Dr. Matthew Walker

You're focused in attending, and it's really there.

You're very blinkered.

You're very focused.

But when that goes away, the neural circuits become a little bit more loosey goosey.

And I also told you that the other chemical, if there is a neurochemical that defines REM sleep dreaming, it's this thing called acetylcholine.

And acetylcholine seems to do the opposite.

It seems to inject a little bit more noise relative to the signal.

So in other words, your brain circuits are neurochemically modulated when you dream,

to inject almost what we would think of as fuzzy logic.

And this is why I think the analogy that we spoke about in a previous episode holds that when you are awake and you're given some information, you produce the most obvious links and obvious associations because you're very much blinkered and you have noradrenaline on board.

But when you go into dream sleep,

it's almost like the Google search.

When you're awake, go straight to page one, and it's very related.

But do that same search when you're in the dream state, and you go straight to page 35, and it's an utterly bizarre page.

And you think, hang on a second, this has got nothing to do with the search term.

When you read it, you think, well, if I squint my eyes, it kind of does.

It's very distant, very non-obvious.

But that's a very smart connection that

as a waking brain, I never would have put together.

So I think neurochemically, we can start to understand it.