Dreaming of Tetris

“Human beings spend on average one third of our lives asleep.”

That is one statistic that most of us have come across at some point or another. But most of us have never given a whole lot of thought to why we need to sleep. What really happens inside our brains while we’re sleeping that causes us to dream?
 

Let me be frank. Scientists don’t really have a clue. The science behind dreaming is about as complex as the brain itself. Having said that, neurobiologists and psychologists do have some theories on dreaming. Here are some of the more popular ones:

• Helps restore our body and mind
• Helps with learning and memory
• Allows us some time to explore new and unusual areas of ourselves
• Helps to resolve conflicts that occur during the day
• Allows us contextualize emotions experienced during waking
• Helps practice dealing with threats.

So while it may seem like your friend who falls asleep during a class lecture is completely unconscious and inactive, some of their brain functions may be more active than when they’re awake. 

 

The interactive sleep lab set up by Harvard helps understand some of these aspects of sleep using examples of healthy sleep patterns in people of various ages. For example, different stages of sleep may be pertinent to different types of learning. Studies by Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School show that subjects who had slept for six hours or more after learning a new task, such as spotting a visual target on a screen as quickly as possible, improved, whereas those who didn’t sleep on it didn’t improve. Moreover, it was found that those who improved the most slept for eight hours, with ample time for both slow-wave and rapid eye movement (REM) periods of sleep.

Another very interesting study, also carried out by Stickgold, had subjects play the computer game Tetris, which requires directing falling blocks into the correct positions as they reach the bottom of the screen. At night, the subjects who were amnesiacs didn’t remember playing the game. But, they did describe seeing falling, rotating blocks during hypnagogic sleep, the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep.

What these studies demonstrate, is that when the brain puts dreams together, it does it without knowledge of and access to memories of actual events in our life. Yet dreams often serve the purpose of making important emotional connections among new pieces of information. So it is no wonder that our dreams can be wildly illogical even if they are related to something we already experienced! 

The Importance of Dreaming

What do Joan of Arc, Mark Twain, Harriet Tubman, and Winston Churchill have in common? They were all influenced by their dreams. Dreaming is vital to the human story. It is essential to our survival, creative processes, and, quite simply, to getting us through our everyday lives. Throughout history people tried to understand the importance of dreams. Dreams have been described by biologists as the neural processes that allow consolidation of memories and by psychologists as reflections of the human subconscious.

Many cultures and religions contain beliefs regarding the ability to receive divine messages through dreams. In fact, some people believe dreams to be a realm beyond the physical that is the precinct of true imagination, discoveries and innovation, even the origin of creation. Indigenous people, such as the Aborigines of Australia, call this the Dreamtime. This state permeates song, dance, storytelling, paintings, and artifact making etc. To them dreamers are travelers between both worlds, analyzing their environment and bringing wise solutions to problems, spiritual knowledge as well as creativity to the physical world.

In modern urban societies, few people have regular sleep patterns like most humans did for almost all of our evolution. The introduction of artificial lighting has disturbed our natural circadian rhythms and cheated us of our dreams and fantasies. Yet new research shows that even though we may not be aware of our dreams as often, we are dreaming at night nonetheless. The new science of dreaming suggests the following:

• Almost everyone dreams, every night ― even those who have suffered massive brain injury.
• Humans who have modern sleep patterns have an average of six dream sequences per night, whether or not they remember them.
• Dreaming does not only occur in the rapid-eye-movement (REM) state of sleep as believed previously but occurs throughout the night in some form or the other.
• Dream deprivation leads to "psychological disturbances such as anxiety, irritability, and difficulty in concentrating."¹

The question then arises that if we realize that dreaming is such a necessity and helps to recharge the mind and body, why do we remain out of touch with this wonderful ability? We are already at some risk of caging our imagination and our body's own healing powers due to consumerism and virtual media. What will happen to modern society if we slowly silence our dreamers?