![]() Say, for instance, you got in a fender bender before work. Scientists reason that the low adrenaline during REM sleep decreases the emotional intensity of events as we reprocess them in dreams, which promotes emotional balance. How? REM sleep is associated with an overnight reduction in amygdala reactivity - the area of the brain responsible for anxiety, stress and fear. “We make connections during REM sleep.” Exactly how this REM learning occurs isn’t known, but research suggests that REM prunes synapses to facilitate learning.įurthermore, getting enough REM sleep may help mitigate potentially negative emotional reactions. Sleep scientist Matthew Walker, Ph.D., author of Why We Sleep and an Oura advisor, describes REM sleep as a sort of “informational alchemy.” “Essentially, REM is creating a revised mind-wide web of associations,” Walker said in an interview. Research has shown that REM plays an incredibly important role in both emotional health and learning. Sleep more soundly and feel more refreshed with Oura Shop Now Benefits of REM Sleep Note that the amount of REM sleep decreases as you age while infants spend around 50% of their sleep in REM, older adults might get less. This means that if you get 7-8 hours of sleep, expect about 90 minutes of REM. Healthy adults should expect to spend about 20-25% of your total time asleep in REM sleep. With each new cycle, you spend increasing amounts of time in REM sleep, with most of your REM sleep taking place in the second half of the night, the Sleep Foundation reports. You’ll experience your first REM cycle about 60 to 90 minutes after falling asleep, which lasts around 10 minutes in duration. In humans, REM sleep periods occur every 90 to 120 minutes. LEARN MORE: What Are the Stages of Sleep? How Much REM Sleep Do You Need? While it’s no longer true that you only dream during REM sleep, studies suggest that about 80% of vivid dream recall results after arousal from this stage of sleep. To protect yourself from acting out dreams, your body can also a loss of muscle tone during REM. You may also experience irregular, jerky muscle twitches as you dream, and it tends to be more difficult to wake up during REM sleep. Brain activity also speeds up, mimicking brainwave activity while you’re awake. What Happens During REM Sleep?ĭuring REM sleep, as the name suggests, your eyes move rapidly behind your closed eyelids, your heart rate speeds up, and breathing becomes irregular. Here, learn more about this essential sleep stage, and how to increase your REM sleep if you’re not getting enough. But REM, also known as “paradoxical sleep,” engages the body and brain in a very similarly way to waking life. We tend to think of sleep as a passive process. doi:10.5664/jcsm.Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, one of four main sleep stages, is critical for brain health and emotional resilience. Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: a joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society. Healthy sleep.Ĭonsensus Conference Panel, Watson NF, Badr MS, et al. National Library of Medicine: MedlinePlus. Prevalence of healthy sleep duration among adults-United States, 2014. Liu Y, Wheaton AG, Chapman DP, Cunningham TJ, Lu H, Croft JB. Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption. The science of sleep: understanding what happens when you sleep. Selective suppression of rapid eye movement sleep increases next-day negative affect and amygdala responses to social exclusion. Glosemeyer RW, Diekelmann S, Cassel W, et al. ![]() Sleep smart-optimizing sleep for declarative learning and memory. Quantifying sleep architecture dynamics and individual differences using big data and Bayesian networks. Yetton BD, McDevitt EA, Cellini N, Shelton C, Mednick SC. Frontal beta-theta network during REM sleep. Vijayan S, Lepage KQ, Kopell NJ, Cash SS. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
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