Debunking Sleep Series Part 3: Nightmares
One of the worst feelings is jumping up in the middle of the night, dripping in sweat, breathing hard and your heart beating rapidly all because of a nightmare. Seriously, nightmares are the worst, and we all get them!
Have you ever asked yourself why?
There are two main points I want to address in this post: when nightmares occur and how.
First, let’s talk about when nightmares occur.
In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the various stages of our sleep cycles. In case you missed it, here is the link for the post or you can head to my blog section and select the post from there.
Anyways, nightmares begin in the REM stage of sleep. A quick recap for the REM stage of sleep: you experience rapid eye movements, your brain becomes activated after deep relaxation, and this is where you typically start dreaming.
Although researchers or scientists don’t know exactly why we have nightmares, they do know that it occurs in the REM stage of sleep, like normal dreaming. It is thought that nightmares are actually a sort of mix of past memories or traumas with new information or thoughts. There needs to be more research done in this field to identify or reveal more about these phenomena, but at least there is a place to start when trying to figure out why you thought someone was chasing you in your sleep last night.
The next thing I want to discuss is that there is an area of the brain called the amygdala (pronounced: A-mig-duh-la) that is thought to be crucial in nightmare production.
The amygdala is the portion of your brain that is known as the “fear center”. This “fear center” plays a critical role in allowing the brain to process signals as dangerous or not. Once it does this processing and identifying, it will signal other areas of the brain to respond accordingly (for example, fight-or-flight when facing danger).
Studies have shown that the amygdala is highly activated during dreaming and when experiencing nightmares.
Studies have also discovered an association between levels of activated mental state to the occurrence of nightmares. This means that if you are stressed or anxious, you are more likely to experience a nightmare.
Because of this activation, there seems to be a connection between this activation of the processing section of our brain (specifically, danger processing), our past memories or traumas, and our current mental state.
Like I said earlier, there has yet to be a definitive answer of how we have nightmares, but, to me (a non-psychologist/non-neurologist/non-neuro researcher), there does seem to be a connection between our “fear center”, our past memories/traumas, our mental status and new information our brain is processing while in REM sleep.
As always, stay humble.
Emily
