Nightmares may be good for you

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(Russell Deeks/ Science Focus) — Having nightmares may help to prepare us for potentially frightening situations, a study at the University of Geneva and University Hospitals Geneva, and the USA’s University of Wisconsin, has found.

There’s a huge amount science still doesn’t know about dreaming. It’s not even clear if everyone does it: we know that everyone experiences REM sleep, but whether those who claim they never dream really don’t, or do dream but simply don’t remember it after waking, isn’t clear. Nor is the mechanism by which dreams are formed in the brain entirely understood, never mind why it happens.

However, many neuroscientists have long believed that bad dreams allow us to safely ‘act out’ potentially dangerous situations before they occur in real life. And the new findings seem to add weight to that theory.

The researchers asked 18 volunteers to wear EEG headsets while they slept and then woke them multiple times during the night to ask them a series of questions about whether they’d been dreaming, and if that dream involved fear. They then compared the volunteers’ answers to their mapped brain activity during sleep. (…)

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