Ever since I used to read the science-for-kids magazines that my parents ordered for me when I was little, I’ve been especially interested in dreams. This interest only deepened in college when I took a psychology course on sleeping and dreaming. So it’s been fascinating for me that since I started PT school five weeks ago, I’ve been dreaming almost every single night about what I’ve been learning in school. Usually this means I end up dreaming about anatomy!
Most researchers say that you’ll only remember a dream (which occur in the REM stage of sleep) if you wake up within 10 minutes of having one. Since I’m a light sleeper and frequently wake up in the middle of the night, this means extra chances for me to remember my dreams. Additionally people who think about dreams and try to remember their dreams also report increased dream memories.
Although no one knows for certain why exactly people (and other animals) dream, most scientists surmise that REM sleep plays a part in learning and memory. Rats who activated a certain part of their brain while running a maze, activated that same part of the brain when they later went into REM sleep.
I don’t assign any deep meaning to my dreams, but I find that I often dream about something that happened to me during the day, or something complex I was thinking about the previous week. When I was under a lot of stress while running for editor of my student newspaper in college, I often dreamed about editing pages.
Now that I’m learning so much new and complicated material, my theory is that my dreams are going into studying overdrive trying to make sense of it all. While I’d rather take a break while asleep and dream I was on vacation, the good news is that all this anatomy dreaming is probably helping me learn!
Happy National Physical Therapy Month!