Dreaming is a strange thing. After a night of dreaming, I often feel more tired than I did before I went to bed! I once had a dream that I was skateboarding with a Buddhist monk and he was speaking to me in Chinese and I understood him perfectly. The frustrating thing about this was not the fact that I actually don’t skateboard or speak Chinese at all, but that I woke up absolutely shattered after an entire night of fictional energetic activity. So why do we dream and isn’t it just a great big waste of time and fictional energy?

Well the answer to this, is no. The fact is that we only dream during a certain stage of sleep called REM (which stands for Rapid Eye Movement) and this type of sleep is fundamentally important, both to our brain and our, albeit tired, body!

REM sleep is different from Non-REM sleep, although scientists’ arguments as to how and why this is, often contradict one another. One difference is that the majority of time spent in REM is spent dreaming, whereas we have few, if any dreams in non-REM sleep. The other difference between REM and non-REM is that there is an increase in brain activity, breathing and also heart rate during REM sleep.



Many scientists believe that REM sleep plays a very important part in development. This stems from the idea that the increase in brain activity needed to dream provides stimulation, and helps us practice certain brain systems.

Evidence to support this theory includes the fact that newborns spend around half of their 16 – 18 hours of sleep a day, in REM - whereas for adults this figure is only around an hour and a half. This suggests that these dreams work as practice for infants, getting them prepared for the world of stimulation they are soon to enter.

Many scientists believe that REM is paramount to memory consolidation (making sure that we have properly remembered something new). Which means they believe we dream about activities and things important in the day to ensure that we have fully learnt the new information.

There is also, however, much evidence that non-REM sleeping or ‘slow-wave’ sleep is also essential in learning, only a different type of learning.

Studies on rats have shown that rats dream about the activities that they have been doing both in REM and non-REM sleep. The rats dream about memory snippets, like segments of replayed memory within non-REM sleep; whereas the time delay of REM sleep illustrates that more complex event-based memory consolidation may be being replayed.

In various studies of animals, it was concluded that complex tasks in a learning environment lead to an increase of the consecutive total of REM sleep time, especially just before learning is complete and consolidated.

What this indicates is that mammals use REM to re-evaluate and practice things that they have learnt in order to ensure that they have learnt them properly. Sleep is therefore extremely important – particularly REM. So…What can you do to increase your REM sleep?

Well, the simple answer is to get a more comfy and longer nights sleep! A person will typically dip into REM every 60 – 90 minutes starting roughly 90 minutes into the sleep cycle. The duration of REM increases with the frequency. On average, a person will experience just five minutes of REM for the first few hours of sleep, increasing to an hour or so at a time if they sleep for seven hours or longer.

Uninterrupted sleep is extremely important to ensure significant amounts of REM sleep. Feather & Black are a leading supplier of beds, bed linen, mattresses and other bedding accessories. They are extremely experienced in ensuring a decent nights sleep and advise people who are worried about not getting enough REM to; “make sure that your bed is comfortable and free of bed bugs. Change your linen regularly, particularly for children who need more sleep than us. Linen and bedding is often more of a problem than people think as many believe it lasts forever and can’t see it affecting the nights sleep as much as it does.”

“Another thing to remember is that different people need different mattresses. Lots of people fail to appreciate just how important the right tension is. The right mattress should cradle you and give support to your lower back; enhancing your posture and keeping your spine in it’s natural position. An adjustable tension mattress is ideal if you haven’t got the time to spend trying out mattresses”

The evidence speaks for itself when it comes to the importance of REM sleep. We need it to help us learn and to help us live in a physically and mentally productive state. So remember, waking up after those crazy dreams may make you feel tired and grumpy but it is actually just ensuring that your brain is processing things sufficiently and is an imperative part of your night!

Jo-Rosie Haffenden is a Digital Copywriter based in the sea-side town of Brighton, UK. With a degree in psychology as well as being a qualified NCTJ journalist, Jo-Rosie is currently working on behalf of Feather and Black (www.featherandblack.com) to provide some insight into the nature of sleep.