Dr. Matthew Walker

It strips the bitter rind from the informational orange so that you wake up the next day and you have a memory of an emotional event. But it's no longer emotional itself. You don't regurgitate the same intensity of visceral reaction that you did at the time of the experience. And so that's why we think... Dreaming provides a form of, it's emotional convalescence.

It strips the bitter rind from the informational orange so that you wake up the next day and you have a memory of an emotional event. But it's no longer emotional itself. You don't regurgitate the same intensity of visceral reaction that you did at the time of the experience. And so that's why we think... Dreaming provides a form of, it's emotional convalescence.

It strips the bitter rind from the informational orange so that you wake up the next day and you have a memory of an emotional event. But it's no longer emotional itself. You don't regurgitate the same intensity of visceral reaction that you did at the time of the experience. And so that's why we think... Dreaming provides a form of, it's emotional convalescence.

And the quintessential disorder that we've studied that this process seems to fail in is PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Because when you speak to those patients, what they will tell you is, I can't quote unquote get over the event.

And the quintessential disorder that we've studied that this process seems to fail in is PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Because when you speak to those patients, what they will tell you is, I can't quote unquote get over the event.

And the quintessential disorder that we've studied that this process seems to fail in is PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Because when you speak to those patients, what they will tell you is, I can't quote unquote get over the event.

What they mean is that every time that they relive the memory, let's say it's the war veteran, they're walking through the supermarket car park, a car backfires, and instantly they have a flashback to the trauma memory of the detonation of the land mine. And what they're describing to you is they have not stripped the emotion from the memory. It's still bound to the experience.

What they mean is that every time that they relive the memory, let's say it's the war veteran, they're walking through the supermarket car park, a car backfires, and instantly they have a flashback to the trauma memory of the detonation of the land mine. And what they're describing to you is they have not stripped the emotion from the memory. It's still bound to the experience.

What they mean is that every time that they relive the memory, let's say it's the war veteran, they're walking through the supermarket car park, a car backfires, and instantly they have a flashback to the trauma memory of the detonation of the land mine. And what they're describing to you is they have not stripped the emotion from the memory. It's still bound to the experience.

it's not coincidental that one of the diagnostic features of PTSD is repetitive nightmares. And what we've done is put forward a theory that in PTSD, because they have two higher levels of a stress-related chemical called noradrenaline in the brain, They are not able to do the elegant trick of stripping the emotion from the memory. So what happens?

it's not coincidental that one of the diagnostic features of PTSD is repetitive nightmares. And what we've done is put forward a theory that in PTSD, because they have two higher levels of a stress-related chemical called noradrenaline in the brain, They are not able to do the elegant trick of stripping the emotion from the memory. So what happens?

it's not coincidental that one of the diagnostic features of PTSD is repetitive nightmares. And what we've done is put forward a theory that in PTSD, because they have two higher levels of a stress-related chemical called noradrenaline in the brain, They are not able to do the elegant trick of stripping the emotion from the memory. So what happens?

The next night, the brain comes back and says, look, sleep, please. I've got this highly charged emotional trauma memory. Please do your trick of divorcing the emotion from the memory. And it fails again because of this two high levels of a stress chemical called noradrenaline. And so it becomes this repetitive, almost like a broken record.

The next night, the brain comes back and says, look, sleep, please. I've got this highly charged emotional trauma memory. Please do your trick of divorcing the emotion from the memory. And it fails again because of this two high levels of a stress chemical called noradrenaline. And so it becomes this repetitive, almost like a broken record.

The next night, the brain comes back and says, look, sleep, please. I've got this highly charged emotional trauma memory. Please do your trick of divorcing the emotion from the memory. And it fails again because of this two high levels of a stress chemical called noradrenaline. And so it becomes this repetitive, almost like a broken record.

And it perfectly fits the feature of repetitive nightmares. You cannot receive a diagnosis of PTSD without having sleep disturbance or repetitive nightmares. So then you can ask, well, so then in normal REM sleep, why is it doing that? REM sleep is the only time during the 24-hour period where our brain shuts off this stress-related chemical called noradrenaline.

And it perfectly fits the feature of repetitive nightmares. You cannot receive a diagnosis of PTSD without having sleep disturbance or repetitive nightmares. So then you can ask, well, so then in normal REM sleep, why is it doing that? REM sleep is the only time during the 24-hour period where our brain shuts off this stress-related chemical called noradrenaline.

And it perfectly fits the feature of repetitive nightmares. You cannot receive a diagnosis of PTSD without having sleep disturbance or repetitive nightmares. So then you can ask, well, so then in normal REM sleep, why is it doing that? REM sleep is the only time during the 24-hour period where our brain shuts off this stress-related chemical called noradrenaline.

The sister chemical in the body everyone has heard about, it's called adrenaline. Upstairs in the brain, it's noradrenaline. And noradrenaline does lots of things, but one of the things it does is it gets released in rude amounts when you undergo one of these emotional experiences. It's the thing that plants the red flag on the memory and says to the brain, this is priority. This was emotional.

The sister chemical in the body everyone has heard about, it's called adrenaline. Upstairs in the brain, it's noradrenaline. And noradrenaline does lots of things, but one of the things it does is it gets released in rude amounts when you undergo one of these emotional experiences. It's the thing that plants the red flag on the memory and says to the brain, this is priority. This was emotional.