.680 | anyone can have.

00:56:28.560 | If you really have to go to the bathroom,

00:56:30.160 | it's very hard to fall asleep or stay asleep.

00:56:32.540 | And bedwetting, which happens in kids very early on,

00:56:36.840 | is a failure of those circuits to mature until,

00:56:41.840 | I think we all assume that babies

00:56:44.300 | are going to pee in their sleep,

00:56:45.960 | but adults aren't supposed to do that.

00:56:48.160 | And the circuits take some time to develop

00:56:51.260 | and in some kids they develop a little bit later

00:56:52.800 | than others.

00:56:53.920 | So having a full bladder is one way to disrupt your sleep.

00:56:57.700 | You don't want to go to bed dehydrated,

00:56:59.200 | but that's one way.

00:57:00.400 | On the other hand, there is evidence

00:57:03.400 | that if you want to remember your dreams more

00:57:05.960 | or remember more of your dreams,

00:57:08.800 | there is a tool that you can use,

00:57:10.480 | I don't necessarily recommend it,

00:57:12.120 | which is to drink a bunch of water before you go to sleep.

00:57:14.480 | And then what happens is you tend to break

00:57:16.480 | in and out of REM sleep, it tends to be fractured.

00:57:19.440 | And with a sleep journal,

00:57:21.620 | they've done these laboratory studies, believe it or not,

00:57:24.140 | people will recall more of their dreams

00:57:26.020 | because they're in this kind of semi-conscious state

00:57:27.920 | because they're constantly waking up throughout the night.

00:57:30.260 | I suggest not having a full bladder before you go to sleep.

00:57:32.740 | That one's kind of an obvious one, but nonetheless.

00:57:36.220 | The other one is if you recall that during REM sleep,

00:57:39.940 | we have a shift in neurotransmitters

00:57:42.420 | such that we have less serotonin, right?

00:57:49.180 | Just want to make sure I got that right, excuse me.

00:57:50.600 | Less serotonin.

00:57:51.840 | There are a lot of supplements out there

00:57:55.820 | geared toward improving sleep.

00:57:58.200 | I've taken some of them and I've taken many of them,

00:58:00.720 | if not all of them at this point,

00:58:03.120 | so I could report back to you.

00:58:04.720 | And I think I mentioned on a previous episode

00:58:06.400 | that when I take tryptophan or anything

00:58:08.220 | that contains 5-HTP, which is serotonin

00:58:11.640 | or a precursor to serotonin,

00:58:13.860 | serotonin is made from tryptophan,

00:58:15.720 | I tend to fall very deeply asleep

00:58:17.440 | and then wake up a few hours later.

00:58:19.200 | And that makes sense now based on the fact

00:58:21.080 | that you just don't want a lot of REM sleep early on.

00:58:24.160 | What was probably happening

00:58:25.120 | is that I was getting a lot of REM sleep early on

00:58:27.000 | because low levels of serotonin

00:58:28.540 | are typically associated with slow wave sleep

00:58:31.740 | and that comes early in the night.

00:58:33.200 | So for some people, those supplements might work,

00:58:35.320 | but beware serotonin supplements

00:58:37.920 | could disrupt the timing of REM sleep and slow wave sleep.

00:58:42.720 | And in my case led to waking up

00:58:44.660 | very shortly after going to sleep

00:58:46.220 | and not being able to get back to sleep.

00:58:48.700 | Now, if you want to increase your slow wave sleep,

00:58:52.340 | that's interesting, there are ways to do that.

00:58:54.840 | One of the most powerful ways to increase slow wave sleep,

00:58:58.200 | the percentage of slow wave sleep,

00:58:59.920 | apparently without any disruption

00:59:02.360 | to the other components of sleep and learning

00:59:05.680 | is to engage in resistance exercise.

00:59:08.400 | It's pretty clear that resistance exercise

00:59:10.600 | triggers a number of metabolic and endocrine pathways

00:59:13.380 | that lend themselves to release of growth hormone,

00:59:16.440 | which happens early in the night.

00:59:18.680 | And resistance exercise therefore

00:59:21.080 | can induce a greater percentage of slow wave sleep.

00:59:24.640 | It doesn't have to be done very close to going to bedtime.

00:59:27.400 | In fact, for some people that the exercise

00:59:29.360 | could be disruptive for reasons I've talked about

00:59:31.240 | in previous episodes,

00:59:32.680 | but resistance exercise unlike aerobic exercise

00:59:35.920 | does seem to increase the amount of slow wave sleep,

00:59:38.240 | which as we know is involved in motor learning

00:59:41.480 | and the acquisition of fine detailed information,

00:59:44.260 | not general rules or the emotional components of experiences.

00:59:48.100 | For those of you that are interested in lucid dreaming

00:59:52.340 | and would like to increase the amount of lucid dreaming

00:59:54.960 | that you're experiencing,

00:59:56.480 | I haven't been able to track down that device

00:59:58.540 | with the red light that I described at the beginning,

01:00:01.340 | but there are a number of just simple zero technology tools

01:00:05.760 | that one could use in principle.

01:00:07.720 | One is to set a cue.

01:00:10.020 | The way this works is you come up with a simple statement

01:00:13.960 | about something that you'd like to see

01:00:17.060 | or experience later in dreams.

01:00:19.620 | You can, for instance, write down something like,

01:00:25.940 | I want to remember the red apple.

01:00:29.040 | I know it sounds silly and trivial.

01:00:30.980 | And you look at that,

01:00:32.440 | you would probably want to write it down

01:00:34.180 | on a piece of paper.

01:00:35.020 | You might even want to draw a red apple.

01:00:36.780 | And then before you go to sleep, you would look at it.

01:00:39.500 | And then you would just go to sleep.

01:00:41.780 | There are some reports that doing that

01:00:44.020 | for several days in a row can lead to a situation

01:00:46.840 | in which you are suddenly in your dream

01:00:49.420 | and you remember the red apple.

01:00:51.100 | And that gives you a sort of tether to reality

01:00:53.940 | between the dream state and reality

01:00:55.320 | that allows you to navigate and shape

01:00:57.220 | and kind of adjust your dreams.

01:00:59.060 | Lucid dreaming does not have to be

01:01:00.940 | or include the ability to alter features of the dream,

01:01:04.540 | to be able to control things in the dream.

01:01:07.700 | Sometimes it's just the awareness that you are dreaming.

01:01:10.300 | But nonetheless, some people enjoy lucid dreaming.

01:01:13.620 | And then for people that have a lot of lucid dreams

01:01:15.880 | that feel kind of overwhelmed by those,

01:01:18.900 | that's going to involve trying to embrace protocols

01:01:23.900 | that can set the right duration of sleep.

01:01:27.060 | There's a little bit of literature, not a lot,

01:01:29.180 | that shows that keeping the total amount of sleep per night

01:01:33.960 | to say six hours such that you begin sleep and end

01:01:38.580 | at the beginning and end of one of these ultradian cycles

01:01:41.780 | can be better than waking up in the middle

01:01:43.560 | of one of these ultradian cycles.

01:01:45.060 | So try and find the right amount of sleep that you need

01:01:49.060 | that's right for you.

01:01:50.080 | And then try and get that consistently night to night.

01:01:52.320 | If you're a lucid dreamer and you don't like it,

01:01:55.060 | then you may want to start to make sure

01:01:57.920 | that you're waking up at the end

01:02:00.080 | of one of these ultradian cycles.

01:02:01.460 | So in this case, it would be better to wake up

01:02:04.000 | after six hours than after seven.

01:02:05.940 | And if you did sleep longer than six hours,

01:02:08.060 | maybe you'd want to get to seven and a half hours

01:02:09.900 | 'cause that's going to reflect the end

01:02:11.280 | of one of these 90 minute cycles

01:02:12.620 | as opposed to waking up in the middle.

01:02:14.520 | Alcohol, alcohol and marijuana are well known

01:02:18.780 | to induce states that are pseudo sleep-like,

01:02:21.920 | especially when people fall asleep

01:02:24.240 | after having consumed alcohol or THC,

01:02:27.380 | the active component,

01:02:28.780 | one of the active components in marijuana.

01:02:31.620 | Alcohol, THC and most things like them,

01:02:36.620 | meaning things that increase serotonin or GABA

01:02:41.680 | are going to disrupt the pattern of sleep.

01:02:43.720 | They're going to disrupt the depth,

01:02:44.900 | they're going to disrupt the overall sequencing

01:02:47.180 | of more slow wave sleep early in the night

01:02:48.820 | and more REM sleep later in the night.

01:02:50.500 | That's just the reality.

01:02:52.220 | There are some things that at least in a few studies

01:02:56.420 | that I could find seem to suggest

01:02:58.740 | that you could increase the amount of slow wave sleep

01:03:01.740 | using things like arginine, the amino acid L-arginine,

01:03:04.900 | although you really want to check,

01:03:05.820 | arginine can have effects on heart, et cetera,

01:03:07.920 | has other effects.

01:03:09.280 | But alcohol, THC, not going to be great

01:03:12.500 | for sleep and depth of sleep.

01:03:13.680 | You might feel like you can fall asleep faster,

01:03:15.560 | but the sleep that you're accessing

01:03:17.360 | really isn't the kind of deep restorative sleep

01:03:19.500 | that you should be getting.

01:03:21.900 | Now, of course, if that's what you need in order to sleep

01:03:24.960 | and that's within your protocols, I've said here before,

01:03:27.120 | I'm not suggesting people take anything,

01:03:28.420 | I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not a cop,

01:03:30.580 | so I'm not trying to regulate anyone's behavior,

01:03:33.580 | I'm just telling you what the literature says.

01:03:36.480 | Some of you may want to explore your dreams

01:03:38.800 | and meaning of dreams, et cetera.

01:03:40.580 | There's not a lot of hard data about how to do this,

01:03:43.940 | but a lot of people report keeping a sleep journal

01:03:47.220 | where a dream journal can be very useful.

01:03:49.280 | So they mark when they think they fell asleep

01:03:51.300 | the night before, when they woke up,

01:03:53.180 | and if they wake up in the middle of the night

01:03:55.300 | early in the morning, they'll just write down

01:03:57.860 | what they can recall of their dreams.

01:03:59.660 | And even if they recall nothing,

01:04:01.860 | many people have the experience of mid-morning

01:04:04.600 | or later afternoon that suddenly comes to them

01:04:07.180 | that they had a dream about something and writing that down.

01:04:10.100 | I kept a dream journal for a while,

01:04:11.820 | it didn't really afford me much,

01:04:13.300 | I didn't really learn anything

01:04:14.900 | except that my dreams were very bizarre,

01:04:17.000 | but there are some things that happen in dreams

01:04:21.060 | that are associated with REM sleep

01:04:22.840 | as it compared to slow wave sleep,

01:04:24.300 | which can tell you whether or not your dream

01:04:26.120 | likely happened in REM sleep or slow wave sleep.

01:04:28.920 | And the distinguishing feature it turns out

01:04:30.860 | is something called theory of mind.

01:04:32.920 | Theory of mind is actually an idea that was developed

01:04:35.720 | for the study and assessment of autism.

01:04:38.460 | And it was initially that phrase theory of mind

01:04:42.520 | was brought about by Simon Baron Cohen,

01:04:47.020 | who is Sasha Baron Cohen, the comedian's brother.

01:04:51.500 | Simon Baron Cohen is a psychologist

01:04:54.480 | and to some extent a neuroscientist at Oxford.

01:04:58.460 | And theory of mind tests are done on children.

01:05:01.860 | And the theory of mind test is somewhat like the following.

01:05:05.220 | A child is brought into a laboratory

01:05:07.420 | and watches a video of a child

01:05:10.060 | playing with some sort of toy.

01:05:11.820 | And then at the end of playing with that toy,

01:05:14.540 | they put the toy in a drawer and they go away.

01:05:17.100 | And then another child comes in and is looking around.

01:05:21.480 | And then the experimenter asks the child

01:05:24.780 | who's in the experiment, the real child and says,

01:05:27.820 | what does the child think?

01:05:30.780 | What are they feeling?

01:05:32.140 | And most children of a particular age,

01:05:35.500 | five or six or older will say,

01:05:37.640 | oh, he or she is confused.

01:05:40.420 | They don't know where the toy is.

01:05:41.580 | Or they'll say something that implies

01:05:43.280 | what we call theory of mind.

01:05:44.720 | That they can put their ideas and their mind

01:05:48.620 | into what the other child is likely to be feeling

01:05:51.480 | or experiencing.

01:05:52.320 | That's theory of mind.

01:05:53.720 | And it turns out that this is used

01:05:57.280 | as one of the assessments for autism

01:05:59.880 | because some children, not all,

01:06:02.300 | but some children that have autism

01:06:04.580 | or that go on to develop autism

01:06:05.940 | don't have this theory of mind.

01:06:07.620 | They tend to fixate on the fact

01:06:10.000 | that the first child put the toy in the drawer.

01:06:12.080 | They'll say it's in the drawer

01:06:13.660 | as opposed to answering the question,

01:06:15.580 | which is how does the second child feel about it?

01:06:18.240 | Or what are they experiencing?

01:06:20.580 | So theory of mind is something that emerges early in life

01:06:24.220 | as a part of the maturation of the circuits in the brain

01:06:27.080 | associated with emotional learning and social interactions.

01:06:31.900 | And we experience this in certain dreams.

01:06:35.440 | So if you had a dream that you're puzzled about

01:06:38.420 | or that you're fixated on and you're thinking about,

01:06:40.740 | you might ask, in that dream,

01:06:42.960 | was I assessing somebody else's emotion and feeling

01:06:46.440 | or was I very much in my own first person experience?

01:06:49.660 | And the tendency is that theory of mind

01:06:53.260 | tends to show up most in these REM associated dreams.

01:06:58.260 | Now this isn't a hard and fast rule,

01:07:00.420 | but chances are if you were in a dream

01:07:02.420 | and you were thinking about other people

01:07:04.420 | who wanted to do something to you,

01:07:06.020 | you were thinking about their desire to chase you

01:07:09.060 | or help you or something that was really related

01:07:12.660 | to someone else's emotional experience,

01:07:14.340 | it was probably a REM dream.

01:07:17.400 | That dream occurred in rapid eye movement sleep

01:07:19.580 | as opposed to slow wave sleep.

01:07:21.620 | And that makes sense when you think about the role of REM

01:07:24.720 | in emotional unlearning of associations

01:07:28.720 | with particular life events,

01:07:30.060 | that REM is rich with all sorts of exploration

01:07:33.920 | of the emotional load of being chased

01:07:37.720 | or the emotional load of having to take an exam the next day

01:07:40.840 | or being late for something.

01:07:42.560 | But again, if you're fixated

01:07:45.400 | or you can recall thinking a lot about

01:07:48.220 | or feeling a lot about what somebody else's motivations were

01:07:51.760 | then chances are it was in REM

01:07:53.700 | and if not, chances are it was in slow wave sleep.

01:07:56.720 | Today we've been in a deep dive of sleep and dreaming,

01:08:01.720 | learning and unlearning.

01:08:03.780 | And I just want to recap a few of the highlights

01:08:06.120 | and important points.

01:08:07.520 | A lot more slow wave sleep and less REM early in the night,

01:08:11.440 | more REM and less slow wave sleep later in the night.

01:08:14.960 | REM sleep is associated with intense experiences

01:08:18.840 | without this chemical epinephrine

01:08:20.920 | that allows us the anxiety or fear

01:08:23.600 | and almost certainly has an important role

01:08:26.080 | in uncoupling of emotion from experiences,

01:08:29.600 | kind of self-induced therapy that we go into each night.

01:08:33.040 | That bears striking resemblance to things like EMDR

01:08:36.120 | and ketamine therapies and so forth.

01:08:38.640 | Slow wave sleep is critical however,

01:08:41.780 | it's critical mostly for motor learning

01:08:43.660 | and the learning of specific details.

01:08:45.740 | So REM is kind of emotions and general themes

01:08:49.460 | and meaning and slow wave sleep, motor learning and details.

01:08:53.760 | I personally find it fascinating that consistency of sleep,

01:08:58.400 | meaning getting six hours every night

01:09:01.000 | is better than getting 10 one night,

01:09:03.260 | eight the next, five the next, four the next.

01:09:06.520 | I find that fascinating and I think I also like it

01:09:09.260 | because it's something I can control better

01:09:11.000 | than just trying to sleep more,

01:09:12.160 | which I think I'm not alone in agreeing

01:09:14.280 | that that's just hard for a lot of people to do.

01:09:16.680 | This episode also brings us to the conclusion

01:09:20.640 | of a five episode streak where we've been focusing on sleep

01:09:24.840 | and transitions in and out of sleep, non-sleep depressed.

01:09:28.000 | We've talked about a lot of tools, morning light,

01:09:30.600 | evening light, avoiding lights, blue blockers, supplements,

01:09:35.000 | tools for measuring sleep duration and quality.

01:09:38.080 | We've been covering a lot of themes.

01:09:40.580 | I like to think that by now you're armed

01:09:42.540 | with a number of tools and information,

01:09:45.480 | things like knowing when your temperature minimum is,

01:09:48.060 | knowing when you might want to view light or not,

01:09:50.080 | when you might want to eat or take hot showers

01:09:52.300 | or God forbid a cold shower,

01:09:54.080 | something that most people including me more or less loathe

01:09:56.520 | but can have certain benefits.

01:09:58.480 | And that will allow you to shape your sleep life

01:10:01.240 | and get this consistent or more or less consistent amount

01:10:04.460 | of sleep on a regular basis.

01:10:06.040 | Nobody's perfect.

01:10:07.280 | In fact, I have this little joke

01:10:08.900 | that I sometimes tell it's not funny.

01:10:10.560 | Like most of the jokes I tell, I'm told they're not funny,

01:10:13.220 | but you know, there's so much excitement now

01:10:15.240 | about intermittent fasting.

01:10:17.020 | Sometimes I think that someone should start something

01:10:19.020 | on intermittent sleep deprivation,

01:10:20.560 | although we're already doing that.

01:10:22.480 | We are all experiencing lack of sleep from time to time.

01:10:25.960 | And I don't think we should catastrophize that too much.

01:10:28.400 | I think that what we want to do rather

01:10:30.200 | than accumulate a sleep anxiety is to, you know,

01:10:34.120 | if we get a bad night's sleep, we want to adjust.

01:10:37.180 | We want to get back on track

01:10:38.540 | and just get the consistent amount of sleep.

01:10:40.500 | Use those non-sleep deep rest protocols

01:10:42.340 | to help us relax when we're feeling anxious,

01:10:44.380 | we're having trouble waking up in the middle of the night.

01:10:46.940 | There are a lot of tools out there

01:10:48.380 | and most of them are zero cost.

01:10:50.680 | And so I hope you'll find those beneficial.

01:10:53.440 | If you've been hearing Costello

01:10:54.960 | snoring throughout this episode,

01:10:56.640 | I apologize on his behalf.

01:10:59.380 | As I said in the welcome video to this podcast,

01:11:01.400 | he's an integral part of the podcast.

01:11:03.040 | A few people have said, hey,

01:11:04.320 | that noise in the background is really disruptive.

01:11:07.200 | Hey, what can I say?

01:11:09.520 | Costello is a 10 year old bulldog mastiff.

01:11:12.800 | The lifespan on those animals is about 10 years.

01:11:15.580 | So I'm not trying to make you feel guilty,

01:11:17.900 | but after he's gone, there won't be any snoring,

01:11:20.520 | although I'll probably get a different dog.

01:11:22.080 | So sort of a, what would the kids say?

01:11:24.840 | Sorry, not sorry.

01:11:26.800 | Sorry, not sorry about the snoring.

01:11:29.080 | And I'm sorry if it's disruptive genuinely,

01:11:31.020 | but he's here for the hall.

01:11:34.080 | So that's what that's about.

01:11:36.080 | As we close out this segment on sleep,

01:11:40.220 | we are moving into a new theme and topic

01:11:42.300 | for the next four to five episodes.

01:11:44.420 | We are going to discuss the science

01:11:46.580 | and the tools related to neuroplasticity.

01:11:50.060 | Neuroplasticity is a remarkable feature

01:11:52.840 | of the nervous system.

01:11:54.040 | In fact, it's the defining feature of the nervous system,

01:11:56.840 | which is its ability to change itself

01:11:59.480 | in response to experience.

01:12:01.140 | That is unlike every other tissue

01:12:03.680 | and collection of cells and organ in our body.

01:12:06.480 | It's really what makes us us as a species

01:12:09.300 | and it's what makes us us as individuals.

01:12:12.260 | And it's really where our potential lies.

01:12:14.700 | Everything that we know, everything we can do

01:12:17.400 | and our true potential in terms of what we will ever

01:12:20.180 | be able to know, do, say in life

01:12:23.120 | is set by the limits of neuroplasticity.

01:12:27.180 | So we're going to explore learning in childhood,

01:12:29.740 | learning in adulthood.

01:12:30.980 | We're going to discuss detailed protocols

01:12:33.740 | as they relate to sensory plasticity,

01:12:37.140 | learning new sensory information versus motor plasticity

01:12:40.100 | or sensory motor integration.

01:12:42.160 | We're going to talk about language acquisition.

01:12:44.300 | We're going to be talking about emotional acquisition

01:12:47.040 | and breadth, as well as I think a topic

01:12:49.500 | a lot of people are going to find fascinating

01:12:51.300 | is the relationship between plasticity set

01:12:54.540 | during childhood attachment to parent or other caregiver

01:12:57.700 | and how that maps onto adult relationships.

01:13:01.140 | You know, there's many of you have probably heard

01:13:02.840 | about secure attached or insecure attached

01:13:04.980 | the A, B and C babies as they're called

01:13:07.520 | from the classic studies of Bowlby and others.

01:13:10.980 | But now there's actual neuroscience that can say

01:13:13.300 | which circuits were active

01:13:15.260 | during those early life attachment

01:13:17.980 | and how those map to adult attachment styles, challenges

01:13:22.620 | and what makes us more likely to select certain partners

01:13:25.380 | and styles of attachment, as well as how to change those.

01:13:28.200 | It's really fascinating.

01:13:29.580 | And I think neurosciences time has come

01:13:32.660 | for neuroplasticity.

01:13:34.580 | We're also going to talk of course about supplements

01:13:37.060 | and chemicals and machines and devices that can assist

01:13:40.500 | in speeding up the plasticity process

01:13:42.940 | or believe it or not, there are some cases

01:13:44.500 | where you might want to delay plasticity

01:13:46.660 | in order to get more depth of learning

01:13:48.940 | and have that learning last longer.

01:13:51.220 | Something that is just absolutely spectacular literature.

01:13:54.740 | So I'm very excited to move on to that topic soon.

01:13:57.300 | I hope that the tools that you've acquired so far

01:13:59.200 | and the knowledge that you've acquired so far

01:14:00.680 | is helping you with your self evaluation

01:14:03.140 | and experimentation as you see fit

01:14:04.900 | and is allowing you to not just sleep better

01:14:06.860 | but feel better while you're awake

01:14:08.540 | and hopefully has set the stage for you to learn better

01:14:11.660 | as we start to march into the month on neuroplasticity.

01:14:16.180 | Many of you have asked how you can help support

01:14:18.480 | the Huberman Lab Podcast and we greatly appreciate

01:14:21.320 | the question.

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01:14:52.120 | And of course, check out our sponsors

01:14:54.500 | because that's a very direct way to help us continue

01:14:56.600 | to get this information out to the general public.

01:14:58.940 | Many of you have asked about supplements

01:15:00.520 | and where I personally get my supplements.

01:15:03.300 | I've partnered with Thorne and I get my supplements

01:15:05.660 | from Thorne because by my view,

01:15:07.760 | they have the highest level of stringency

01:15:09.860 | and precision in terms of what's in the bottle.

01:15:13.640 | And they also have very, very high quality standards.

01:15:16.320 | They're partnered with the Mayo Clinic

01:15:17.800 | and all the major sports organizations.

01:15:20.500 | If you want to try Thorne supplements,

01:15:22.360 | you can go to Thorne.com.

01:15:24.480 | So that's Thorne spelled T-H-O-R-N-E.com/u/huberman.

01:15:29.480 | And if you do that, you can see the formulations that I take

01:15:34.640 | and you'll also get 20% off, not just those formulations,

01:15:37.800 | but anything that Thorne makes.

01:15:39.780 | That's Thorne.com/u/huberman

01:15:44.240 | to get 20% off anything that they provide.

01:15:47.420 | Last but not least, a few people wrote to me

01:15:50.520 | with some questions/corrections

01:15:54.320 | about things that I said in previous podcasts.

01:15:57.120 | So in keeping with my goal

01:15:59.360 | of making the information accurate and clear,

01:16:02.560 | I just want to correct myself

01:16:04.440 | about a few things that I said.

01:16:06.000 | One of those, and I'm guessing it probably came

01:16:08.960 | from an endocrinologist or somebody else

01:16:10.920 | that knows a lot about testicles, said, "Huberman,

01:16:15.920 | "you mentioned that testosterone is made

01:16:17.840 | "by the Sertoli cells of the testes, and it's not.

01:16:20.600 | "It's made by the Leydig cells of the testes,

01:16:22.740 | "and indeed you are correct."

01:16:24.500 | And so I want to make sure that I clarify that.

01:16:27.440 | Testosterone is made by the Leydig cells of the testes,

01:16:30.160 | not by the Sertoli cells.

01:16:31.440 | The Sertoli cells make 5-alpha reductase and aromatase

01:16:35.400 | and some other enzymes involved in conversion of testosterone

01:16:37.960 | into things like DHT and estrogen.

01:16:40.700 | So thank you for that correction.

01:16:42.020 | I genuinely appreciate it.

01:16:43.180 | I misspoke.

01:16:44.700 | The other thing I said was at one point I said,

01:16:46.880 | "Typical temperature is 96.8,"

01:16:49.340 | when I actually meant to say 98.6.

01:16:52.020 | So it was a dyslexic slip on my part, and I apologize.

01:16:55.780 | I don't know that I'm dyslexic.

01:16:57.740 | I know I'm being clinically diagnosed with dyslexia,

01:17:00.880 | but I swapped them,

01:17:02.120 | which sometimes happens when I'm going fast.

01:17:04.620 | So I apologize.

01:17:06.220 | I'll use this as a moment to just say,

01:17:08.060 | temperature varies a lot across the day and night.

01:17:10.960 | That was a theme of previous podcasts.

01:17:13.120 | So we can't really talk about average temperature anyway,

01:17:16.240 | but I do want to be clear

01:17:17.260 | that most people think about average temperature as 98.6.

01:17:21.240 | I misspoke my error, and I apologize.

01:17:24.500 | Thank you for joining me

01:17:25.900 | in this journey of the nervous system and biology

01:17:29.040 | and trying to understand the mechanisms

01:17:31.540 | that make us who we are

01:17:32.700 | and how we function in sleep and in wakefulness.

01:17:36.080 | It's really an incredible landscape to consider,

01:17:39.140 | and I hope that you're getting a lot out of the information.

01:17:41.920 | As always, thank you for your interest in science.

01:17:44.640 | [upbeat music]

01:17:47.220 | (upbeat music)

Understanding and Using Dreams to Learn and to Forget

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