REM Sleep & Dreaming

[Voyageur]

Had a listen to a segment which opens under the title: 'Your dreams are disappearing in a cloud of pot smoke and it’s a problem - Getting quality REM sleep is important when it comes to processing memories' Oct 6, 2017 http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/quirks-and-quarks/segment/14299003

15:36 minutes

Radio show/interview starts with a guy describing his pot use and what it did to his dreams, it removed them, and then when he stopped its use the adjustment process came in and the floodgate of dreams. Of particular interest was with the very short interview with Dr. Rubin Naiman, PhD. (Arizona) and longer interview with Dr. Robert Stickgold, PhD (Harvard Med) who talks about the interruption process of dreams and damage to REM via "dream-drain" by factors such as pot, alcohol (primarily) and prescription - antidepressants etc. Stickgold discusses some testing done and how the brain keeps information and during REM sleep puts things together in a strange way, yet it keeps you smart.

There are other threads that discuss REM/Dreams here in the Forum. Further, adding what Dr. Stickgold has or is researching (interests):

https://sleep.med.harvard.edu/people/faculty/220/robert+stickgold+phd

Research Interests
My research seeks to describe the nature of cognition during sleep, and to explain the role of sleep in memory and emotional processing. My studies of sleep and memory have provided definitive evidence demonstrating the importance of sleep in learning and memory consolidation. Work in my laboratory and in collaboration has presented the first clear demonstrations that:

1) some forms of memory consolidation are absolutely dependent on post-training sleep
2) access to associative memories is altered during REM sleep
3) memory stabilization and enhancement can both occur "off-line," but in different wake-sleep states
4) stabilized memories in humans can be made labile by reactivation, and subsequently weakened through interference
5) in some cases, naps can provide as much benefit as a full night of sleep
6) specific sleep-dependent consolidation is absent in chronic, medicated schizophrenics and in cocaine addicts in withdrawal.
7) resting state brain activity following training on a memory task can predict subsequent sleep-dependent memory consolidation and, separately, correlate with thinking about the task

More recently we have been studying:

1) the role of sleep in probabilistic learning and declarative memory
2) cutting edge techniques for quantitative EEG analyses of memory processing
3) neural network models of sleep-dependent memory processing

Our studies of dreaming have made important breakthroughs in this classically difficult field, and have provided the first demonstrations that:

1) episodic memories are not replayed in dreams
2) hypnagogic dreams are constructed without the help of the hippocampally mediated episodic memory system
3) two hours of sleep alters the content of hypnagogic dreams from nearly veridical replay of recent events to semantically associated imagery
4) dreaming about a recently learned memory task predicts post-sleep task improvement

Our paper on hypnagogic dreaming published in Science was the first paper in that journal focusing on dreaming since 1968.

https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/OTB_Summer2014.pdf