Wish Fulfillment? No. But Dreams (and Sleep) Have Meaning

By TIFFANY SHARPLES Tiffany Sharples – Tue Jun 16, 4:15 am ET

Dreams may not be the secret window into the frustrated desires of the unconscious that Sigmund Freud first posited in 1899, but growing evidence suggests that dreams - and, more so, sleep - are powerfully connected to the processing of human emotions.


According to new research presented last week at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Seattle, adequate sleep may underpin our ability to understand complex emotions properly in waking life. "Sleep essentially is resetting the magnetic north of your emotional compass," says Matthew Walker, director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2008.)


A recent study by Walker and his colleagues examined how rest - specifically, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep - influences our ability to read emotions in other people's faces. In the small analysis of 36 adults, volunteers were asked to interpret the facial expressions of people in photographs, following either a 60- or 90-minute nap during the day or with no nap. Participants who had reached REM sleep (when dreaming most frequently occurs) during their nap were better able to identify expressions of positive emotions like happiness in other people, compared with participants who did not achieve REM sleep or did not nap at all. Those volunteers were more sensitive to negative expressions, including anger and fear.

Neat.