Dizzy?

psychotherapy:

The last decade of research has clearly shown that sleep is one of the best aide memoires that we have. During this nightly time-out, our brain can rehearse information that it has picked up during the day and consolidate them into lasting memories. Wamsley’s new study supports that idea but it also shows that dreaming while you nap can strengthen our memories even further…

…Wamsley doesn’t think that dreams themselves improve our memory – they’re a side effect of processes that do this. While our bodies lie still, our brain is busily working away processing the day’s memories. The brain doesn’t simply replay those memories, as the volunteers’ descriptions show. Instead, Wamsley thinks that it works the old into the new, slowly integrating parts of our recent experiences into our more established memory networks. Dreams, then, are like the tip of a mental iceberg – the visible sign of a tremendous body of work going on behind-the-scenes.

I’ve had some deep dreams lately, and this is a really interesting article.

Relevant for anyone interested in dreams.