Regina Barber

Michelle is the author of the new book called Nightmare Obscura.

In it, she explores the science of dreams, nightmares, even something called dream engineering, where people are able to influence their own dreams while they sleep.

But why we dream or get nightmares is still a bit mysterious for scientists.

And since humans spend somewhere around one-third of our lives asleep, we had to know more.

So today on the show, why your nightmares go bump in the night.

We dive into the science of our sleeping life with Michelle Carr and make nightmares a little more known, a little less scary.

I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

Michelle, sleep happens in cycles.

So can you just walk us through the four different stages of sleep?

It seems like, at least for me and many people, like there's an emotional component to sleep.

And in your book, Nightmare Obscura, you write about a study you love where participants watched embarrassing videos of themselves singing and then their brain showed signs of shame.

But that changed after a night of sleep.

What does that tell you about like the importance of sleep?

It kind of sounds like exposure therapy.

And then that makes me think of nightmares, which mostly seem to happen in that fourth REM sleep stage, when our amygdala, which deals with fear, is more active.

In your book, you call nightmares almost like a self-attack, like there's this mental autoimmune reaction.

Is that what's happening?

Like, why do we have them?

Are there any benefits of nightmares?

You know, like this mental autoimmune reaction that we have in our minds?