![]() While cortisol is produced elsewhere, our amygdala is used to detect stressful situations.ĭuring REM our brain produces low-frequency, slow theta waves in the hippocampus, amygdala and neocortex (we produce theta waves while awake, too, but they are particularly characteristic of REM sleep). Studies on stressed workers show that our cortisol level, the hormone that helps to regulate our stress response, is highest in the morning, meaning we are better able to react well to stress early on. Perhaps dumping the emotional baggage of the previous day overnight allows us to start from a new baseline in the morning. Our amygdala might need this period of processing to reset before the next day. (It's one thing to be better prepared for looking at distressing photos and another to be prepared for your boss shouting at you in reality, however.) The longer people had felt fear during their dreams, the less their emotion centres were activated when they were shown stressful images. These emotionally charged memories then become the subject of our dreams.Īfter a bad dream, the area of the brain that prepares us for being afraid is more effective, as though the dream trained us for this situation. It is thought that this happens throughout sleep, but it is in the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage (just before we awake or as we dip into sleep) that we store our most emotional memories. While we sleep, we organise and file away our memories of the previous day and give our older memories a bit of a dust-off and reshuffle.
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