Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain the important role that sleep and dreams have in learning, regulating emotions, and recovering from trauma.

I discuss how dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep contribute to emotional learning and the processing of traumatic experiences. I also discuss the similarities of REM dreams to clinical treatments like ketamine and EMDR therapy. I explain how non-REM dreams function differently to support other types of learning. Additionally, I describe science-backed strategies to optimize both types of sleep for improved learning, mood and emotional regulation.

Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes (approximately 30 minutes) focused on essential science and protocol takeaways from past Huberman Lab episodes. Essentials will be released every Thursday, and our full-length episodes will still be released every Monday.

Read the full show notes for this episode at hubermanlab.com.

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Timestamps

00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Dreaming, Learning & Un-learning 

00:01:04 Types of Sleep

00:02:57 Slow-Wave Sleep, Motor Learning

00:06:23 Sponsor: AG1

00:07:30 REM Sleep, Paralysis, Unlearning of Emotional Events

00:12:29 Lack of REM Sleep, Emotionality

00:15:02 REM Sleep, Learning & Meaning

00:18:54 Sponsor: Joovv

00:20:08 EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) Therapy, Trauma

00:26:48 Ketamine Therapy, PCP, Trauma

00:29:52 Sponsor: Eight Sleep

00:31:23 REM Sleep as Therapy, Emotions

00:33:40 Tool: Improve Slow-Wave & REM Sleep

00:37:05 Recap & Key Takeaways

Disclaimer & Disclosures