According to a new study published in the journal, people who can remember dreams more often are more creative and tend to have better functional connectivity in major brain networks. The nature and science of sleep.. The findings provide new insights into the neurophysiological correlations of dreams.
“I think dreams are one of the last frontiers of human recognition— Terrain Cognita If you do so, it’s your heart, “said the research author. Rafael Vala, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Human Sleep Science, University of California, Berkeley. “We are all dreaming and spending a significant part of our lives, but there are so many basic research questions related to dreams that haven’t been answered yet, which is clearly very attractive to study. It will be a topic!
“This and previous studies address one of these basic research questions. Why do some people remember their dreams every day and others don’t?”
In his new study, Vallat and his colleagues used brain imaging techniques to determine if there were neurophysiological differences between individuals who frequently recall dreams and those who do not.
The study included 55 healthy participants (ages 19-29) with normal sleep characteristics and a classification of obesity index. Twenty-eight participants are high dream recallers (can remember about six dreams a week on average), and 27 participants are low dream recallers (less than one a week on average). I remember my dream). There were no significant differences between the two groups in age, habitual sleep time, or education.
Participants arrived at the Sleep Lab at Rubinatier Hospital the night before the scan session and completed a self-reported assessment of personality, anxiety, and sleep quality. Wechsler memory scale (used to measure immediate and delayed memory performance), Wechsler use task (used to measure creativity), and digit span task (used to measure work memory storage capacity) have also been completed. After staying overnight in the lab, participants underwent three functional magnetic resonance imaging scans to measure resting brain activity.
Researchers have found that high and low dream recallers have similar personalities, levels of anxiety, sleep quality, and memory abilities. However, high dream recalls scored significantly higher on Guildford usage tasks than low dream recalls. This shows that they had better creativity.
Vallat and his colleagues have also observed that high dream recallers have improved functional connectivity within the default mode network compared to low dream recallers. The brain network is “known to be active when fantasies, wandering (for example, lost in thought), further suggesting that it promotes creativity and dreams,” Vallat explains. bottom. Increased connectivity is particularly seen between the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction, consistent with clinical reports showing that lesions in these brain regions result in cessation of dream recall.
“Simply put, high dream recalls have great creativity and different brain function tissues, as shown by this study and previous studies from our lab,” Vallat told PsyPost. Told. “Is there a causal relationship between dream recall, creative thinking, and the” wiring “of the brain, and if so, the direction of that relationship (chicken or the egg first) is unresolved. It remains. Does increased dreams encourage creative thinking and ultimately lead to changes in brain function? Or do the essential high-performance connections of these individuals’ default mode networks promote their dream recall and creativity? “
Experimental methodologies can help elucidate causality. “The next step in this study is to take a group of non-dreamers and use some validated methods to improve their ability to recall dreams over time (best known). It’s about writing down dreams every morning when you wake up. The conscious effort to remember their dreams ultimately leads to better recall of dreams), and their creativity and brain before and after manipulation. We will evaluate the functionality, “Vallat explained.
However, like all surveys, this survey has some limitations. “As with most functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, we used a fairly small sample size, which limits the generalization of findings (that is, these findings are more. Does it apply to diverse groups?) “, Says Vallat.
This study examined only one type of creativity. In the Guildford Usage task, participants are given two minutes to list as many alternative uses of everyday objects as possible. The total number of responses and the number of rare uses are used to measure the type of creative ability known as divergent thinking. “Creativity is a collective term that includes several concepts (for example, convergent and divergent thinking, problem solving, gist extraction, etc.). In this study, we measured a single subdomain of creativity,” Vallat said. Mr. says.
“Understanding the differences in dream recall between individuals is just one angle in which we are trying to decipher this fascinating and mysterious phenomenon we are dreaming of,” Vallat said. “Study a dream is a nightmare because you can’t observe it directly (sorry for the pun!). I don’t know exactly when the dream will happen during sleep, so to ask if you’re dreaming. You have to rely on waking up the sleeper. To wake up. Still, if they don’t report their dreams, I don’t know if they weren’t dreaming or were actually dreaming. This is incomplete, as I forget my dreams as soon as I wake up. “
the study, “High dream recall is associated with increased creativity and default mode network connectivity.“Was created by Raphael Vallat, Başak Türker, Alain Nicolas, and Perrine Ruby.
