Dreaming

Restless · Post by **Restless** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:47 pm

Tonight is the two week anniversary of my being on the CPAP machine. I am still adjusting, but doing well. I have not noticed much of a change in my tiredness during the day. One thing I have noticed is that I am dreaming. I remember bits and pieces. Prior to the CPAP I can't remember the last dream I had.

Is this a good thing or bad thing?

jskinner · Post by **jskinner** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:50 pm

Restless wrote: Is this a good thing or bad thing?

Its a good thing. You may also experience REM rebound for a while after starting CPAP. It seems to be ones body making up for lost REM. It normally calms down after a week or too.

In any case dreaming is good because most dreaming happens during REM. Having dreams means that you are now making it to that stage.

DreamStalker · Post by **DreamStalker** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:56 pm

Dreaming is a good thing in my opinion. Some may say otherwise based on the premise that if you remember, then you are waking and therefore not sleeping as soundly. Although I agree with the logic behind this premise, I think it varies from person to person regarding just how soundly one may sleep and how well one can remember their dreams.

I know that I used to remember my dreams throughout my early childhood and into my late 20's. Dreams bacame a rarity after that and eventually faded away all together until I started my PAP treatment. Now its just like when I was a kid and I sort'a feel like one most of the time too.

pedroski · Post by **pedroski** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:56 pm

Hi Restless,

It's got to be a good thing I think. The jury is out on dreaming and there's still much that's not understood, but the fact that one of the things you've noticed since commencing cpap means that something is changing in your sleeping/brain wave patterns ie the therapy is doing it's job.

I noticed the same thing. I can't remember dreaming before cpap for yonks, but especially in the first couple of weeks with what I think was REM rebound I had amazingly vivid dreams.

Good luck with it

Peter

Dreaming and REM Sleep
We typically spend more than 2 hours each night dreaming. Scientists do not know much about how or why we dream. Sigmund Freud, who greatly influenced the field of psychology, believed dreaming was a "safety valve" for unconscious desires. Only after 1953, when researchers first described REM in sleeping infants, did scientists begin to carefully study sleep and dreaming. They soon realized that the strange, illogical experiences we call dreams almost always occur during REM sleep. While most mammals and birds show signs of REM sleep, reptiles and other cold-blooded animals do not.
REM sleep begins with signals from an area at the base of the brain called the pons (see figure 2). These signals travel to a brain region called the thalamus, which relays them to the cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain that is responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. The pons also sends signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis of the limb muscles. If something interferes with this paralysis, people will begin to physically "act out" their dreams – a rare, dangerous problem called REM sleep behavior disorder. A person dreaming about a ball game, for example, may run headlong into furniture or blindly strike someone sleeping nearby while trying to catch a ball in the dream.
REM sleep stimulates the brain regions used in learning. This may be important for normal brain development during infancy, which would explain why infants spend much more time in REM sleep than adults (see Sleep: A Dynamic Activity). Like deep sleep, REM sleep is associated with increased production of proteins. One study found that REM sleep affects learning of certain mental skills. People taught a skill and then deprived of non-REM sleep could recall what they had learned after sleeping, while people deprived of REM sleep could not.
Some scientists believe dreams are the cortex's attempt to find meaning in the random signals that it receives during REM sleep. The cortex is the part of the brain that interprets and organizes information from the environment during consciousness. It may be that, given random signals from the pons during REM sleep, the cortex tries to interpret these signals as well, creating a "story" out of fragmented brain activity.

Especially

One study found that REM sleep affects learning of certain mental skills. People taught a skill and then deprived of non-REM sleep could recall what they had learned

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brai ... m#dreaming

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