Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain the important role that sleep and dreams have in learning, regulating emotions, and recovering from trauma. I discuss how dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep contribute to emotional learning and the processing of traumatic experiences. I also discuss the similarities of REM dreams to clinical treatments like ketamine and EMDR therapy. I explain how non-REM dreams function differently to support other types of learning. Additionally, I describe science-backed strategies to optimize both types of sleep for improved learning, mood and emotional regulation. Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes (approximately 30 minutes) focused on essential science and protocol takeaways from past Huberman Lab episodes. Essentials will be released every Thursday, and our full-length episodes will still be released every Monday. Read the full show notes for this episode at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Joovv: https://joovv.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman More Huberman Lab Huberman Lab Premium: https://go.hubermanlab.com/premium Huberman Lab Shop: https://go.hubermanlab.com/merch Timestamps 00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Dreaming, Learning & Un-learning  00:01:04 Types of Sleep 00:02:57 Slow-Wave Sleep, Motor Learning 00:06:23 Sponsor: AG1 00:07:30 REM Sleep, Paralysis, Unlearning of Emotional Events 00:12:29 Lack of REM Sleep, Emotionality 00:15:02 REM Sleep, Learning & Meaning 00:18:54 Sponsor: Joovv 00:20:08 EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) Therapy, Trauma 00:26:48 Ketamine Therapy, PCP, Trauma 00:29:52 Sponsor: Eight Sleep 00:31:23 REM Sleep as Therapy, Emotions 00:33:40 Tool: Improve Slow-Wave & REM Sleep 00:37:05 Recap & Key Takeaways Disclaimer & Disclosures