drscribe how covid is affecting our dreams
Answers
Explanation:
Illustration of a doctor’s dream that involved her investigating quails’ eggs as a possible covid-19 cure
Julia Lockheart, DreamsID.com
If you feel you’ve been dreaming a lot more recently, the coronavirus crisis and lockdown measures could be to blame. Changes in sleep patterns may mean that many of us are dreaming more or remembering more of the dreams that we have, while the looming threat of the virus may have affected the nature of the dreams themselves.
According to a survey conducted by King’s College London, 62 per cent of people in the UK are getting just as much sleep, if not more, than before stricter social distancing measures began on 23 March. Similar patterns are likely in other countries, and it is reasonable to assume that for some of those staying at home, the time saved from getting ready for work and commuting is being used to get more sleep.
This means dream time and dream recall is probably increasing during the crisis, says Mark Blagrove, a psychologist at Swansea University, UK.
please mark me as brainllest
Answer:
The content and tone of our dreams is also probably being affected. “Our dreams are more likely to incorporate memories from recent waking life that are emotional,” says Blagrove.
“Dreams are thought to be the brain’s way of working out our emotional problems, and the more anxious we become, the more vivid the dream images become,” says Russell Foster, a circadian neuroscientist at the University of Oxford. “After 9/11, many New Yorkers reported dreams of being overwhelmed by a tidal wave or being attacked and robbed.”
Blagrove’s research supports this idea that the function of dreams is to process our emotions and memories, acting in effect as overnight therapy.
Another theory is that dreams also help prepare us for adversity. “The threat-simulation theory predicts that when we are facing threats and feel fear and anxiety, our dream production mechanism starts simulating those fears and worries in our dreams,” says Katja Valli, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Turku, Finland.
Blagrove’s work suggests that talking about your dreams can alleviate distress, and lead to greater empathy and social bonding. He recently set up an online dream discussion forum for health workers.
One of the first people to share their dreams in the forum was Libby Nolan, a nurse in Swansea who contracted the coronavirus and started getting nightmares while she was in quarantine. Graduate students at University College London have started a similar forum for sharing, lockdowndreams.com.