Dr. Matthew Walker

I, as a scientist based on the data, I'm not telling you that that's hooey and non-scientific.

I think it's very valid.

It's just that some of the Freudian principles, I think, we've been able to dislocate ourselves from.

He's not extraordinary.

He's extraordinary.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

It makes total sense because in some ways,

There is no one who knows your own autobiography, by definition, than you, than yourself.

Now, I'm not suggesting that having that interpretation guided by someone who also understands the emotional problems that you're having and also sees your blind spots, which is what a really good therapist can do,

can then help with that interpretation.

But you're right because my representation of information in the brain is going to be very biased by also what I've experienced in the past and how that past experience augments and modulates the current representation of that information and thus the meaning of it for me, the unique individual.

And you're also right to say that it's somehow...

It's almost as though you're squinting your eyes when you're in dream sleep in terms of the true vision of things.

Things get a little bit wacky and distorted, this bizarre nature.

There is some very interesting data, and it comes back to what we described earlier, the neurochemistry of the REM sleep state.

I told you that during REM sleep, levels of noradrenaline are at floor levels.

Noradrenaline is shut off.

One of the things, if you sort of drop noradrenaline onto neural circuits, it will very much increase what we call the signal to noise.

And this is why noradrenaline, when it's released, or if you administer it to an animal, you can become almost more directed.

You're much more divergent.