How REM sleep unlocks human function

[Music]

In the modern age, we've lost our

reverence for the dream state. But rim

sleep is what has made us special.

More and more evidence is accumulating

which suggests that rim sleep was

absolutely critical to the evolution of

the special cognitive capacities that

human beings evidence and therefore

critical to our cultural evolution and

our special creativity.

What REM sleep normally does is it

creates this very high coneric

environment in the brain which allows

for intense creativity because it

promotes connections between otherwise

disparit ideas. So when our ancestors in

the upper paleolithic acquired greater

access to the rim sleep state, it helped

to fuel the onset of cumulative cultural

evolutionary processes.

When you're in REM sleep, your body is

quiet, but your mind is actually very

active. So, it's a time when your body

and your brain is restoring itself. It's

repairing any cell damage that happened

during the day. It also helps with

digestion, helps with memory. It has a

lot of things that it's doing while

you're asleep.

Sleep deprivation can lead to a number

of different decrements. Decrements in

attention and concentration, being able

to learn more efficiently. that's just

not as good. And also, there's a new

line of research showing that people who

don't get enough sleep, their body

doesn't metabolize as well.

>> For all of the quadrillions of cells in

your body to do what they're supposed to

do, they all need to know what time it

is. And that's why every organ has a

clock. That's why each cell has a clock.

And that's why the master clock is

stored in something called the SCN

inside the brain. And light controls the

SCN more than anything else. you want to

sleep well at night, the biggest thing

is turn the lights down at night. It

doesn't change the length you'll sleep

necessarily, but it changes the quality

of your sleep. And the reason this works

is that timing system in the body is

looking for that. And if you give it the

bright light, especially in evening, it

says, "I don't know what time it is."

And then all the different systems in

the body that are supposed to work as a

system in unison, they don't do that. It

doesn't take very much light at night in

order to screw up the quality of your

sleep and then the quality of your

thinking.

>> RIM has been crucial to human

creativity. It's constantly creating

these dream worlds for us and we can

then compare our current world with

these alternative simulations of

possible worlds and that creates

tremendous forward goal seeking

behaviors and can help us get creative

solutions for dealing with the

challenges we're all facing.