Three phases of life
Not long ago, without thinking about it, we divided our lives into two significantly different phases - awakening and sleeping. Now, perhaps, it's time to give it up. And that's why.
While studying the state of a person's sleep, scientists have recently established a lot of interesting facts. It turned out that each of us has two dreams: a slow dream and a fast dream, or paradoxical. An adult has about a quarter of all sleep time falling into a fast sleep, and the rest falls into a slow sleep.
If you ask your acquaintances what dreams they have, there may be those who will answer, "I never dream. However, this is not the case. Researchers were watching the person who was asleep, and as soon as he had a quick sleep, they would wake up and ask him what he saw in his sleep. The woke-up man always remembered the dream and talked about it. And indeed, when you look at a person in a paradoxical dream phase, you can conclude that the sleeping person is experiencing something: his breathing becomes faster, his heart rate changes, his arms and legs move, there are rapid movements of eyes and facial muscles.
Researchers have suggested that it is at these moments that a person who is asleep has a dream. And so it turned out. And it was worth waking up the same person while sleeping, and he assured that he did not see any dreams. The reason was simple - he had already forgotten them while he was sleeping slowly.
In 6-8 hours of sleep, a slow sleep lasting 60-90 minutes was several times replaced by a fast sleep - by 10-20 minutes. Thus, overnight we have four to five "fifteen, twenty minutes" when the brain allows itself to "walk around the land of dreams.
The constant appearance of dreams, their regularity has led researchers to the idea: aren't they necessary for the body? What happens if you deprive a person of the opportunity to dream?
Hundreds of volunteers have been studied during sleep. They were allowed to sleep only when they were sleeping slowly, and as soon as they had a paradoxical dream, they were awakened. In other words, people were given the opportunity to sleep, but were not allowed to dream.
In parallel with them, others were woken up as often, but during sleep periods without dreams. What was observed in those who were not allowed to have dreams? First of all, there was an increase in the frequency of dreams, and fast sleep came at shorter intervals. Then, some time later, people without dreams developed neuroses - feelings of fear, anxiety, tension. And after they were allowed to sleep fast again, it lasted longer than usual, as if the body was catching up.
It turns out that our dreams are just as much a necessary brain work as normal mental activity. We need dreams as much as breathing or digestion!
Thus, we have every reason to divide our lives not into sleep and awakening, but dreamless sleep, dreaming and awake.
A dream dream dream is a very special state of the body, in which the brain works as intensively as it does when awake, but this work is organized differently and is much more "classified" by nature. Anyway, now it has become clear: it is impossible to say that during sleep the brain is in a passive state. A kind proverb of brain neurons in a sleeping person works even more actively than in the daytime. This applies, first of all, to the deep parts of the brain. Interestingly, the same pattern is observed in animals. Scientists have experimented with cats: when they were awakened by fast sleep, the intervals between fast sleep periods were reduced from 10-30 minutes to 1 minute. The animal seems to be trying to dream the more often the more it is hindered! The cat stops waking up and the sleep periods lengthen.
To be continued in the next part https://zen.yandex.ru/profile/editor/id/5d9330af8600e100b06bbabe/5d94967bdf944400b0e4eefc/edit