NPR: Nightmare on Your Street

Nightmare on Your Street

Under the covers may actually be the scariest place of all.

Paul Hebditch/iStockphoto

Did you know that most of your dreams are not sweet — but bad? Really. Studies have found that about three-quarters of the emotions described in dreams are negative. But it also turns out that all those bad dreams could be pretty useful.

The New York Times reports that sleep scientists say dreaming may serve an evolutionarily adaptive purpose. (I can only imagine the kind of dreams our distant ancestors had — getting eaten by a saber-toothed cat?) Two scientists have proposed that when you dream you are cleansing and then trashing scary memories to clear space in your brain for any new threats that are coming down the road.

But just don't wake up — that's when those bad dreams become nightmares, and the only purpose they seem to serve is to scare the blazes out of you.

6:36 PM ET | 10-24-2007 | permalink

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Evolutionary psychologists and their pension for progressive evolution: Always oscillating back and forth between objective, scientific themes like "evolutionarily adaptive purpose," and the completely culture-bound concepts of 'bad' and 'scary'(or even fright and memory, for that matter)--as though the complex, arcane and ultimately opaque mass of symbolism bound up in significative discourse and evolution will ever express anything other than what we want it to. If nothing else, all the unaccounted-for "junk" in DNA sequencing should remind us that meaning (like nightmares tying in with evolutionary psychology) is only ever abstraction.

Sent by thomas j robbins | 8:43 PM ET | 10-24-2007

that is sort of like how an embarrassing dream is to help you get over some embarrassment.
still food for thought

Sent by inzone | 10:45 AM ET | 10-25-2007

I have nightmares about the strangest things, and I have no idea where or what I am doing most of the time. I do remember most of my dreams, but they are mostly violent in someway. The few dreams that I do enjoy are rare, if at all any.

Sent by NIck a | 3:19 PM ET | 10-25-2007

I think people that have nightmares are the ones that had a few drinks, or the ones that do bad things and live in constant anxiety and fear. I put my head on the pillow at night and hav eno dreams and nothing to worry about. I don't lie cheat or else.

Sent by Maniakos Mitsos | 4:45 PM ET | 10-25-2007

Aboriginal peoples of Australia gave equal validity to dreamstates and waking states. Both were considered valid realities and totally coherant realms of being. It's not hard to get one's own mind into an understanding of this Aboriginal take on dreaming. I've done it, and WOW!! it sure makes dreaming a whole new experience.

Sent by cgrach | 8:26 AM ET | 10-29-2007

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