Does what we dream change us? Who has more nightmares, men or women? We tell you four interesting and recent scientific discoveries about dreams.
Women have more nightmares than men.And not only that. According to Jennie Parker, from the University of the West of England (United Kingdom), the unpleasant dreams of women contain more misfortunes and negative emotions, in addition to involving more times family members and developing normally in closed spaces instead of outdoors.
What you smell while you sleep affects the content of your dreams.German scientists reached that conclusion in a study presented to the American Academy of Otolaryngology. Comparing the effects of smelling roses and breathing in the stench of rotten eggs while we sleep, the researchers found that the emotional tone of dreams is positive in the first case and negative when the smell is unpleasant.
The sleeping brain resembles the awake brain.While you dream, your brain is activated just like when things happen to you in your wake. This was recently demonstrated by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich (Germany) after measuring the activity of a series of subjects with electroencephalography while they were dreaming in a guided way (lucid dreaming). Neuroimaging revealed that dreaming of making a movement activates the same neurons as executing the same movement while awake.
Dreaming erases the pain.When we dream, specifically in the REM phase of sleep, stress-generating chemicals cease to be produced and the brain processes the emotional experiences of the day while softening negative or painful memories, as recently concluded by a neuroscientific study of the University of California at Berkeley.
