NEWS
CONSCIOUS DREAMING It's hard to remember your dreams when you're awake. This observation led researchers from four Inserm laboratories in Paris to wonder whether it would be possible to talk to dreamers during their dreams. And they noticed that those in a particular category, the “ lucid dreamers ” , are perfectly capable of having a conversation without waking up! They understand questions, answer them with yes or no - even with eye movements or by contracting their facial muscles - and perform simple calculations. This is a discovery that could be useful in helping people suffering from nightmares.
MEMORY AND SLEEP We have known for a while that when we sleep, our brains take the opportunity to consolidate our memories. But this memorisation process is still unclear to us. Researchers from the University of Geneva therefore proposed two games to a test group. These were rigged so that participants could only win one. They were then sent to sleep in an MRI machine. As a result, it would appear that it is during the deep sleep phases that the brain stores its memories. And it tends to remember the good ones rather than the bad ones.
WHY DO WE DREAM? Erik Hoel, a neuroscientist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, has come up with an interesting hypothesis. So that we remain able to adapt to the unexpected, both physically and mentally, we must confront it regularly. The older we get, the more similar our days tend to be, limiting our 'learning set'. By projecting ourselves into a strange version of the world, our dreams could serve as a 'training ground'. This theory still needs to be tested, however.
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