In the Arms of Morpheus: The Science and Mystery of Dreaming

Editor’s note: This piece was writ­ten in December 2020—in the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. That was a par­tic­u­lar­ly stress­ful times for peo­ple, but today it seems the world is per­haps even more anx­i­ety-induc­ing, does­n’t it? Erin is on her annu­al sum­mer hia­tus, so we are select­ing sto­ries from her won­der­ful blog.

Morpheus, the God of Dreams, is the son of Hypnos, the God of Sleep, and Pasithea, the Goddess of Rest. The ancients tell that Morpheus dozes in a cave of pop­pies, and, lulled into trances by the flow­ers’ soporif­ic effects, trans­mits mes­sages from the gods through human dreams. The Greeks referred to deep sleep as lying in the arms of Morpheus. They warned against ignor­ing the omens Morpheus brings to us in the night.

I’ve been hav­ing the rich­est dream­life of my exis­tence dur­ing quar­an­tine. My nights seem filled with espe­cial­ly lucid, unfor­get­table dreams that fol­low me into my wak­ing day. I dream in vivid col­or, which is inter­est­ing since I am col­or­blind when awake (I have spe­cial col­or­blind glass­es that have shown me what col­ors look like, so my hip­pocam­pus now pulls these mem­o­ries into my dreams. How cool is that?). But most of these pan­dem­ic dreams are also upset­ting, filled with stress­ful themes. In one, I wan­der through a large house, open­ing doors and descend­ing stair­cas­es, look­ing for some­thing I can nev­er locate. In anoth­er, Izzie is in some unnamed dan­ger and I am unable to get to her. Sometimes I am being chased or pur­sued. And yet, more times than not, I awake refreshed. 

What if I told you that this sort of stress­ful, lucid dream­ing is actu­al­ly good for me? That it’s my brain heal­ing itself against the stres­sors of my wak­ing life?

Science used to large­ly teach that dreams were mere­ly elec­tri­cal brain impuls­es fir­ing at ran­dom. The acti­va­tion-syn­the­sis hypoth­e­sis holds that dreams are com­plete­ly mean­ing­less. This wide­ly-accept­ed neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal the­o­ry states that humans con­struct sto­ries when we awak­en in an attempt to make sense of those elec­tri­cal impulses. 

As we learn more and more about our mag­nif­i­cent brains, we are start­ing to under­stand that there is much more hap­pen­ing when we dream than ran­dom fir­ing of the neu­rons. Many neu­rol­o­gists and psy­chol­o­gists have now adopt­ed the threat sim­u­la­tion the­o­ry of dream­ing, which states that dream­ing is an ancient bio­log­i­cal defense mech­a­nism that actu­al­ly pro­tects us from anx­i­ety and depression.

Let me explain. Those real­ly vivid, bizarre and emo­tion­al­ly intense dreams we’ve been hav­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic? When they occur, our brain lights up like a Christmas tree in the amyg­dala, that ani­mal brain that process­es emo­tion­al reac­tions and is sole­ly con­cerned with our sur­vival. Dreams help us process emo­tions by encod­ing and then con­struct­ing mem­o­ries of those emotions. 

But dreams are a total­ly safe place to process these emo­tions because the brain is calm, even though the dream might feel intense. Sleep involves five dis­tinct phas­es, which we cycle through sev­er­al times dur­ing the night. The first four phas­es are shal­low, dream­less sleep; we’re only in the arms of Morpheus in the fifth phase, or REM sleep. REM, or rapid eye move­ment, is the sleep cycle when we dream. And REM sleep is the only time when our brain is com­plete­ly devoid of the anx­i­ety-trig­ger­ing mol­e­cule nor­ep­i­neph­rine. So think of deep sleep as the per­fect time to process the neg­a­tive emo­tions from your day. The emo­tion­al mem­o­ry reac­ti­va­tion hap­pens in a brain that is free of stress chem­i­cals, let­ting us process our stress in a safe, calm environment. 

The Journal of Neuroscience found that when we spend more time in REM sleep at night, we have low­er fear-relat­ed brain activ­i­ty the next day. That’s just a fan­cy way of say­ing that if we don’t get a good night’s sleep, we don’t have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to process the stress of the day, and it bleeds into a more stress­ful tomorrow. 

We are col­lec­tive­ly under a lot of stress right now, so get­ting enough sleep is cru­cial to our men­tal health. The longest peri­ods of REM sleep hap­pen dur­ing the final hours of sleep. If we are going to bed too late and get­ting up too ear­ly, then we are cut­ting off our restora­tive REM sleep.