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Sleep and Dreaming Lecture 19

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Sleep and Dreaming Lecture 19 The relationship of dreaming to memory consolidation during sleep, and to pre- and post-sleep cognition Professor Mark Blagrove Sleep Laboratory Department of Psychology Swansea University • Background: Sleep, memory & dreaming • Possible functions of dreaming, or no function • Dreaming, metaphor and insight • Post-sleep effects of considering and sharing dreams • Background • Slow Wave Sleep and REM sleep are involved in memory consolidation during sleep • Replay of memories in HC during sleep • Memory consolidation is greater for salient or important materials Welsh language recall across 12 hours wake or 12 hours incl sleep Van Rijn et al., 2017, J Sleep Res Lesion sites associated with loss of dreaming but preserved REM sleep (Solms, 1997) • Possible functions of dreaming • Hartmann E (1995). Making Connections in a Safe Place: Is Dreaming Psychotherapy? Dreaming, 5: 213-228. • Dreaming and psychotherapy involve the freeing of associations, without acting out, in a safe environment. • Dreaming and psychotherapy can make connections between trauma and other relevant memories. Dreams at first replay the trauma, but then change to include related material, using metaphor. • During this change the same dominant emotion remains • Dreaming makes more broad and peripheral connections than does waking thought Another theory is….. • Revonsuo’s (2000) Threat simulation theory. • This is a virtual reality theory, as opposed to mnemonic or emotional processing theories • This theory holds that dreaming is a selective simulation of the waking world and its threats • In dreaming we practice overcoming the threats • Revonsuo et al. (2015) have now amended this theory to include dreaming being a simulation of social reality, as well as of physical threats. • Links to memory consolidation in general That dreaming might reflect functional neural processes during sleep results in the following bold statement: “Dreaming is the poor man’s fMRI!” Bob Stickgold, 2012 Dream content as a function of hours of TV watched on 9/11 (Propper et al., 2007) • They speculate that the dream content was related to unresolved emotion from TV watching, as effect was not found for length of time spent talking about it on the day Often cited as support for dreaming having a beneficial effect / function • Wamsley et al, (2010) Current Biology • Dreaming of a Learning Task Is Associated with Enhanced Sleep- Dependent Memory Consolidation • Hypothesized that dreaming in NREM sleep about learning a virtual navigation maze task would be associated with improved performance across sleep on the task. • Memory improved across sleep, compared to across wake. • Improved performance at retest was strongly associated with task-related dream imagery during the nap. However • Task-Related reports were not veridical reiterations of the learning experience • The reports were unquestionably related to the maze, but consisted of remote associations and memories thematically related to the task. • Maybe memory consolidation is highly associative • Or maybe dreams reinstate the context of learning, like the context of an odour, allowing re-excitation of what was learnt. • An endogenous ‘Targeted Memory Reactivation’ • Most important objection to Wamsley et al, 2010, and to their J Sleep Research (in press) replication, is that dreaming of the task was also correlated with pre-sleep low performance • So dreaming might not reflect or be related to a within-sleep brain function • Similar to DeKoninck (2012) and language learning, we dream of mistakes What does it mean to say dreaming has a function? • It means the hypothesis that we have evolved to have dreams of a particular type. People with those dreams have a reproductive advantage. • For most such theories, dreams that we do not remember on waking, or that occurred while we remained asleep, do something beneficial for us. But why propose a function? • Nielsen & Levin: we dream of waking life so as to extinguish fear memories • Revonsuo: we dream of threats so as to practice overcoming them • Hartmann: we dream of waking life emotional events so as to connect memories more widely • The null hypothesis: we just dream of waking life • The null hypothesis has two versions: • Dreams are similar to waking life and reflect our waking life thinking, the continuity theory of Domhoff and Schredl, or • Dreams are a scrambled version of waking life memories, as in Hobson’s Activation- Synthesis theory Is there still a possibility of dream function? • Maybe higher level learning / restructuring / interpersonal emotional social learning is occurring in REM sleep and is reflected by dream content. • Maybe we are dreaming of social learning, e.g., why was I being tested on that maze, how was I treated, how do I feel? • After all, dreams are very social, often with many characters • Hu et al. (2015). • Cognitive neuroscience. Unlearning implicit social biases during sleep. • Science, 348(6238):1013-5. • This form of social memory consolidation could be related to the plot, characters and emotions of dreams • But this learning usually has long time scales and the cue for it can also be temporally diffuse, unless it is a trauma, so it is difficult to study • Evidence from the dream-lag effect, the delayed incorporation of waking life experiences into dreams, might support a memory consolidation function of dreaming Nielsen et al. (2004, J Sleep Res) The time course for the incorporation of recent naturalistic events into dreams has shown day-residue and dream-lag effects The nature of delayed dream incorporation (‘dream‐lag effect’): Personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns The nature of delayed dream incorporation (‘dream‐lag effect’): Personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns, First published: 22 April 2018, DOI: (10.1111/jsr.12697) Fig. 1. Design of experiments. Experiment 1 – participants kept a daily log for 10 days before having dream reports collected during one night in the sleep laboratory or at home. Experiment 2 – participants kept a diary of dreams spontaneously recalled at home... E. van Rijn, J.-B. Eichenlaub, P.A. Lewis, M.P. Walker, M.G. Gaskell, J.E. Malinowski, M. Blagrove The dream-lag effect: Selective processing of personally significant events during Rapid Eye Movement sleep, but not during Slow Wave Sleep Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Volume 122, 2015, 98–109 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2015.01.009 Fig. 3. Mean number of incorporations of the instrumental awakenings night into home dream reports for participants in the sleep laboratory group who recorded the impending experimental night as being a major concern. Incorporations are identified by participa... E. van Rijn, J.-B. Eichenlaub, P.A. Lewis, M.P. Walker, M.G. Gaskell, J.E. Malinowski, M. Blagrove The dream-lag effect: Selective processing of personally significant events during Rapid Eye Movement sleep, but not during Slow Wave Sleep Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Volume 122, 2015, 98–109 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2015.01.009 • Difficulty here is studies of relationship between dream content and any waking life change are correlational, they can’t show causation • We can’t yet assign participants randomly to dream content conditions so as to see if that content has any effect • But a 2017 paper might lead to work that gives clues as to whether dreaming has a function • Within-subjects multiple awakenings design • Dreaming occurs in NREM and REM sleep when the posterior ‘hot spot’ changes activity. • Hot-spot activity can even predict dream / no dream on awakening • Next step is to find out why the hot spot is turned on. • Is virtual simulation of the world sometimes needed to complete/enhance emotional memory processing? Dreams are decorative ‘spandrels’ • Flanagan and Domhoff and Schredl: dreaming is an epiphenomenon, like the noise from a factory, or a by-product of waking life imagination. • But it is a complicated by-product! • Domhoff: Dreams are embodied simulations that dramatize conceptions and concerns. APA journal Dreaming, 2017 • Domhoff’s view is that there is non- functional embodied enactment of waking life conceptualizations and concerns. • Dreaming includes long-term concerns and past misfortunes, including dreaming of long-deceased loved ones, that Domhoff & Schneider say are not characteristic of SST ‘forward-looking social rehearsal’. • Despite dreaming and dream formation being so complex…. • We don’t know if dreaming has a function. • Unrelated question: • Can the consideration of dreams give insight or self-awareness? Dream content, creativity and insight • This is a completely different issue from whether dreaming / REM sleep / sleep has a cognitive, memory, emotional or virtual reality function! Some evolutionary function Yes No Can be Yes Hartmann Freud source of insight No Hobson; Flanagan Revonsuo Domhoff Claims of dreams and insight • For example, the claimed insight of Kekulé about the circular shape of the benzene ring after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail Measuring insight and creativity • There are many difficulties • Assessing novelty and validity of the insight or creativity • E.g. Stockhausen • In 1991 he was commissioned to compose a string quartet • “And then I had a dream. I heard and saw the four sitting players in four helicopters flying in the air and playing. At the same time I saw people on the ground seated in an audio-visual hall, others were standing outdoors on a large public plaza.” • This led to his Helicopter Quartet, in which each of the four members of a string quartet is in a helicopter, the sound of its rotating blades being mixed with the sound of the strings. • To investigate such claims it must be clear that creativity or insight has occurred • Allan Hobson: “I never learned anything from a client’s dreams that I did not already know.” (in Hobson & Schredl, 2011) • Use Ullmann Dream Appreciation technique Found two types of insight • A distinction can be made between: – Insight about the sources of an item of dream content: “Aha, this is where that part of the dream came from.” – Insight about one’s waking life as a result of considering the dream: “Aha, this tells me this about myself”.
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