Three years ago a Crocodile was troubling Eva Salem.Her hand was snapped in its jaws. She was panicked and some-how managed to knock out the crocodile and let herself free. Then, suddenly she woke up.
she says "I imagine that's what it's like when you're on heroin. That's what my dreams were active, crazy and,like—vivid ".Salem,who was a new mother, is breast-feeding her daughter form last five months before the dream of croc-attack,living on four hours of sleep a night. If she sleep a full night, her dreams were boomeranged and becoming so vivid that she felt as though she wasn't sleeping at all.
Dreams are amazingly persistent. Few were missed due to lack of sleep and the brain keeps score,
forcing payback soon after eyelids close. Shakespeare called sleep as "Nature's soft nurse," isn't so soft after all.
neurologist Mark Mahowald says,"We see greater sleep intensity When someone is sleep deprived , which means brain activity is greater during sleep; dreaming is definitely increased and likely more vivid than normal, "who was from the University of Minnesota and director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis .
This phenomenon is called REM rebound. REM is "rapid eye movement," the darting of the eyes under closed lids. We dream the most and our brain activity eerily resembles that of waking life in this state. At the same time, our muscles go slack and we lie paralyzed—a toe might wiggle, but we can't move, we feel as if our body is protected by our brain and from acting out the stories we dream.
Normally Sleep is divided into REM and four different stages of non-REM; each has a different wave frequency for brain. 1st stage of non-REM is the period of nodding off where one is between waking and sleeping; this is sometimes punctuated with a sensation of falling into a hole.In 2nd stage the brain slows with few bursts of activity. Then in stages three and four it practically shuts off and shifts into slow-wave sleep, where there is a drop in heart and breathing rates.
After 70 minutes of non-REM sleep we experience our first period of REM, that lasts only five minutes. A total 90 minutes of non-REM–REM cycle;Over the course of a night this pattern is repeated about five times .however,non-REM stages are shorten and growth in the REM periods ,as the night progresses giving us a 40-minute dream scape just before waking.
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The scientists can study REM deprivation is by torturous sleep deprivation. psychologist Tore Nielsen says "We follow the [electroencephalogram] tracing and then when we see [subjects] moving into REM, we wake them up," who is the director of the Dream and Nightmare Lab at the Sacre-Coeur Hospital in the Montreal. "As soon as they are robbed from REM, the pressure force them to go back into REM starts to increase." Nielsen must wake them 40 times in one night as they go directly into REM as soon as they are asleep.
Of course there is non-REM rebound also, but the priority is given to the slow-wave
sleep and then to REM, which suggest that the states are independent of each other.
In 2005 study published in Sleep,losing 30 minutes of REM one night may lead to a 35 percent REM increase the next night ,subjects jumped from 74 minutes of REM to rebound of 100 minutes.
Nielsen also found that intensity of dream are increased with REM deprivation. Subjects who were getting about 25 minutes of REM sleep rated the quality of their dreams between 9 and 8 on a nine-point scale (one being dull and nine being dynamite).
Of course, deprivation of REM, and the subsequent rebound, was common outside the lab. Both Nicotine and Alcohol repress REM. And other well known REM suppressants are blood pressure drugs as well as
antidepressants. (Take away the dreams and, curiously, then the depression lifts.) patients were rewarded with scary rebound when they stop meds and the vices.
