The Neuroscience of Sleep

[Music]

hello everyone

i um it’s kind of funny because if you

think about what i’m going to be talking

today it’s mostly related to

stress relief and being stressed anxious

about different things

and i was so stressed that i actually

forgot my water bottle coming up to the

stage and all these other different

things that

make me realize that there’s so many

parts of our lives

that we kind of just go through and as

soon as we get through something we get

through a big test

or we get over something that we were

really nervous about

there’s this huge moment in which

there’s this huge relief

so obviously you know even leading up to

this i was so excited to come and talk

to people some people that i know some

people that weren’t here when i was a

student here

and i think to myself i really wanted to

come and stand on the carpet but i was

planning on standing at the podium

because i have all these notes

but i hope you guys don’t mind and i

just want to tell you a little about

one of my hobbies so i talked about

being interested in the neuroscience of

sleep

and the reason that i didn’t want to

prepare any slides for today is because

i think one of the most important

aspects of sleep and important aspects

of dreams

is that there’s this component of

creativity

and when you’re in your own mind and

you’re trying to be imaginative

i’d like you guys to join me and in some

of the things that i’ll tell you i might

tell you to close your eyes and think

about a certain situation

uh because a lot of times the thing that

i like doing which is

lucid dreaming as you can see from my

title um

it’s kind of something that you need to

be creative about and i’m gonna teach

you guys

how to become lucid dreamers yourselves

so i hope you guys enjoy

and if you guys have any questions i’ll

say my email at the end and you can

email me

and i’d love to stay in touch especially

with some people that here at bca

because

i mean i don’t know the school is

changing so much these blue lights are

really cool

in the auditorium but i still feel like

i have such a strong connection with all

of you and i love coming back and

talking to everyone

so to start off there’s a huge industry

that’s growing today

with stress relief obviously you’ve seen

the advertisements for whether it’s yoga

classes or stress relief candles

there’s all sorts of things that are

going on but one of the biggest things

is meditation and so meditation is

kind of has a proposed connection to

being able to benefit specifically

western society because there’s this

obsession in western society with

individualism and trying to be a leader

on your own

and not really necessarily working as

part of a team

and this is different in other cultures

where i remember once i actually visited

japan

with bergen academies and we watched

them

set up an auditorium in minutes all

these chairs in perfect rows

because everyone was working to blend

together and work as a team

and so there’s this aspect of when

you’re here

and everyone is told to like do your own

individual best be your best person

and there’s kind of this competitive

aspect of competing against everyone

else

there’s this weird feeling of kind of

being alone in that sometimes

and so meditation is specifically a time

or a practice

in which you can kind of sit alone

there’s lots of versions of it

so you could just be sitting breathing

and breathing and now

slowly you can have guided meditations

you guys have probably heard of

headspace as an app

you can have a membership a lot of

people at school do it

it’s pretty cool actually i’ve never

done it mostly because

last semester i was privileged enough to

take a class on mindfulness meditation

and we had guided meditations once a

week

um and so i actually found through this

class that there’s this really weird

connection

between mindfulness meditation and

something that i have been doing

my entire life which is lucid dreaming

so

um the definition of mindfulness is

really debated in the scientific

community it’s kind of like one of those

things where

you know what something is but no one

really knows how to categorize it

this happens a lot in science because

specifically in psychology

if any of you guys are taking ap

psychology i remember there were so many

definitions

where i was always kind of like wouldn’t

it just be easier

if we talked about this in a practical

experiential term

but instead there needs to be this

scientific definition that’s given to it

the way that it is framed

and so interestingly um there’s a

scholar called

named scott bishop and he was the lead

offer on a paper that had this awkward

operational definition for mindfulness

and he said that it was composed of two

components which was one

self-regulation of attention and so like

i’m saying there’s these words they’re

kind of inaccessible when you think

about it

because when you hear me say

self-regulation of attention

you don’t think of what it actually is

which is being aware

of your surroundings and being aware

that you are aware which is the main

thing

and so the second component is

orientation to experience

and so when you are practicing

mindfulness one of the biggest

components is actually you need to be

open to being curious

and this is really important because

there’s kind of this

idea that it’s has something to do with

being non-biased

in terms of interpreting your

surroundings and you know if you hear

things that you’re used to hearing

usually you would just not notice them

but when you’re practicing mindfulness

you’re supposed to take that into

account and say

this is a stimulus that i get and i’m

going to recognize that it’s there and

kind of not think about it but focus on

it and that’s supposed to allow you to

just

become one with yourself and kind of get

away from the stresses that are

constantly going through your head

it’s kind of called the laundry mind

which is definitely a thing

i found out i thought that oh my

wandering isn’t that relevant

and my professor sent out a survey where

randomly each day for a week we would

get an email and we had to click on it

and immediately say whether when we

received the email

were we thinking about what we were

doing or were we thinking about

something else

and this is really relevant because i

think that when i was younger

i was constantly thinking about what i

was doing but

as i grew older there’s things that i

need to focus on in the future i’m

trying to think

what am i going to talk about in the

next portion of this talk things like

that

but when you’re actually in the moment

uh you can kind of get a lot more from

certain experiences the whole

stereotypical

live in the moment thing is kind of a

way to freeze it

but more differently you can think of it

as not allowing yourself to get stressed

out and anxious about these upcoming

things

and obviously that’s hard because

i myself am not very good at living by

that rule

but i’ve found that mindfulness really

did help me

when we did practices every week and i

tried to do it every day i found myself

kind of becoming

uh surprisingly less scared of sleeping

before my homework was done

and this was because i would you know i

would try to work around my schedule and

put myself first

um i obviously understand that this is

hard and i remember being in bca and

staying up late and doing homework and

um it’s the same way now i just say that

now having this concept of trying to

live in the moment um and trying to

not focus too much on what’s making me

anxious in the future even though this

will happen in the most stressful

situations

i think it’s really good to see wow

you know i can go to bed now and when

you tell yourself you can go to bed like

it’s very nice because i personally like

i said my hobby is sleep

so i enjoy sleeping quite a lot so i

love to tell myself it’s okay to go to

bed

and just wake up early in the morning

and do my homework then it doesn’t work

for everyone and i often do sleep

through my alarm and so it doesn’t

always work for me either

but this was a new perspective that i

brought after practicing mindfulness

also it’s important to mention the

origins of mindfulness and some debates

that are also happening about that

uh mindfulness comes from buddhist

tradition and so it was uh founded in

southeast asia

it’s really important to keep in mind

that mindfulness was kind of taken by

many western companies

and just plucked away from an entire

spiritual

convention uh there’s many things in

buddhism about morality

and uh you probably have learned about

the eightfold path and all these things

that you need to follow alongside

mindfulness practice

in order to attain basically moral

righteousness and escape the cycle of

reincarnation

and so many people have debated that you

should not take mindfulness the practice

away from its roots which is

things like being a good person

basically simplified

i could talk about this all day and we

talked about it a lot in my class um but

when we were talking about these things

in class i realized that

my own version of this and kind of my

way of like

spiritualizing this being in the moment

type experience was

for me lucid dreaming and this is weird

because many people say well i’ve heard

of lucid dreaming that’s when you’re

aware of your sleep

and it is and weirdly when i was a kid i

did not think

that you were not aware that you were in

a dream

so my friends would say oh i had a

nightmare and i’d be like

why not just tell yourself to wake up

and they’re like

you’re weird you should know that you’re

asleep and

you shouldn’t be aware of the fact that

you’re dreaming and so

i don’t really know why this was the

case with me i was

kind of creative and loved to just like

make up stories so maybe that had

something to do with it

i do want to research it which is why

i’m interested in neuroscience of sleep

but i’ve found that as i’ve grown older

and stresses and anxieties have been

added to my life i no longer lucid dream

just naturally and so i realized this

and

when i was at vca i decided that i

wanted to figure out how to start doing

it again on my own

and the reason for this and the reason i

relate it and i’ve been talking about

mindfulness for so long

is because mindfulness specifically the

practice

of it before talking about the operation

you can do like i mentioned these guided

meditations

which sometimes there’s things called

the body scan which is when you think

about all the different parts of your

body and you kind of bring them

up to a relaxed state by focusing on

them

and then there’s also compassion

meditation once which

you send love and you send happy

thoughts to people

you know people that you don’t know

people that you love and people that you

might have problems with

which is another great version but if

you’re not guided the most common form

of

mindfulness meditation practice is

actually just called

mindfulness of the breath and so

mindfulness of the breath

is when you do a controlled breathing in

and out it’s kind of like if you really

stress out someone tells you to just

breathe

um you’re supposed to focus on one thing

whether that be like the actual motion

of breathing and you’re supposed to be

open to any things

sounds noises or things that you see if

you’re looking out a window

while you’re doing this some people

close their eyes but

you can also do this while walking we

did when we were walking through a park

and i realized that when you’re doing

this form of meditation it’s this

focus on breath and when you’re asleep

you have

constant breath it’s the same connection

there’s this

connection that’s actually really

important you have this constant breath

and that is why i realized that when i

was lucid dreaming i was getting the

same feeling

that i got through mindfulness

meditation and it actually became a

really great stress reliever for me

when i figured out how to do it so um

just some examples of studies that have

been done

on lucid dreaming injuries in general so

um

dr martin chun who is the dean of yale

he actually published a study where he

was able to

recreate the faces of people’s dreams

just because of using an mri and that

was

incredible i mean it was a functional

mri so um

it took a lot of work but the fact that

we are able to somehow connect

thoughts to creating images that people

are thinking about

this is the imagination aspect that i’m

talking about we can create

images with our minds once we have the

technology to do it and we’re getting

there

um another thing that’s interesting is

that

lucid dreamers have been involved in a

study where

they do a functional mri and they

basically are able to signal by moving

their eyes around

when they’re asleep and that means that

they are lucid and they’re aware that

they’re dreaming

and then when that happens um they then

are told to hold their breath

while they’re lucid drinking and uh the

study found

that when people did this they actually

held their breath so

that means that you do have somewhat

control over your body

you don’t have control over your

emotions when you’re lucid dreaming

obviously that would be very dangerous

if you were constantly sleepwalking

um but you do have this control over the

breath

nonetheless it usually stays constant

which is why i find it to be

similar to mindfulness practice so

another study

is that the part of your brain used to

read

is not active when you’re dreaming and

so

people would say oh why can’t you read

things in your dreams

and uh this was really interesting to me

because

i thought that i could read things in my

dreams and i’ve actually found in my own

experience that through practicing lucid

dreaming

i have found whenever i’m encountered

with something to read

i then become lucid because i’ll just be

dreaming and not be aware that i’m

dreaming

and then i’ll suddenly be like hey i

can’t read this and then i’ll be like oh

i’m in a dream

and then i can read it because that

activates the part of your brain

that’s able to read so i always thought

that was really awesome

so my own experiences i kind of used

that

as a way to kind of like figure out that

i was dreaming in the middle of a dream

um but usually what happens for me is

i’m able to start lucid dreaming after i

wake up suddenly

or i’m in a room with lots of light when

i fall asleep if i’m napping during the

day

usually if you were like doing a lot of

activity like doing your homework right

before going to sleep that’s usually the

best kind of thing

to reduce lucid dreaming and so um

you guys have probably heard of this

phenomenon called sleep paralysis

and that’s when when you wake up there’s

actually

two neurotransmitters in your brain it’s

gaba and glycine if anyone

here is taking ap site because i

remember learning about them

they’re actually really interesting in

that they cause you to be paralyzed

um because you can’t act out your dreams

or else you’d be sleepwalking all the

time

and so when this occurs this sleep

paralysis

is really interesting because it uh

makes it so that sometimes when people

wake up they can see their surroundings

but they might start having

hallucinations and they can’t move and

this is really scary for a lot of people

um but what has happened to me

personally is

the exact opposite so i once was

awoken by someone walking into my suite

when i had just fallen asleep on the

couch last year

and someone was hugging me in a dream

and i opened my eyes and i could still

feel as if i was moving in the dream and

i could still feel someone hugging me

but i was aware of the fact that like my

eyes were open i couldn’t move

but it was so cool because i closed my

eyes and i was back in the dream

so i found this just incredible this is

something that i think should be studied

and i think it’s something that’s also

cool because a lot of people want to

lose a dream because the coolest part of

it

is you can control your dreams once you

get good enough at it so you can kind of

just like make your own imaginative

realities when you’re asleep

um so that was some of my own

experiences

when i first started trying to lucid

dream interestingly

i had a bit of a problem that being that

i was able to figure out that i was

dreaming but

i was not able to control it and so one

time i was in a room i figured out i was

dreaming i said okay

so i’m gonna just start trying to

control my dreams and i said

i want a hot tub in the middle of the

room and the hot tub appeared but it

didn’t have water

i was like why on earth is my brain so

mean to me

it’s my own conscious kind of stopping

me from fulfilling this goal i have of

creating this

really cool experience in my own head

and

so that’s another thing that i think

needs to be studied and all of these

things really are not studied it’s kind

of a new

territory and neural science there’s

limited studies on lucid dreaming

um really when i did a paper on it last

year it was really only about that

breathing example i gave so with these

last few minutes i’m going to tell you

guys

how you guys can start to lucid dream so

if you draw on your hand

anywhere um you could just put a dot on

your hand this is the first step

i call it um checking is everything

normal

and so the way this works is whenever

you see that dot on your hand you just

look down at your fingers and you say

do my hands look normal do i have ten

fingers just quickly count off

um i did this for weeks and it wasn’t

working and i thought didn’t work

and then i stopped doing it and about a

week after i stopped i was in a dream

i looked down at my hands went to count

if i had 10 fingers

and my hands were like this big

so the thing is whenever you check

something and you try to be aware of

your surroundings as you would in

mindfulness

um in a dream uh it’s not normal

so it’s almost as if your brain wants

you to become aware

to relate this to mindfulness because

it’s an awareness of

being aware right so you kind of already

are aware of your dreams you just have

to pay attention to it

and this is what i find really

interesting so step two after you’re

doing that for a while

i’d say make a dream journal so

immediately when you wake up

the chemicals that are in your brain

during sleep

they’re trying to prevent you from

forming memories so you need to

immediately write down

dreams that you remember and then you’ll

start to become better at remembering

them and you’ll become more lucid

um that’s something i find really

interesting it’s kind of hard to do

especially if you’re usually waking up

in a rush to get to class

but i’ve had a lot of fun doing it

nonetheless and then finally find what

works for you

for me what works is reading things like

i said

um it works out really nicely and then i

figure oh i’m asleep and then i

start to lose stream so there’s some

pretty cool benefits

with lucid dreaming you can return to

dreams after you’ve already woken up

you’ll be able to not wake up if you

hear noises and incorporate noises into

your dreams

and then you’ll feel more well rested i

find and you can also experience

mindfulness

while also getting some sleep so

remember guys you’re already aware

you just haven’t realized it yet thank

you