Proof You Went Psychotic Last Night - Matt Walker

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Uploaded by on Aug 18, 2009

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/08/11/Matt_Walker_Secrets_of_the_Sleeping_Brain#Proof_You...

UC Berkeley professor Matt Walker describes the different stages of sleep and jokes that everyone suffers a nightly bout of psychosis during the REM stage.

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Why do we sleep? Although science has yet to explain the reason we spend one-third of our lives in this bizarre state, an exciting theory suggests that sleep can solidify newly learned memories by rewiring the architecture of brain.

Emerging neuroscience evidence also indicates that sleep can intelligently associate and integrate new memories together, performing a kind of "sleep-dependent alchemy." This phenomenon may fuel creative human insights, often reflected in dream content.

In addition to memory benefits, recent findings also suggest that sleep can "refresh" emotional brain reactivity, smoothing away the rough edges from our prior waking concerns, thereby allowing rational next-day decisions.

Thinking about skimping on your Zs? You'd better tune in to hear what UC Berkeley's Matt Walker has to say about it first! - Ask A Scientist

Matt Walker is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of California Berkeley.

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  • I HAD AMNESIA OR WATEVER I GET THEM ALL THE TIME IS THAT BAD?! I had a dream last night that someone was sufficating me and I was under a matress. I tried to move but I couldn't! I was actualy in that dream! I tried to scream"STOP! PLEASE STOP!" but when I did I move my mouth to say those words but it wouldn't come out! Then I saw a vivid light on my door. I woke up with m heart racing. My father "I heard you scream stop, please stop, what happened?" After that I was here.IM VERY SCARED NOW!

  • @deathing Actually no/For example,like i said, aging is not useful.Actually many scientists have said that aging is the accumulation of bad mutations that take effect after the reproductory period. So they don't affect gene survival but have adverse effects. Female orgasm, while it's there, has no actual evolutionary purpose (according to research. just google it). Thus, many females don't have orgasms. But it survived. So did homosexuality which does have a genetic factor involved. Rem likewise

  • @JamesTR4 But evolution has the "use it or losing it principle" so it must do something

  • yea get a hold of some dmt this stuff makes u trip balls do this and u will experience dreaming while awake. i had a friend who went to the desert and on his way there he googeld plants containing the substance he brought some back and i tried it. i have done a lot of drugs and many hallucinogens and there is nothing like this

  • images seen and heard and felt and tasted in dreams are all projected from the holographic center of our awareness, perhaps from the same areas that interpret and project what we sense when awake, and therefor to complete the circuit, perhaps bounced off the receptive organs usually associated with these senses. therefor the eyes are being zapped by neuro-chemical signals, and by cycling rapidly left to right, the eyes simply reflect the info clearly, while allowing the eye organ itself to rest.

  • @OsoLoco40 i was thinking the same thing

  • @kevintype maybe the movement of the eyes is an unnecessary evolution artifact that shouldn't be there...Just like aging...

  • DMT

  • For some reason the back and forth eye movement is exclusively linked to intense states of emotion. There are psychiatric techniques used to simulate and stimulate this emotional response in patients. But as far as I know, nobody can really explain WHY exactly your eyes horizontal movement is linked this way.

  • 6Churches, when did he say "nothing is known about REM sleep?"

    He said the function of the eye movements is unknown, which is not the same as saying "nothing is known."

    We know a lot of important things seem to happen at the same time as the eye movements of REM sleep. But I have never seen any explanation of why this eye movement occurs, or what it does to allow the other things to happen.

    Why not dream without moving our eyes?

    Can you explain that?

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