Topics: Sleep, Health, Mental Health, YouTube, Social Media, World News, Psychology, Science
A sleep expert has revealed a pretty simple method to stop experiencing recurring nightmares.
Knock yourself out before you want to sleep? Don't sleep at all? As someone who experiences extreme night terrors and who's got a past of pretty intense sleep paralysis, the idea of banishing nightmares seems like a bit of a mystery to me.
However, one doctor claims to hold the key to waving goodbye to your recurring scary sleeps for good.
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Professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr Matthew Walker, sat down with professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine Andrew Huberman on an episode of his podcast Huberman Lab to discuss the biology of sleep.
In an episode posted to YouTube earlier this month on 8 May, Dr Walker reveals a method called 'IRT' - Image Rehearsal Therapy.
The therapy focuses on the idea of reconsolidating memories and that includes the memory of your recurring nightmare.
Basically, Dr Walker explains there are 'at least, sort of, two main steps of memory'.
"First, you have to imprint and learn the memory, lay down that memory, trace it. But then that memory is very fragile and vulnerable to being overwritten by competing information.
"And for you to hold on to that memory you have to go through a second step called memory consolidation - a very slow process, like a very slow pressing of the save button."
Dr Walker compares the process to typing out a Word Document, encoding the information and pressing save and then coming back a day later, opening the file and editing it, either adding or revising it and continuing day after day.
When you reactivate the same nightmare, the theory suggests you should be able to go in and 'update the information in that memory store' and the 'next night' you can 'reconsolidate it' again - working 'time and time again' to change the nightmare and think of 'a more neutral ending'.
He gives the example of having a nightmare of a car crash and instead of crashing, you 'apply the breaks'. And should the breaks not work? Well, you can write in an 'alternative scenario' of 'reaching over to the handbrake,' bringing the car to a stop and calling emergency services, the car is towed and you 'survive and everything is fine'.
While you'll probably have 'a high chance' of repeating the nightmare, if you keep rehearsing an alternate ending, your nightmare should slowly change.
"It's like me going into the word document and editing something which was really bad and and replacing it with something that's neutral or even positive and over time, I sleep and I will consolidate and I'll come back the next day and do more editing and updating," he resolves.
"And gradually you dissipate the narrative that is fixed inside of the brain and the nightmare frequency decreases in proportion."
It may sound simple, but does it really work?
Well, Dr Walker notes it's 'not effective for 100 percent of patients' and on average, the data shows it works for 'two out of every three people' - around 66 percent people.
However, a recent study from Sophie Schwarz and her colleagues at the University of Geneva nudged the effectiveness up from 66 percent to '92 percent' by using 'an additional memory released research tool' called TMR - targeted memory reactivation, which has people learn 'a set of associations' and reinforce the memory with sound.
In terms of associating a sound with an object, for instance, a kettle, it would be the sound of a kettle, a fire engine, the sound of a fire engine.
Schwarz and her team bonded the association of the 'new outcome ending to the nightmare' with a 'pleasant piano chord'. And if you play those 'same tones' while someone who experiences nightmares is asleep, at a 'sub-awakening threshold' so they don't wake up, this can help further infiltrate the nightmare and reinforce the image rehearsal therapy work.
The image rehearsal therapy plus memory reactivation at night with the piano music playing as the patient entered REM sleep subsequently led to even more effective results.
So, how about giving it a go for yourself?
