Karen van Kampen: Dreams are quite complex. There's emotion. There's visual components to help us understand what parts of the brain are affiliated with dreaming.

Karen van Kampen: So different parts of the brain are active at different times in the sleep cycle. One part of the brain that's active during dreaming is the emotional centre of your brain. So the parts of the brain that help process emotions that are involved in our feelings, the prefrontal cortex. During REM sleep, it's less active than when we're awake. And that's the part of the brain that really deals with making decisions, thinking rationally. And that's less active during REM.

Karen van Kampen: All right. You mentioned REM and you mentioned cycle. So REM to simplify rapid eye movement. And then there is non-rapid eye movement. You mentioned which cycles we dream in. How do we know. You know there's eye movement that's very clear. And when we talk about how do we know that's where we dream.

Karen van Kampen: So we dream through non-REM and REM. So non-REM sleep is stages one through three. Stages one, two and three is non-REM sleep. And REM sleep is stage four. So we actually dream all through the sleep cycle, all through the night. So that's.

Karen van Kampen: Where the best, most vivid dreams.

Karen van Kampen: REM sleep. So it's typically our most intense, vivid emotional dreams happen during REM and we get to our first REM. We go through 4 or 5 stages of the sleep cycle a night. And so we get it's about 90 minutes into the sleep cycle that we have our first period of REM.

Karen van Kampen: Okay, reading your book, you have, I would say, quite an unusual childhood in terms of what you were, what you experienced, what drew you to understand more about sleep and dreams? And I know your father had a lot to do with that.

Karen van Kampen: So my dad's a sleep doctor. So I was always immersed in this world of sleep, and I sort of look at it as sleep was kind of like this gateway to the world of dreams. And so I was always, you know, always thinking about sleep and trying to get enough sleep. And sleep was a really big part of growing up my childhood. And then a few years ago, I read this scientific study that said, we're as dream deprived as we are sleep deprived. And it made me think, you know, why do dreams matter on their own? You know, not just sleep. Sleep is its own industry and we're very focussed on sleep. But what about dreams? And then it got me. It turned me on to the science of dreaming.

Karen van Kampen: As you mentioned, and what we've talked about in terms of the brain, we have come a long way in terms of understanding the brain. Yes. Do we better understand dreams? I know this is a question of why do we dream has been asked for decades. Yes. But do we have a better understanding of that?

Karen van Kampen: So there's many possibilities of why we dream. So one idea is that we dream to help dream sleep and dreams help consolidate memories. So let's say we've learned something new during the day or we've had a new experience. It's thought that during sleep and during dreams, it helps to strengthen these memories. So that's one thing is memory consolidation.

Karen van Kampen: So a cabinet of dreams that you can put in and yes, exactly.

Karen van Kampen: So and then it's really neat. So one idea is it's called this. It's called the next up model of dreaming. And I found this fascinating because I've always wondered, you know, why do I suddenly dream of something from my childhood or years ago. Why do I do I choose to say dream of it tonight? What is it? And this idea is that in order to strengthen memories, say recent experiences, recent memories you associate it with, with memories from your catalogue of memories that are already stored in your brain. So that's it's finding possibilities through these connections, these unique and, yeah, unique connections through these associations.

Karen van Kampen: Another theory is sort of viewing dreams as sort of a night therapy. Talk me through that. That sounds interesting.

Karen van Kampen: It's so interesting. So yeah. So Matthew Walker, he so it's dreams as overnight therapy. And the whole idea about dreams is overnight therapy. And other dream researchers have have also studied this is that it helps to process our emotions. So it helps come to terms with, say, difficult emotions. Rosalind Cartwright, she was known as the Queen of dreams. And she did these studies on people who were going through divorce. And she found out, if you dream, you have these unsettling dreams about your divorce. You actually they the subjects tended to cope better a year later. So that is also so it's it helps to process the emotions but keep the details of the memory.

Karen van Kampen: There's also this thinking of our dreams. Some people may look at look at them as two separate compartments when we're awake and we're falling asleep. But when we wake up, sometimes we might have solved some of the issues that we dealt with. Help us understand perhaps how dreams kind of help us when we wake up in our real world.

Karen van Kampen: So it's thought that when we're falling asleep, we sort of tag certain ideas to revisit later in the night. So let's say you're you're trying to, you know, you're noodling around, you're thinking about a problem you're trying to solve. You might be thinking about it as you're falling asleep. So during sleep onset, it's this really unique time. It's almost like a dreamy brainstorming session.

Karen van Kampen: It's like a to do list for another to do list.

Karen van Kampen: Exactly. So you can like if you, you can even guide your dream thoughts. That's about dream engineering okay. And so let's say you want to work on a problem. You want to solve a problem, or you want to think about a new creative idea. When you're falling asleep, you can think about this idea, think about this problem that you want to work on. And then oftentimes it will help guide your dreams. So those thoughts that you're thinking about and dream engineering uses technology to help you guide and shape your dreams. So I did this dream experiment and it was really fun. And so basically I Adam ha, he's a dream researcher and he helped me set it up, this sort of ad hoc dream experiment at home. And so as I was just falling asleep in sleep onset, the first few minutes of sleep a recording, I did a recording before and then it would record the recording played and it said it was my voice and it said, remember to think of a tree. And then. So then that would help guide my my dreams.

Karen van Kampen: And what did you dream that.

Karen van Kampen: I dreamt about? All these different trees. First it was very concrete, okay. And I was dreaming of there was this willow tree in front of this cabin where our family used to have this cabin. And then it started to get the farther I went into sleep onset, it started getting more creative and not as concrete and not as logical. Okay. And then I thought of this time that my husband, I got lost in these woods, and then the trees became waves. And so it got very abstract. Almost. Yeah.

Karen van Kampen: Speaking of abstract, let's talk about lucid dreams. I'm sure there are many listeners who have probably had a dream where they're running, and then all of a sudden they're like, hold on, I am dreaming, I know I'm dreaming and probably stop. Explain to us about lucid dreams. What can you tell us about them? Why do we have control?

Karen van Kampen: So lucid dreaming is when it starts with to be aware that you're in a dream as the dream is happening, so it's to have that awareness and then once you gain the awareness, it's to develop that skill, to actually learn that you your dream is a it's a creation of your imagination. So you actually can be in control. So then you start to control your dream characters or maybe the plot you could choose, you know what to do, what you've always wanted to do. Some people want to try and fly. I read about I talked to a dream researcher and he told me, there's an artist and he imagines an art gallery, okay. And he opens the door and goes into this art gallery, and there's all these beautiful paintings and their creation of his own, his own imagination and mind. So then he wakes up and sketches out what he was dreaming.

Karen van Kampen: All right. I feel like there's a lot of a lot of power to harness here if we can really sort of figure it out. On the flip side, there's something that you talk about in your book called Dream Advertising. Yes. Help us understand what that is.

Karen van Kampen: So it was brought up a few years ago. And so basically we are more we are vulnerable when we're sleeping. And so the question was brought up, let's say if we have a speaker in our in our bedroom and it could, you know, if we're susceptible to ideas and thoughts, could it then could we be influenced, say, if a company wanted to, you know, say, push their product while we were sleeping? Yeah. So that's kind of what it is. So, you know, the is it is it probable, is it possible these are sort of, you know, things where technically, if we're susceptible to suggestion at certain times of the sleep cycle, but is it really probable that this will change our, say, buying and consumer habits?

Karen van Kampen: What does that tell us about the power of dreams in our lives?

Karen van Kampen: I think that dreams are so powerful. I mean, it's it makes me think, you know, we spend a third of our lives asleep and a large portion of that time dreaming, and there's this whole, this mental life that we have there that we can tap into to try and guide our dreams for creativity, to solve problems. And then in the morning, use our dreams to better understand, say, our preoccupations or our concerns. What's sort of weighing on our minds.

Karen van Kampen: During the production of this book? You have delved into a number of studies. I am curious, what's one that kind of left you sitting back and being like that is like, amazing to think how our brain works when it comes to dreams.

Karen van Kampen: So the the work that I was so, so dream engineering for sure that I talked about and then also anaesthesia dreams. So it's a group of researchers at Stanford and they've discovered that if you keep a patient at a certain brain state just under the level of consciousness, they come to this calm, relaxed state. And it's wonderful because you can revisit potentially difficult and even traumatic experiences and events. But having this calm state so you're able to revisit them and then almost create new memories of them. And so I spoke with people who had these experiences as well, and they said they were life altering, transforming. So it's it's unbelievable. Actually.

Karen van Kampen: The potential.

Karen van Kampen: Is the potential. Yeah. There's so much there. I can't imagine what's what your bedside table looks like, but I imagine there's probably a book and a pen there. Yes, I will admit, before this interview this weekend, I was trying to remember my dreams because lots of people, when they share dreams, they want some interpretation of the symbols. Yes. How do we take full advantage of our dreams?

Karen van Kampen: So I always think we're the best interpreter of our own dreams. So we it's how we want to tap into them, delve into them, look at them differently. You know, we know if let's say there's a certain theme or even a person keeps showing up. The way I look at it is it's like our dreams are saying, you know, pay more attention to this idea, or maybe this person, that's something that you can do. I did a dream salon.

Karen van Kampen: I did read about this. Yes. Okay.

Karen van Kampen: So it was so interesting. I've never shared a dream before. And so it was with a group of friends and dream researchers. And it was so interesting because I shared a dream and the perspectives that other people had. So you, you share your dream and then different people say, you know, if it was my dream, I would maybe think about this. And it totally changed my perspective on my dreams. And then, you know, you can you can look at it from other people's perspectives and, and see what works for you.

Karen van Kampen: Very fascinating stuff. This is a really exciting read. Lots of potential as we talked about. Karen, thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it.

Karen van Kampen: Thank you. It was great chatting.