REM Sleep: Opening The Doors To Our Minds

REM Sleep: Opening The Doors To Our Minds 

Within my neuroscience seminar week 12, we had a guest speaker, Dr. Grabriela Torres-Platas, who gave a wonderful presentation on their research that they have done involving how one can benefit from something called dream yoga. Basically, they gathered a group of 20 participants who specialize and are vastly knowledgeable about how when in REM sleep  (is a state where you are asleep but still conscious, visibly seen with rapid eye movement)  to activate lucid dreaming (when you're able to control your dreams, defying natural law) and had them partake in different sleep experiments. When training for this previously, the participants learned different cues that indicated when they were lucid dreaming and when they were done and have completed the task that was set for them. These challenges were ones that involved walking through solid objects and flying in their dreams. In doing this it helped increase cognitive flexibility. There was also test and data that was collected form this that showed that sleep yoga improved memory and other health outcomes, such as a decrease in anxiety. Since sleep yoga holds so many benefits, Dr. Gabriela Torres-Platas and her team are trying to conduct more research on how to make the process of dream yoga learnable for everyone so they can obtain better health both physically and mentally. This all would not have happened if we had not analyse lucid dreaming which only takes place during REM sleep. This left me wondering what other amazing advances neuroscience has made analyzing more that can happen in this dreaming state. 

In an article that I had found,”Memory deficits link trait-like EEG spectral profiles during REM and slow-wave sleep with shared symptoms of depression and anxiety, published November 2025, they conducted an experiment to see if certain memories not being processed in a healthy way can lead to depression and anxiety. To test and see if this is in fact linked to one another they conducted a rest with 149 participants who did not have a history of sleep disorders and mental health disorders and had them partake in memory learning before sleeping. In the memory learning step the participants looked at images of 32 negative scenes (images that were upsetting)  and 32 natural scenes (images that had neutral emotion) in a random slideshow and tracked the thumb positioning of the participants that told the researchers what emotion they felt when shown each image. Participants then slept in the lab wearing EEG caps that recorded what is happening during REM sleep (when the brain is very active) and slow wave sleep (when the brain is in a deep state of sleep and memories are restored). In doing so they collected data that correlated in both of these sleep stages.  Then after they slept and it was 12 hours they conducted a recognition test that tested whether the images they were shown again were new, similar, or the same.  This allowed researchers to see if depending on what was shown, they had correct recognition or created false memories of seeing different images. Then after this participants partook in a survey that asked about if they had anxiety, stress/ negative emotions, and depression symptoms to allow this to be linked to the overall data, In the end when all of this was put together they discovered that with an increase of activity of the brain during REM sleep resulted in the participants to create false memories in regards to the negative images that were shown.  For those who had an increase of brain activity in slow wave sleep, memory recall was decreased for both negative and neutral images that were shown. To further this those whose memory was decreased for recall or created false memories did in fact score higher in terms of anxiety and depression.  In the researchers were able to show that brain activity during sleep state affects memory and mental health a lot and even more when you have experienced something negative. 

Both of these discuss two different things but in the end they both found important information on the effect that sleep has on our overall health. And something that correlates in both is the fact that they exported different sleep states, especially REM sleep. I feel like if we explore this sleep stage even more we will discover many new things and learn how that links to important functions that we never knew they could as in articles and presentations, lucid dreaming and memory processing. 

References:  

Niu, Xinran, Kristin E. G. Sanders, Dan Denis, Tony J. Cunningham, Guangjian Zhang, Elizabeth A. Kensinger, and Jessica D. Payne. 2026. “Memory Deficits Link Trait-Like EEG Spectral Profiles during REM and Slow-Wave Sleep with Shared “

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432825005194?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=9ac284126f17e811