TO SLEEP...PERCHANCE TO DREAM

[Music] e [Music] have you slept in the in a lab before Joel no I haven't well I hope you have a good night's sleep this is one of 14,000 sleep experiments that have exploded on campuses all over the nation in the last few years finish up here maybe you can tell Joel what he'll be doing as far as what he has to know anyway now these these electrodes will register eye movements these two mainly up and down the electrodes at the sides of the will register horizontal L movements there seem to be a lot of wires but once you're asleep you won't notice them these electrodes are not used to send current in but rather to pick up subtle electric changes coming from the muscle that control the eye what have these eye movements to do with sleep we have been sleeping for thousands of years yet remarkably it was not until 1953 that a graduate student Eugene aserinsky noticed that while you sleep a dramatic activity takes place your eyes move these movements were named rapid eye movements Reem REM for short you can observe them yourself at night if you stay up and watch a sleeper or the rapid eye movements can be recorded on the electroencephalograph or EEG and researcher Nathaniel clitman wondered could remen tell us when a person is dreaming the answer to this seemingly simple question helped to fling open the doors to the closed domain of sleep and dreams and once inside we are discovering startling new realities about who we are and how we live awake or [Music] asleep all over the country as night falls and most of us go to sleep sleep scientists go to work tonight at UCLA they will storm The Citadel of sleep and try to capture a dream Dr kman who pioneered in sleep research at the University of Chicago is joining a team of investigators gathered here at UCLA to help explore this Hidden World with us among them is Dr William DeMent of Stanford University or or simply the waking up you can do tonight you wake him up that's what you do you wake him up their first question is can science predict exactly when you will have a dream Dr Alan Jacobson's 11-year-old daughter Denise is sleeping in the lab tonight and the experiment is being conducted by psychiatrist Anthony KES of UCLA the principle is the same when I wake you up just try to sit up in bed and tell me whatever was going on before I came in the room okay and sometimes you may be thinking about something or dreaming about something and other times you may not have any thoughts at all before I've come come in the room so just take your time and think a little bit once you wake up and if you have any recall then let us know you think you dram more at home or here in the lab here here yeah let's let's check it out the let's check out the electrodes out front here all right okay Denise you can relax Denise will be watched electronically to determine during her long night's sleep whether her rapid eye movements will indicate exactly when she is dreaming all right Denise move your eyes from side to side these two pens record eye movements to the left and right and these two register eye movements up and down look up down up down up down up down in a similar way changes in brain waves blood pressure pulse respiration and body temperatures of the sleeping subjects are measured through the EEG and are also Clues to the dream state although the basic patterns are the same for all normal adults each sleep record differs subtly and is as personal as a signature okay you can go to sleep now at this point Denise has been asleep for some time and her EEG shows that she is finishing the stages of quiet sleep her heart rate and blood pressure have been near their lowest point but now these quiet sleep patterns end and active sleep begins Denise started a rapid eye movement period about four or five minutes ago you can see very definite eye movements here and this is the uh stage of the brain wave activity that is most frequently associated with dream recall also there are a lot of physiological changes that occur during this period such as irregularity and heart rate uh respiration here are some more eye movements appearing now fairly regularly here on the EEG and I'm going to go awaken Denise and see if we can get some recall Denise just sit up and try and remember what was going on before I came in I was dreaming about school and and I was with this other guy I had a new teacher and I was fling the grade so that's all I know can can you tell us that again we can't hear you too well I was in school and I was with just a couple other kids in the room and I was flunking that grade can you remember anything else about the dream no can you remember who gave you the report card or no any of the exact grades on it no just the said it what it wasn't good wasn't good okay Denise so they can tell when we are dreaming but how often do we dream our second subject is Joel his dream pattern will help us find out one of the most striking things about rapid sleep is the regularity of its occurrence uh rapid IM appear on the average of once every 90 minutes throughout the night the subject has just fallen asleep is now 5 minutes of 12 the first rabid Imon period generally occurs about 60 minutes after the onset of sleep so we should expect a dream at about 1:00 it is now 5 minutes after one which is about 70 minutes after the onset of sleep the record now indicates that the subject is dreaming there's a burst of I which you probably can see in a few seconds we will awaken and see if we can catch a dream were you dreaming justtin yes what about took me back to my high school days it Shakespeare Festival uhhuh and I was talking to some kid too they just lost they were just lost they had just lost they had just lost okay 90 minutes after Joel fell back to sleep according to the prediction it's time for another dream and he had him in a wheelbarrow that little kid in a wheelbarrow yeah he came off the driveway and he put him in a wheel bear and he wheeled him up and he dumped him on my chest dumped on me I picked him up on I said what was wrong the fell that had picked him up put him in the street and it was a hot day and he roasted his Goose for the man who works at night the night has eyes that look inward what draws a man to The Sleep watch something about the dream and I I think what really hooked me was hearing hearing my first Dream my greatest enthusiasm was that it would be a way of oh quicker way of getting on the Royal Road to the unconscious the try talked about I heard a lecture by Clan I happened to be a student at the University of Chicago in which he was posing a question of how do you go to sleep it's it's an intriguing question intriguing enough to visit his laboratory and then at that point to see to see instantly really that there was a new way of studying dreaming that was the The key thing one sleep record one IM an episode and that's it like that I guess it's like love at first sight 4:45 about 90 minutes later and time for a third dream were you dreaming just then yeah what about I got to this poery shop to and a my car seat repair my first impression was that of a a dark I don't know if it was if it was now it was a dark sweat shot with eight men working during an average night's sleep a person has about four or five dream periods each around 90 minutes apart this is not to say that the mind is inactive during the rest of the night but the REM dream state is special although some REM period may run from 1 to 80 minutes the average lasts about 20 minutes and may consist of several dreams but suppose like Mr Bates you're one of those who knows he never dreams hi Mr B how are you very good how you been PR good good we'll be in this room here tonight you remember Dr Jacobson what we be doing with you tonight is just letting you sleep most of the time but we may wake you up once or twice okay and see if anything was going on before we came in the room if you were thinking of anything or dreaming of anything or maybe nothing was going on how have your dreams been lately I don't have them don't have any no what happened to them I don't know how long has it been that way since you know you had dreams regularly would you say I don't say I don't know 10 years ago were you having the dreams regularly that you could remember I think it's been that way about all my life like that uh-huh this is Mr Bates Mr Bates Dr cman No you how old are you 84 84 he's just a young man how's that feel now okay in the elderly subject often you see very fast activity during these periods which makes it harder to distinguish them that of the young adults but you see here that he's clearly having some eye movements on the record with very fast activity and we're going to go and awaken him now and see if he has any recall at all Mr B yeah anything going on before I came in the room I think I was get ready you think you were what get ready to you would to work in New York City in the milk business in New York City where in the milk business uh-huh tell us tell us some more about it that's about all of us TR then somebody hit me on the shoulder somebody hit you on the shoulder yeah were you in the milk business before Oh I used to work at it okay when he awakens will Mr Bates remember that he had a dream tonight do you remember any dreams at all tonight well just that want I told about that's the only thing I can remember that was a pretty good dream wasn't it I guess well there are many people like you you know who who say they never dream but when they come in the lab and we awaken them during these dreaming periods they're able to recall something MH and certainly the thing you recall tonight was very clearcut and seemed to be pretty uh definite do you remember what it was again yeah getting ready to go to work where was that at well it was partly here in in California is that where it was in the dream well L I can't say I don't know you told us before that it was in New York City maybe you forgot about that well I don't think it wasn't because I never was in New York you never were in New York no uhhuh oh that's kind of interesting isn't it of course I've read a lot about town and stuff like that but never was Adit well there you are you visited last night yeah in your dreams do we dream because we want to or because we must sleep scientists are learning that we must and that we all spend a total of 1 and a half to 2 hours of every night dreaming morning time to get some sleep that night time to go to work and the work tonight concerns how we are affected physically when we dream we're going to have a an ulcer patient and we were quite fortunate we had some difficulty in getting a subject but uh we actually had one right in our own group and uh Dr Wilson is uh going to be the subject tonight now did you develop the Auer before or after after you started doing a sleep resch actually it was after I think it was one of the first few nights that I had to stay up all night that I got my ulcer so tonight I'll be glad to to be a subject we'll capitalize on it then sleep experiments sometimes require special equipment like this stomach tube but surprisingly this does not prevent the subject from sleeping the ulcer patient is at the mercy of his emotions and must avoid all stressful situations or else he will secrete painful gastric acids so he looks forward to his sleep when hopefully he will get relief but will he or will he secrete these very same acids by means of this experiment we hope to find out whether there are stressful conditions in our sleep we know that people who have ulcers or who are have had heart attacks or have heart difficulty that often they the expression is they need a good night's sleep and yet people do die suddenly in the middle of the night from a heart attack or awaken in the middle of the night with severe pain in their stomach or epigastrium so really uh it's a a big question as to what is going on uh when these events are occurring the subject is now in his quiet stage of sleep no dreams no stress no secretions in the flask but once he he begins to dream the subject is in a rapid eye movement period here with heavy secretion of acid outside in the flask you can observe there the eyeballs moving back and forth beneath the eyelid to all appearances the dreamer is peaceful and relaxed but underneath his stress is so great that his gastric juices secrete as if faced with a daytime emergency what can he be dreaming about to have caused such a drastic reaction when awakened during the time of his greatest secretions he reported to Dr K he was happily dreaming of a party and a trip to Hawaii uh you and I were in the dream I think we'd been out to maybe uh to a party or something and uh I said something about maybe uh I'd like to go back to Hawaii someday if it is not primarily the content of the dreams that causes this stressful body reaction what does Studies have shown that for all of us the dream state is by nature a state of stress if we don't have ulcers we don't respond to this stress with gastric secretions but we do respond in other ways while we dream our seemingly quiet bodies are in a state of chemical uproar in some ways more active than when we are awake for when we REM our blood pressure Rises sharply our breathing becomes erratic adrenaline shoots into our system as it does when we are in a state of daytime emergency or anxiety the ulcer patient reacts as he does to daytime stress with gastric secretions the rest of us do not but we do each react in our own way to the stress of remming Shakespeare said to sleep per chance to dream I there's the rub today we say to sleep to dream no per chance but plenty of rub as we develop and begin to live our lives the content and nature of our dreams take shape and the interpretation of this content may one day wind up as the subject of long discussions on the analyst's couch but when do we actually develop the capacity to dream at Birth and even in the womb the baby already has the physiological equipment with which to dream how old is she how old is three days old three days and full-term baby full-term baby and everything has been fine everything has been fine Dr Arthur palle and his Associates at UCLA have shown that at Birth about 50% of an infant sleep time is rem or the dream type of sleep during the next few years after birth the Primitive REM period is reduced to about 20% of sleep time and remains that way for most of one's adult life this baby is now in a special state of sleep rapid eye movement sleep or active sleep and in this sleep the respirations are irregular the heart rate is irregular as you see by this wavy line the chin muscle activity is down is minimal there movements and the electro andram tends to be flat the baby is now going into quiet sleep with more regular respiration according to Dr to paraly the way in which a baby switches back and forth from REM to the quiet stages of sleep may be a clue to normal or abnormal development at a time when a baby does little butt sleep and there is much other Behavior to check if REM sleep is so basic to life and it has been found to exist even in most animals what will happen if we are deprived of it this is Joel's second night at the lab and the question is can man safely be totally deprived of his dream awaken you a number of times tonight and we have a specific purpose in mind but in order that you not uh in a sense distort the results by your own expectations I can't tell you exactly what we're doing but essentially we are doing a study of the effect of disturbing sleep so uh and after this is over I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have please don't be offended anything that happens oh Joel will be allowed to get his full quota of quiet sleep but he will be awakened just before he begins to REM and at no time tonight will he be allowed to dream and this means the onset of rap sleep right here already 15 seconds of elapse we must interrupt the period right away were you doing this thing no are you sure mhm were you sleep I think so do you remember anything do you think you were dreaming when I woke you up no you feel sure you w don't think so okay go back to sleep if now if we keep these Awakenings up throughout the remainder of the night this will curtail the rim sleep time by about 90% or maybe even 95% um and then we go in and awaken the subject and keep him awake by some sort of inan conversation for 2 or 3 minutes and then allow him to go back to sleep and uh the reason for this is if you don't get him fully awake and keep him awake for a minute or two then he will go immediately back into room C immediately have to awaken him again are you widely awake well I I shift into it try to make the best of it it's so patriotic thing to do can you say Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers can we talk about it later all right were you dreaming just then no are you certain I don't think I what is 13 * 27 I don't know go back to as Shakespeare said some must watch while some must sleep We're The Watcher and in order to study normal sleep we must watch at night well it's it's fatiguing it can be depressing it can make you a little bit psychotic I us said I would actually get I think uh after maybe 3 or 4 days of sleep loss actually get paranoid in a sense that is begin to feel that all people were sort of plotting against me and have this feeling and and at the same time know absolutely perfectly well that it was not true but for the Sleep researcher it's really a condition of both sensory and social isolation he is alone at night I would say either we are very dedicated or we are all skitso I I don't know as the night goes on Joel's need to dream becomes overwhelming by don't on he must be awakened every 15 minutes to prevent him from dreaming were you doing this no no experiments like this have gone on for as many as 15 consecutive nights and the number of Awakenings needed to prevent REM got as high as 20 an hour I don't know whether I was conscious or just then Jo were you dreaming just then you sure okay stay aake for a minute are you awake marked signs of psychological disturbance appeared anxiety irritation suspicion was this due just to loss of sleep no other subjects were awakened just as frequently but not in rem periods their daytime reactions showed clearly that it was the loss of REM rather than the Awakenings that led to these disturbances when the subjects finally were allowed a full night's sleep they spent much of that sleep remming to make up for their REM loss what happens to a person who is totally deprived of his dreams as yet the search for an answer has proven to be too dangerous to pursue it began to suspect that that that we're uh inducing personality changes in the subjects and have discontinued these experiments until we are more certain of what Rim sleep deprivation actually does in order to clarify this we have begun to do these experiments in cats and hope to get sufficient information uh that will enable us to uh carry on the studies in humans subjects safely and to work on the problem of whether or not the deprivation of Rapid sleep has anything to do with the onset of major mental illness or other related conditions does REM help preserve our brittle balance of sanity this is just one of many crucial questions now under investigation by Sleep researchers questions as yet unanswered will we one day be able to alter our sleep and dream Cycles to help those in physical or mental need how do different drugs affect this cycle will we one day change man's age-old 24-hour schedule of sleep and wakefulness today we are witness to a revolution in self- knowledge with possibilities as yet barely conceived for we have all been strangers that we spend asleep and what we are now learning about that sleeping third of Our Lives May reveal new truths about our waking moments [Music] e [Applause] [Music] [Music] l for