Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: M welcome back to another episode of Spill the Tea where we share real stories with real teens. Last episode we went down the rabbit hole into the science of sleep and it was such a hit. But it was jam packed with science insights and tips and tricks. So we decided to break it down into bite sized episodes, making it easier to catch the insights without losing sleep over the details.
In this mini series, we'll unpack topics like what happens when you're running on m empty with sleep deprivation, take a tour through our brain's overn workshop for dreams, memories and learning, and decode your body's built in clock with circadian alertness. So get comfortable and let's wake up to the fascinating science behind better sleep.
I am going to let you in on another secret today. All of you have heard that high achievers do more than memorize facts and figures. They sprinkle in creativity and insight to start making connections far beyond the black and white on the page. You don't need to take my word for it. As I'm looking at the prompts for every college application, there are questions asking about creativity, intellectual curiosity and making connections. The secret these high achievers have isn't some magic pill or green leafy vegetable that helps expand their mind. The secret happens every night, mostly around 3 to 7am M in the morning. That secret is REM sleep. REM stands for rapid eye movement, which is one of the physical characteristics people have in this stage. But so much more than some energetic eyes happens in rem.
In this episode, we're going to explore the importance of REM sleep, take a tour through our Brain's Overnight Workshop for Dreams, and break down some funky nighttime behavior like sleepwalking. Let's get cracking.
To guide us through this topic, we welcome back Dr. Mary Carscadin, a pioneer in the study of sleep for children and adolescents and a leader in the field of sleep and circadian science. Dr. Carskadin holds a doctorate with distinction in Neuro and Biobehavioral Sciences from Stanford University, and she has written and published many scientific papers, receiving numerous awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Sleep foundation, the Distinguished Scientist Award, and Outstanding Educator Award from the Sleep Research Society, to name a few. So what actually makes REM sleep different from the other stages of sleep? There's a lot more going on than the name might suggest.
Let's hear from Dr. Carskadin about the three defining characteristics of REM sleep.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Oh, REM sleep. One of my favorite topics because it's the, uh, cool kind of sleep. So REM sleep. It's so interesting. The brain waves look as active as they do when you're wide awake. You have rapid eye movements. And the third criterion is this suppression of motor activity, otherwise called paralysis.
So those are the three features that make REM sleep. REM sleep.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: REM sleep is, hands down, the most interesting stage of sleep. Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, points out four acute mental aspects of rem. The first point is that we hallucinate, as in we see and experience dreams even though our eyes are closed. Also, we're delusional, as in we believe in our dreams, no matter how outlandish they are, and we're disoriented, and then we get amnesia, since we don't always remember our dreams. Together, these characteristics make REM sleep a pretty strange state of consciousness. And yet this nighttime psychosis may actually be one of the things that helps keeps us sane during the day.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: There was this quote that dreaming keeps you sane.
And so working towards the theory that if you deprive people of REM sleep, it would make them have some emotional or cognitive problems.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: So where did this idea dreaming keeps you sane come from? To understand why we're dreaming in the first place, and why those dreams matter, we need to zoom out and look at what the brain is doing across the entire sleep cycle. There are three states of the awake, when we take in information, non REM sleep when we store it, and REM sleep when we integrate that information by connecting ideas in ways that may not be obvious during the day. This is where much of our creativity can emerge. For example, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards reportedly came up with the opening riff for satisfaction in a dream.
Similarly, chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, exhausted from organizing the elements of, dreamed of their logical arrangement, inspiring the modern periodic table. So if REM is when we dream and integrate information, why don't we remember most of our dreams?
[00:04:56] Speaker B: The high likelihood is that when you have rem, um, sleep, if it's of sufficient length, you will be dreaming. But you don't recall most dreams because you need to be awake to engage the memory of having that experience.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Remember, the awake state is when we take in information. So to vividly remember your dreams, you have to be to some extent awake at a point in time. During rem.
While we're in rem, brain activity closely resembles wakefulness, with four key areas becoming especially active. First, the motor cortex, which controls movement. Second, the visuospatial areas, which create dream imagery.
Third, the memory center, which incorporates memories into dreams. And lastly, the Emotion processing areas, which are about 30% more active than at any other time. This heightened emotional activity may help us separate emotions from memories, allowing us to learn from difficult experiences without being overwhelmed by them, possibly explaining why sometimes we feel better after sleeping on a difficult problem.
So if REM is helping us process emotions, memories and experiences, it raises an important how much REM sleep are we actually getting infants?
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Newborn infants have active sleep, which is kind of a prodromal of REM sleep. And it's 50% of their night grownups. We're down to about 20% of our night in REM sleep. And one of the things for you to think about as well in that regard is as a teenager then on weekdays when someone came in and said, okay, you gotta get up at whatever, six o', clock, and you haven't hit that window for REM sleep to be more prominent.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: So teens aren't necessarily getting less REM because their brains don't need it. The problem is that REM becomes more prominent toward the end of the night. And teenagers naturally tend to fall asleep later and wake up later when school schedules force them to wake up early. They may be cutting short the very part of sleep when REM is most abundant. And that matters because REM isn't just when we dream. It's when our brains are doing some of the emotional processing, memory integration, and creative connecting.
So what happens when we consistently don't get enough sleep? To learn more about this loss of sleep and its effects, check out our other episode on sleep deprivation in teens.
So we know that REM is important for creativity and emotional responses. But we're forgetting about the last key area that's fired up in our brain during remote our motor cortex.
This is the thing that tells our arms and legs to move. But in REM, our body is paralyzed, or should be. What happens when the system breaks down
[00:07:44] Speaker B: is called REM sleep behavior disorder, and that occurs in people when that paralysis we normally experience in REM sleep isn't there. And so these people behave actively during REM sleep. And the other more common name, uh, for it is dream enacting behavior.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Being paralyzed during REM doesn't just help us preserve our sleep, it helps keep dreaming safe. There are countless stories about people acting out their dreams, one of the most famous being from the comedian Mike Birbiglia, who detailed his experience with REM sleep behavior disorder on the radio show and podcast the American Life.
[00:08:25] Speaker C: I have a serious sleep disorder and it got so bad when I didn't treat it that I jumped through the second story of a La Quinta Inn in Walla Walla, Washington. I had a dream I was a guy, there was a guided missile headed towards my room, jumped out of bed. You know, people who have rbd, like, sometimes act out their dreams in really extreme ways. So I jumped through the window and then I landed on the front lawn, kept running.
And this is like, this is the part that I remember vividly where I'm running and I'm slowly realizing I'm on the front lawn of La Quinta in. In Walla Walla, Washington, in my underwear. Bleeding. Bleeding, yeah. And I'm like, oh no. But then I realized it. And at that moment I was relieved that I hadn't been hit by the missile.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: I definitely do not want to be acting out my dreams, especially if there's a guided missile after me.
But don't worry. REM Sleep Behavior Disorder is very rare and the majority of people will be safely paralyzed during REM dreaming. Sleepwalking and REM Sleep Behavior Disorder are all reminders that the boundary between our sleeping and our waking states can be surprisingly complex.
From the brain's intense activity during REM and its role in integrating information to the fascinating way sleep may help separate emotions from our memories, REM sleep reveals just how active and important our sleeping brains really are.
So the next time you wake up from a strange, vivid dream, remember while you were asleep, your brain may have been doing some of its most important work.
We would like to extend our biggest thanks to Dr. Mary Carskadin, the sleep expert or really the sleep Queen, for generously taking the time to share her expertise and insights on REM sleep for our podcast.
But we're not done dreaming just yet. Check out the two other episodes on sleep where we unpack sleep deprivation and some of its unknown effects. Then we tackle circadian alertness and find out why your body has a built in clock that's constantly deciding when you're ready to conquer the day or desperately need a nap. See you next time. And thanks for listening to Spill the Tea.
