Inception: I Dream of Science

you prepare it all for this podcast? You know, normally I would be able to answer that question because I remember quite a few of my dreams, But I really don't remember my dreams outside. I can only assume that, uh, I was hopefully covering the material. Well, I'm on my part. I don't always remember my dreams, but I remember the one last night because I was dreaming that my cat had a guest starring role on thirty Rock. And then

I woke up to the sound of the cat barfing. Um, which generally happens, like the cat starts barfing or even beginning to barf somewhere in the house, and I just wake up like that and immediately go into this sort of half awake must keep the cat from barfing on soft things mode, you know, right like on blankets and wool carpets, you go into triosh. Yeah, but it did not really help this podcast at all. Not to say that something in my in my dream cycle didn't help,

but it's like it wasn't. Yeah, but there wasn't like a situation where I was like, how are we going to do that intro tomorrow and then like a man appeared to me in the like into in the dream like I don't know, like um, like some you know, podcasting deity appears and says, this is how you will do it. You will both talk about how the night before your dreams inspired, you know, like there was nothing like I was gonna say Ira Glass, but that didn't

sound like Ira Glass. That's not Ira Glasses, Boice. But but Ira Glass would have been a good good pick

for that that dream vision. Um. But the interesting thing is you do see plenty of really cool examples of UH and and all of them are potentially problematic UH of creative people or even scientific you know, or rather artistically geared people or scientifically geared people, UM getting something out of their dreams, some sort of inspiration or some idea, you know, this like this moment of like inception that just uh that now enables them to create some great

work or or or solve some problem that was nagging them in their daily life. Yeah. Yeah, And that makes sense because the mind, I've always said, plays with what it loves, and if you're working on a problem day after day, of course it's going to show up in your dreams. Yeah. So I guess mine is something to

do with like my Cat and thirty Rock. But yeah, I think that you have a wish fulfillment for for Biscuit to show up on a thirty Rock episode, and who doesn't now I have we talked about this earlier. I think we've both had examples where, um, we've had something in a dream that we've been able to take and run with like a creative fashion. Um. Sometimes those

ideas have worked for me. Um, and I've been able to like, you know, be like a really cool image that I'm like, oh I can take that and and extrapolate on that and and feel like, you know, I create something interesting, say fiction wise, out of it. Have you found that to be the case, Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, when I've been writing fiction, I've there have been certain scenes that came to me as if fully formed. Um

it wasn't. The actual story wasn't fully formed, but there was a very visceral idea of of this thing that became the plot for something. And I've also uh had dreams when I've had a conflict with someone and and had was talking in that dream about the conflict with that person, and that really seemed to help gain a

better perspective, like I know I've had I have. I think I have a lot of dreams where I'm it probably comes of like being fascinated by subway systems and public transportation systems that are rail based or subterranean in nature, and also from taking Atlanta's public transportation Marta every day. I frequently have these dreams of sort of like vast like unreal um subterranean public transit systems, you know, and lots of lots of sort of very very fantastic um

settings that are all sort of subway based. So do you have a sort of continuity in your dreams and there's this universe that you've created that you can revisit. Yeah, And so I've gotten some ideas out of that where I'm where I sort of like in my waking um hour sort of think back on that world and sort of try to apply form and function to it that doesn't exist in the dream. So you're working on your

dreams in your waking life. Yeah, some I guess, but but it's more like I, like I said, I feel like I'm definitely applying in order to it that doesn't

exist in the dream. On the other hand, I've also had like one particular example that I always come back to is what I referred to as the hell pimple dream, where I had this dream and it's like I woke up in the night and I'm like, this is a fabulous story idea, so it will be about a hell pimple where I think the basis was that you have the surface world and then Hell and then there's like

a pimple coming up from Hell into this. And anyway, when I woke up at like, you know, three o'clock in the morning, uh, this time, it was like, this is a great idea. This is the best idea ever. And I like wrote it down on the pad and then came back to it. I'm like, wow, this is just so monumentally stupid, you know. So had you been reading Dante before that possibly also I have read Dante before that seems like it could be like a hell

pimple sort of indirect thing happening there. Um. Well, what I think is really interesting about this is, especially the Subpremian dreams, is that you did create that continuity and that there is there's something going on in our dream lives. Um. That indicates that we do have an area to work

out our problems or ideas. But then you've got cognitive scientists Stephen Pinker, And he's the same guy, by the way, who when we were covering music UM and and how it can rebuild your brain in that podcast, he's the guy that said that auditory cheesecake is something um that he could ascribe to the ability of humans to play music, saying appreciate music, so on and so forth, that it didn't necessarily add to any sort of um function in

evolutionary sense. Yeah, he's he provides a really sobering note to to other researchers who make a really lofty will not lofty, but make a really you know, strong claim that that music is a really essential part of who we are and serves a specific purpose. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, he's like the kill joy right of all the fun things, and when it comes to dreams, same thing.

Not to say we don't need kill joys, I mean we need somebody to say, WHOA slow down there, guys, don't get too excited, get too excited about this, because there is something in our nature we want to give meaning to these things, you know, and because they're important to us, and so we think therefore, oh well, you know, of course my dream is important. Um. So he likens dreams to computer screen savers, and you know, we're just

totally depressing. He says, it doesn't really matter what the content is as long as certain parts of the brain are active. That being said, there's a lot of data out there now that say that we can point to and say, okay, well, dreams actually are a huge function of the way that we are processing information, and that's what we're talking about today. So I'm gonna run through a few examples of of of ways that first artists from a different spectrum have have claimed that dreams have

inspired their work. Um and uh, you know, without spending a whole lot of time, I do you have people like Salvador Dolly of course claimed dreams stimulated his work. You have a number of filmmakers such as Mark Bergmann uh Felini. Um, you have authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Mary Shelley. Um, you know Dr jack On,

Mr Hyde, Frankenstein. There's the whole business with Paul McCartney was claiming yesterday, Um, he heard it in in his dream right right, the melody yeah, and immediately got up and started playing on the piano. And this is just a biographically kind of interesting that he was in the midst of filming Help, and he was staying in his parents attic in a small room, and so I mean, it's interesting that he composed this completely nostalgic piece of music in a really important time of his life. Well

sidebar there. Yeah. And one of my favorites is the tale of Joe R. Landsdale, who's kind of a weird southern Southern Gothic noir writer. Uh still writing, putting out a number of novels today. But he he claimed to have this thing where anytime he was hard up for a story idea, couldn't think of anything, he would have his wife make him a big bowl of popcorn and he would like just gorge himself on and then go to bed, and which would result in like these crazy dreams.

And he claims that anytime that those dreams gave him like even something he could like grab onto and turn into a story, he was able to sell that story with with like, you know, the first time he submitted it to a publication. That's pretty great. So that the

popcorn was like this symbolic like mental activity. Yea lucky red socks and yeah, and and also you know, like in our recent podcast about the Gut, we talked about how inner about the link between our gastro intestinal activity and our neural activity in the brain, and how there's this you know, they're this, they're linked, and so you know, it's like he's stimulating the brain by stimulating the gut and getting these crazy stories out of it. I think

I knew what I'm doing this weekend. I'm going to try that out. I tried with pickles once, and I think it were I mean not, I didn't set out to. It's just I ended up eating like two or three like big like you know, Boar said pickles before I went to sleep and had some sort of weird dreams.

But you also encounter. Of course, scientists who who claimed to have have have made that, you know, come up with that one key step they were missing or or you know, it's kind of like in the back of the Future, you know where you have Dr Emmitt Brown claiming, you know where he he envisions the flux capacitor that makes time travel possible in a dream, which is a

great way to explain the unexplainable um away. Yeah, and we'll get into that in a in a minute too, because because again, all these examples of somebody claiming dream inspiration are are at once believable and potentially problematic because it realies on your personal experience right right, and unverifiable. Yeah, and I mean what was what's going to get into

this part? Yeah, it's there's something about even in in even today, when we know, I think most of us know that a dream is not that a line talking to you, there's still the dream world is mysterious. And to say that an idea came to you in a dream, um, you know it, it kind of elevates that that idea. It's it's like saying, you know, I got this idea from a dream, I got this idea from uh you know, there's a sense that I got it from another world. There's a sense I got it from a from the muse.

It's so or it's it's just sort of a symbol out of a mysterious you know process, and and and so making that claim can it can be a little uh disingenuous. I guess is that because the memory is a faulty thing. Yeah. Yeah, and then the then what I always think of two is that the ego might be kind of bound up to like I'm a genius, I I've got the solution. I I dreamed like this brain is pretty fabulous. I was thinking about this problem and then I just I just went to sleep and

my brain did all the rest of the work. Like That's how awesome this uh, this engine in my head is. You know. So there's there's a there's a sense of that with with the and and of course it's one of those things that can never be fully proved proven. I could I could make the claim that every podcast we've done, I've you know, has been inspired by my dreams. And you know, how are you going to prove me wrong? Right? I'm not? Yeah, so um so yeah, keep that in

mind in any of these examples we're talking about. I think we'll get into it. There's clearly something going on in the in the brain and a number of processes that we can actually look at scientifically, but ultimately there's a lot of subjective subjective area there to keep in mind. Uh. The biggest one that comes that that generally rises to the top is Dmitri mental Lev and Uh, he was working on the periodic table of elements, um, which we have.

There's I believe there's a podcast about that and also an excellent how stuff works article. Um. But he allegedly he fell asleep during an afternoon game of solitaire, as one as want to do, and upon waking he you know, he knew exactly how he's going to arrange them, which is of course he ranged the arrange them according to increasing atomic masks and found that, you know, the elements

of similar properties appeared at regular intervals. But but this is that this is one again, we can't really prove that this happened, right, Yeah, And there is actually some information out there that calls it into question because they say that it um that wrestling colleagues second hand account of this, right, So maybe he told the colleague and then that the archival material indicates that Mendelev had already discovered the pyodic table before the alleged dream took place,

and that a dream quite plausibly occurred some went later than depicted in and it was an improved representation of the periodic table. So there's I mean no doubt he had a dream about it, but it may have not been the the Eureka moment that was, you know, all of a sudden, the complete version of the periodic table.

It makes me think too, like maybe he just got sick of telling the story like everybody you know, Like it's like he goes to a dinner party and they're like, hey, mental leve, how did you come up with that periodic table? And eventually you just get sick of telling the same story over and over and you like, I dreamt it right? Yeah. Yeah. Because he tells a real version, he's going to have

the group for very long. Um. Another interesting case is is a Frederick August von Coo Cool back in eighteen sixty nine, and he again allegedly discovered the ring structure of the benzene molecule UH by dreaming about a snake seizing hold of its own tail, which for the conspiracy theorists out there, don't get too excited. I don't think

that he was a member of the Illuminati. Um. But right that that that he took that, and he extrapolated that to say that benzine had a ring like molecular structure, right, yeah, which is pretty cool. I mean if if indeed that happened. Yeah, because the ben zine is it's basically it's a ring of six carbons and then they're like six hydrogen shooting off from it. They'll have to say I look at it, and I don't think, oh my goodness, it's totally a snake um consuming its own tail. No. And I was

thinking about that too. I was like, yeah, that seems a little far fetched, but if you are obsessed with the topic, you'll find patterns anywhere that you can. Right. So maybe even if it was an accident, maybe if the he truly was just dreaming about a snake consuming its own tail. Um after his Illuminati meeting, and then he woke up and he thought, oh, well, you know what, there's there's actually a correlation here, like the it's you know,

the brain does try to find patterns. Yeah, well, maybe he was reading a bunch of like Norse mythology, and he was all wound up about the organ mander and the knit guard storm, and you know who isn't about them.

Another interesting account is that of this, well there's a First of all, there's Elias ho This is the guy who, uh, he was working on designs for the first selling machine and he couldn't figure out how to make it hold the needle, and then he dreamt that he was being attacked by cannibals with spears and supposedly worked it all out right right, and he noticed that the spear there was a small hole at the top right, because I think before he was playing with a needle that he

had put the hole in the middle. And so he had that eureka moment when when he was about to be cannibalized in his dream. I wonder if you like woke up, like, first of all, it was like, oh my god, goodness, I'm about to be eaten, like just completely freaking out, and he's like, oh, oh wait, no, I got it. You know, it's sort of interesting too, because you know, his adrenaline probably was pretty high, and there's actually some correlation between adrenaline in long term memory.

So yeah, so it was good that he remembered it. One of the more one of the crazy examples is Herman v. Hill prect and this guy was actually a German born professor of assyrian Um. And there it's worth noting that there are also some accusations that this professor and you know, took credit for other people's archaeological work that he hadn't done, that he appropriated artifacts, it's, etcetera.

So there's there's some controversy about this figure um. But but there were like two cases where he supposedly figured

something out via his dreams. Uh. For instance, he was trying to umu decode the name Nebuchadnezzar, the legendary Babylonian and he claims that he had a dream um and you know, he'd been working at this problem, working at it, and then he had a dream um where he's like saw this, uh, this dude at a table and he figured out that the that it means nebu protect my boundary, which that may not make a lot of sense, but let me get unto the in the next one, which

is even more interesting. And this was one he was this is uh and there was an expedition to the Temple of Bell at Nippur in present day Iraq, and Uh he brought back a sketch of two fragments UH with the inscriptions in cuneiform, and he made a stab

at translating these to no avail and then Uh. Then he supposedly had a dream in which quote a tall, thin priest of the old pre Christian Nippur unquote came to him in a dream, and it formed him that these fragments were portions of ear rings and UH, and that the Babylonian king had sent these had sent an inscribed voted cylinder uh to Uh to some artisans and asked him to make ear rings and then he made

them out of the subscribed cylinder and UH. And so he ended up going to the He thought about it this after the dream apparently decided that yes, the dream was right, and then he went to the Imperial Museum in Constantinople in the same year and located fragments UH in two widely separated cases. And when he arranged them side by side, he found that they had in fact once belonged to the same vote of cylinder. So this

fascinated um Uh some some people. But but when they really started looking at it, it it was like it was clear that this was just associated reasoning. There was like nothing going on that like, these dreams were not giving him any information that he could not have pieced together conceivably, and you know in his waking uh contemplations, right, it just happened to occur in his dream stay and and again there's some controversies about the guy anyway, so you know,

keep that in mind too. But but but even if it was complete, really on the up and up, there was nothing, uh you know, there's nothing supernatural going on here, right, right. But then yeah, but there's the problem him being a little body, So yeah, what are you gonna do? So

what's going on in the mind? A lot turns out? Yeah. Um. In fact, there's a psychologists by the name of Deedre Barrett, and she says that creative problem solving dreams virtually always occur only after the dreamer has done extensive work on the issue awake. So most typically the dreamer is stuck at one particular step of a multiple phase process, and

then the dream involves that step. So then you uh add another psychologist to the equation, and his name is Robert stickled, and he has conducted all sorts of studies, but basically his premise is that sleep can increase your ability to finish solving outstanding problems that you may have. And when you look at it our brains, the regions involved in dreaming, the emotional processing quanked way up. Um,

so you've got the emotional component. And what he seems to think is that there are parts of the brain that you can access much more directly than in your waking sleep. Um, in particular the emotional components which may have been gathering data for you as well. Um, that

can inform the problem that you're working on. And I mean I would use the example of from earlier when we were talking about solving problems in our dreams, and when I've had a conflict with someone and being able to access that information in my mind during a dream and having this conversation and and perhaps having the time and space on a mental blackboard to figure that out, and those resources being more available to me. So this is someone who has, like I said, carried out a

lot of studies in that area. So anyway, Um, yes, he Robert Sickle thinks that dreams are constructed within networks of associated memories that we don't have access to normally, and he sees dreams as being about what the brain calculates as most important, same as as Barrett. Basically, the importance of the subject, multiplied by the time spent on it determines what we dream about. But now, of course the problem is that we don't always remember our dreams.

So there are two theories on why we don't remember dreams. One is that uh during rem we shut off our non adrenaline release, and that may shut down systems that normally in code memories. So when we wake up from a lingering dream, and that dream is sort of in a short term purgatory of memory, UM, whether or not it's sticks depends on if we can revisit the material while we're actively awake when the uh nora adrenaline release turns back on, and then it commits it to memory.

So that's one possibility. A second possibility of why we don't necessarily remember is that we can't necessarily index them and find them quickly. Um we need associations to trip the memory. So um stick Gold uses the example of seeing a cat and then all of a sudden remembering a dream from the night before about a cat and being able to take those associations and really activate the

recall part of your brain. Yeah, so that's that's always something kind of mystery, like why can't I remember every single one of my dreams? Yeah, there's a on similar ground, there's a there's a two thousand seven study from Germany Central Institute of Mental Health and they looked at and they were looking into how dreams of influence creativity. And uh, it's important that when I'm talking about creativity that we're not just talking about Salvador Dolly painting a dream escape,

like this is the creative thinking in any thing. Yeah, the same thing goes for you know, you're trying to figure out how to build a sewing machine, because creativity is essentially taking you know, different ideas and assembling them

into new and useful combinations. Yeah, you know. And so in a sense, the whole dreams are just a screen saver, maybe in the sense that, like you said, you had a you have one of the screensavers that draws from a folder ofges, and so all these images are things that occupy your brain and you know, suddenly, oh, we're getting the picture of you know, the cat barfing and oh, here's the picture of you know, of of dirty rock or something, you know, and so then they become because

for you, the cat barfing is going to get flag because it's really important because that means you're gonna have some big dry cleaning bills. Right. So, but I mean in terms of content that we flag, is this is

important to pay attention to. Yeah, or you know, it's like one of those things where you know you'll have like, oh, on on one level, here's this you know, there's this area of like just pure emotional like say, you know, fear of I don't know, you know, fear of strangers, and then it gets tied up with some you know, fictional thing you've been consuming. Like I think of like like zombie dreams, Like have you ever had zombie Holocaust dreams?

Zombie U part? No? I wish really I have them frequently, and I think my wife does too, And I've I've spent some time like sort of analyze self analyzing those and thinking about like what does that represent? Because I think there're a number of things in the whole zombie mythos that really that that really capture a lot of emotions about modern life. No. No, I think that it's just that they're so slow moving that I've never been

able to take them seriously as a threat exactly. But I think that's why we end up getting attached them, because it's a slow moving Uh. It's a slow moving threat that we can totally deal with if we apply ourselves. And it's a blank check to use um violence to solve It's basically, uh, in the zombie movies, it's like totally cool to use just brutal violence to solve a

very simple problem. And so I think there's something like you know, primal in our you know, in our hind brain that really wants to be able to solve simple problems like that. And of course the world is there's no morality connected to zombies. Yeah. But but I'm I'm I'm getting off the point. Basically, I'm saying, I think there's academic paper here in the work. There is somebody who there was a recent article about the whole like

the problem solving aspect of that, not so much the violence. Um. I'll have to throw it up on the blocks when I can remember it later maybe, But back to this, uh, this German study, Um, this two thousand seven study. They looked at individual individuals with average levels of creativity who had reported their dream stimulating stimulating their waking life creativity, and they found that there are a number of factors uh that that were in play here. Uh. Dream and

dream recall frequency was key. Um, your ability to recall the dream was a major a major influence on whether or not that was actually useful to you on a creative level. But also there were traits like attitude towards creativity and creative activities that you undertake on a regular basis, your openness to new experience, and just your imagination in general. This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow.

So the this was bearing out what in the study specifically, is it sort of that the more uh it's to me, it's like a chicken and egg proposition, like the more artistic you are creative during the day, then it would feed your dreams or vice versa. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's like you're you're engaging in a creative process of

some kind and then you're dreaming. It's you know, it's on one level, it's like the creative process is the problem you're trying to solve your you dream about it, and then your you know, your brain isn't preparing you more for that for that challenge in the waking life. But also it comes down to are you remembering your dreams? Are you the kind of person who's going to value

the dream information at all? You know? Are you the kind of person that's gonna, you know, look at the cat and think, oh, I had a dream last night about that cat? What was that dream? What did that dream mean? You know, so you can't necessarily dismiss dreams out of hand if you're if you're the person who really wants to add more value to your own creativity, right, yeah, okay?

Is it interesting? I mean this one study anyway, um and and there's some other interesting ones where they look at just how it affects um uh, you know, your ability to solve problems. There's a University of California, San Diego experiment where uh, and this is this is one of those just brilliantly simple experiments where three words are given to test subjects such as surprise, line, and birthday, and then they you have to guess a fourth word.

So what would what would be the first fourth associated words you would pick for surprise line and birthday surprise line, birthday zombies. Well, the word they were asked they were looking for it was party, you know, surprise party, party line, a little you know, and the birthday party. Uh. So, but they let one third of the test subjects nap before they picked that fourth word, and uh post u rim sleep and then they woke up and the people

who had had that little map scored higher. Uh. And then the quiet rest or non rem sleep uh test subjects produced no benefit whatsoever. So so this was you know, they were definitely making an argument that rooms sleep with having a very um, you know, active role in preparing

you for these problems. So you know, the brain is free associating amongst its ideas and its memories, and uh, you know, it's creating these loose associations that were able to you know, then we're able to put the connections together and get new ideas out of it, you know, the creative creativity, you know, the guts of creativity and action. Along the same lines again, Robert stick Gold had a study where he had some college students go through a maze on a computer and they were asked to note

the position of a particular tree. Oh yes, I ran across this as well. Yeah. And then I think, like, I don't know how many of the subjects were asked to take a nap and the other, let's say half, we're asked to go do something quiet and meditative. Um. And after the they completed their activity, whether it was napping or playing a you know, quiet video game, I don't know. Um, they then were retested, or rather they were put through the maze again. And those subjects found

the tree a lot faster. But of course they had to have had dreamed about it. And the ones who reported dreaming about it actually were the ones that found the tree a lot faster. Yeah, those who those who had dreamed of the the experimental tasks, that's like four four of the fifty nappers, they completed the maze just

much faster, right. And And the reason that they know that they dreamed about it is because from time to time they would wake them up and ask them what they're dreaming about, and they you know, I think it was right as they were going to sleep in rem sleep and then right at the end of their sleep cycle, and so the person would say, I'm dreaming about the

maze or you know, giving certain details, um. But it was interesting that a lot of them described some of the associations with learning, meaning that they would say, Okay, I'm I'm hearing the music that was played in the lab earlier, and now I see the tree or I see this position in the maze, which again points back to the fact that you've got to have certain associations during learning. And it actually makes me think about this

study that was done with much of college kids. They were basically saying, okay, we want you to study in three different places. Everybody you know, one group three different places, one group just studying the same place that you always study. And the people that studied in multiple places scored higher

because they were creating those associations. They were in that room when they were thinking about this piece of information and the light was just so and so the cool thing about dreams is that it's allowing you to replay all of those associations that you're having during the learning process. Interesting. So stick Gold again, this is this is the guy

to go to with dreams and learning. He was he wanted to test out dreaming and problem solving, UM, but he wasn't quite sure how to get everybody to dream about the same thing. So sort of his poor man's in scept front right here. Um, he decided to have a group of people play Tetris. Oh, yes, because I think anybody who's played Tetris has had dreams about it. And it's yeah, it just happens. Yeah, Yeah, there's something that it's like capting it for the brain that you

can't help but revisit again and again. Um. But the group included amnusiacs, which is sort of interesting. Um, and this group dreamed about Tetris indeed, and again they did the same process where they woke them up at intervals

and ask them what they were dreaming about. Um. So that findings suggests that dreams come from the parts of the brain responsible for implicit memories, such as being able to ride a bike after years of not being on one, and that's a memory that um, actually amnesiacs do have. And the study confirmed that scientists suspicions that implicit rather than declarative memories were involved, and that really cemented this

idea that the brain uses dreaming to re worse learning. Interesting. Yeah, I wonder uh, And certainly if anybody out there has any stories about this, we'd be happy to hear them. Um, if there are cases where someone has been playing a video game with some form prior to going to sleep, then go to sleep and you know dream about it, which occurs with games other than than Tetris, especially if there's anybody out there like addicted to like Angry Birds

or any of that. If they've ever like hit a level where they're like, oh I totally can't beat this, go to sleep, and then the next day they're able to knock it. I wonder if if that occurs. Oh yeah,

I think I've actually seen studies about that before. Um that this is a big thing with gamers too, so that um, they have to use the same process and saying okay, can they work out the problem and then master another level more efficiently than someone who's not napping or dreaming about there, you go, don't stay up all night playing video games, get some sleep, and you know, wake up at a decent time and you know, work

on it first thing in the morning. I say to my old roommate, and I used to get up at seven o'clock to go to work, and he was still in front of the computer. Um that being said, uh, I mean it's it's there's no doubt here that there's evidence that your your brain is working it out while you're sleeping. Um and so I guess the idea is that if you had more access to your dream material than you might be able to actively work on these things.

And they're also there's also some there're also studies that are looking at gene expression. Um. The University of Wisconsin study found in the rats expression levels of about a hundred genes increased during sleep independent of the time of day. So um and you know, these are genes that are involved in the release of neurotransmitter chemicals that of course, you know, allowing different parts of your brain to talk

to each other. Um. So. So you know, through throughout these different experiments, you're just seeing, you know, cases where sleep induce procedural learning. Is you know, is influence is you know, there's a role with the gene expression, neurotransmitter mechanisms, the patterns of electrical activity and uh, you know a number of different scientists out there can just continuing to

sort of map out exactly what's going on. But but but but I think it's clear that you know that that the brain is working on solving problems in the night, or at least the results prepare you to to better

solve these problems in your waking life. Yeah. I actually even read this this one question that went to stick Gold in a Q and A, and it was someone asking why flying dreams are so prevalent, and he was saying, even then, your brain is trying to work on the data that it has present and presenting it in a dream. So um, he was saying that that the brain is trying to reconcile the fact that we're under the illusion that we're moving, but it's getting data from the body

saying that it's immobile. So flying, we're moving, but our limbs aren't bending or moving, and so that that was really interesting to me to think it was. It was trying to serve both masters of saying, look, I'm flying, and yet if you've ever had a flying dream, you're usually the accounts of them, or that you're you know, pretty stiff, like you're in the Superman pose, or you're just sort of sitting very stiff li and moving forward. Yeah.

I I unfortunately don't get them that often, but it's generally like I like, I don't really remember any sense of moving my limbs, you know, or having any kind of like reef. It's just sort of like you're just you're you're flying, You're you're off the ground. And yeah, yeah, I guess it. It is kind of a stiff feeling when I think back on it. Yeah, And I think that's your brain trying to say, Okay, fine, do you want to fly, You'll fly. But I'm telling you right

now that you know your body is immobile. You're not moving, buddy. Yeah. So fascinating stuff with the brain. Yeah, take that with you, sleep on it and uh and see what kind of interesting ideas come out of it. It's especially if you're listening to this ride before you go to sleep. That's right, and don't win miss if you have any nightmares. Yeah right. So, hey, I think we have just one little bit of listener mail.

Here is this the hair shirt email hairshirt? Yeah, you know you you noticed the hair shirt then I went, oh, yes, yes, I mean it's super spiky and hairy. Yeah. Well, I mean the color scheme is really cool. So I just thought it was like a fashion thing going on. Oh yeah, which it's Italian. We have a listener by the name of Ryan and Ryan writes in Hi, Robert and Julie. I love the podcast, but you made a huge mistake when you said that the universe is forty seven billion

years old. It is, in fact only fourteen point seven billion years old. I don't mean to split hairs, but this is a pretty big mistake to make. In a happier note, thanks for finally helping me figure out a mystery that has bothered me for a while now by explaining that M theory stands for membrane. I could never get a straight answer about what he stood for before your loyal listener, Ryan. Okay, Well, first of all, M theory for anybody else who's interested in that. Um. John

Horgan actually has a really interesting article. If you go onto his website, you'll see it's about Stephen Hawking and he talks about M theory in more detail. But yeah, I am this is a very scratchy shirt and I'm glad that he pointed that out because speaking of dreams and waking life. Um, that was one of those things that actually popped up at three o'clock in the morning a couple of days after we quote of the podcast,

And oh my god, did I say that? But what I thought I had done is confused four point five billion years in the solar system with forty five millions, But apparently I've said forty seven millions. So well, it's one of those you said. It didn't even register because I just kind of like heard the correct numbers in my head somehow. No, but it hurts his heart, it hurts mine, so you know, Mia Colpa. Yeah, but it's

worth noting that. It's not like you're running into Julian the hallways and she's making a passionate argument that that the universe is forty seven billion years old it's true, yeah, or six thousand years. Yeah. I try not to, you know,

have those conversations in the hallway. Um, but by all means, you know, if something over here in one of our podcasts sounds a little off, you know, a lot of what we do in here, Um, you know, we researched everything beforehand, but some of the actual content is sort of come and flying off the cuff. And uh, you know, every now and then we get something a little wrong, so we're happy to make the correction. Uh. And Robert likes to to make me where I hurt, So is

that his pleasure? Um? And uh, if you have any really interesting anecdotes or even just mildly interested, We're we're pretty easily pleased, uh stories about how dreams have influenced your creative processes, whether it be in the creation of art, you know, music. Um, yeah, I'm especially interested in music because I was looking at some stats from one of those studies and they found, uh, like, one of the

lowest stats was musical inspiration among the people Poe. Now you know, even though we have this, you know, this really cool story of of Paul McCartney, Like in this particular study, there were fewer examples of of a dream influencing somebody's music. But but really anything if you if you have any examples of of something in your dream, you know, solving that problem, be it scientific or artistic, let us know. We'd love to hear about it. Yeah,

you never know, it might be Noble prize winning. And uh, you know you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. On both of those we are to load the mind, And if you want to drop us a line in the old leadite fashion, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.

Download it today on iTunes.