WEBVTT

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Hi, everyone.

NOTE Paragraph

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So, when people ask me about my research,

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and I tell them I study dreams,
they ask questions like:

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"Where do dreams come from?"
and "Why do we dream?"

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and "What does it means if I have a dream
where my teeth are falling out?"

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Then I have to become an ad hoc
dream interpreter right there,

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which is okay,

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but one of the prevailing
scientific perspectives on dreams

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is the "continuity hypothesis,"

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the idea that we dream about things
that we experience while we're awake.

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So last night, I had a dream
about basketball.

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Guess what I was doing
before I went to sleep?

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Watching the NBA playoffs.

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Or, as cleverly illustrated
in this cartoon, the guy says,

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"I think my dream catcher
needs some sort of filter.

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I'm getting a lot of dreams
about hot stock investments,

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low-cost air fares, and products promising
to enhance my sexual performance."

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(Laughter)

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But my research actually examines
the opposite question:

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"How are our dreams associated
with behavior after we wake up?"

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So let me ask you a question.

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How many of you have ever had a dream
about someone that you know?

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All right.

NOTE Paragraph

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Keep your hand up 
if you've ever had a dream,

NOTE Paragraph

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and then you were upset
at the person in your dream

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for something they did
to you in that dream,

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or if someone was upset at you

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for something you did
to them in their dream.

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Keep your hands up. 
Take a look around.

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This was also captured
in an episode of Friends

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where Phoebe was mad
at Ross for something

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that she couldn't figure out
what it was at first.

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She was mad at him the all day
and then finally realized

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it was because of something mean
that he said about her in a dream.

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My colleagues and I
wanted to investigate this.

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This is when I was working
on my PhD at Stony Brook.

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In our study,
we asked 61 participants

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to keep track of their dreams
each night for a two-week period.

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We also asked them to keep track

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of their daily activity
with their romantic partners,

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their significant others.

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In this study, we collected
almost 850 total dream reports.

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Out of that sample, about one-quarter
contains their romantic partners.

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So people are dreaming
about their romantic partners

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about 25% of the time.

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Of those dreams,
a little bit less than half

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have some kind
of positive interaction in them,

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and about one-quarter of those
have some kind of conflicts in them.

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People are also having dreams
about other people,

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what I would call "infidelity dreams"

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or dreams with romantic
cheating behavior in them.

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Let's take a look
at some of these dreams.

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I'll show you two happy ones first,
with positive interaction in them.

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This dream goes: "I dreamt I was
at a carnival with my girlfriend.

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She likes them, so we decided to go
to one that stopped in our town.

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We were having fun running around,
kissing, tickling each other.

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She kept beating me
at the whack-a-mole game

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even though I thought
I was winning by a lot...

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In the end, she won
a big teddy bear as a prize

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which is apparently what
she wanted, so I was happy."

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That's cute.

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(Laughter)

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"This dream was a memory.

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It was our first date, and we were
watching Saw II around November.

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I was so scared of the movie,
I kept ducking my head into his shoulder

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and squeaking when some
gory part appeared.

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He laughed and comforted me.

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In the middle of the movie
I rested my head on his shoulder,

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and he put his arm
around me and kissed me.

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He was very sweet,
and I remember feeling tingly.

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We continued to kiss and hug each other."

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Aw!

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(Laughter)

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So what we're seeing in these dreams
is a lot of the same kinds of behaviors

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that people would exhibit
with their romantic partners

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in their waking lives.

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They're going on dates,
to the carnival, to the movies.

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There's kissing, affectionate behaviour,
there's comforting.

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If I showed you these dreams
in some regular diary reports,

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you probably wouldn't be able
to tell the difference.

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So that shows evidence
for the continuity hypothesis.

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That being said, not all dreams
are sunshine and roses.

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I'm going to show you some negative
dreams now, so fair warning:

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if you're sensitive to conflicts,
these get a little rough.

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"A girl left a message
on my boyfriend's Facebook page,

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saying that she loved him.

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I find out he called her,
they were talking,

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even though he knows
how I feel about her.

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On top of that,
he tells her that he loves her.

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After badgering him
about what they talked about,

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he finally says that he told her
he loved her without meaning it.

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I become even more upset
and start smacking him across the face,

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yelling and crying
how could he do this to me.

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He just says 'I don't know'
and I keep yelling and crying

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until finally waking myself
out of the dream."

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Ouch!

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So, think about if you
have this type of dream,

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and you wake up and your partner
is sleeping right next to you,

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what might you say
and do in that situation?

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Also, this shows how ubiquitous
Facebook has become:

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now it even infiltrates our dreams.

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Let's do another one.
This involves a little bit of jealousy.

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"In this dream, I was friends
with my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend.

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We were hanging out at my house,
having fun, singing karaoke.

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Every time I looked at her,

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I thought very few girls
are as beautiful as she is.

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Then my boyfriend comes over.
He wanted a picture with her.

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Then I got all jealous
and pulled him aside

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to ask him if he thought
she was prettier than me.

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I was giving him
a lot of attitude, I knew it,

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but I didn't care
because of our situation.

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I had every right
to be jealous and bitchy.

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He ignored both my question
and me for the night.

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I confronted him again,
he told me he was very turned off

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by my attitude and behavior.

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I questioned my behavior
and wondered if maybe I overreacted."

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There we're seeing more evidence
that a dream like this

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might prompt someone when they
wake up to reconsider their actions,

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to reconsider their
interpersonal relationships.

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Let's do an example
of infidelity in dreams.

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"I had met this wonderful,
cute affectionate guy.

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He gave me attention, gifts,
and wanted to meet my parents.

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He even said he wanted
to marry me some day.

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One particular part I remember best.

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He took me to this extravagant
store, all gold and silver.

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He gave me jewelry to try on
with this beautiful champagne dress.

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I felt so happy the entire dream
that I didn't want to wake up."

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It's important to keep in mind

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this person is in a relationship
with somebody else -

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a completely different person
who she's not having a dream about.

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I'll do one more infidelity dream.

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"I was at a party
with my fraternity brothers

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with a bunch of sorority girls
I know from school.

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I remember being called constantly
from my girlfriend checking up on me.

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It got to the point
where we got into a fight

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because I told her she didn't trust me.

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I got beyond drunk and hooked up 
with some random girl.

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I brought her to my house
and we had sex.

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I remember feeling guilty
before it went down, but satisfied after."

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I know some of these dreams look like

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they're from deleted episodes
of the Jersey Shore,

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(Laughter)

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but what we're seeing

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is that when people
have these types of dreams

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with arguments or conflict
or betrayal or jealousy,

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they have more conflict
with their partners the next day,

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and that's controlling
for the previous day's conflict.

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So it is not part of some
day-to-day mechanism,

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there's something unique about the dream.

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When people have an infidelity dream,

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cheating on their partner,
hooking up with someone else,

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they feel significantly less love
and closeness the next day.

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What about sex dreams?

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In case you're curious, we do have some.
I'll show you two examples.

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"I guess to write my dream
is embarrassing,

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but I'll try to describe it.

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It was a sexual dream where me
and my loved one had sex.

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Oddly, it was in my bathroom
on the counter sink top.

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I felt happy and excited in my dream,

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and with the look on his face,
I'd say he felt the same."

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So this is a relatively good sex dream.

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Here's one that's a little bit, crazy.

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"I was having sex with my girlfriend,

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and my ex-girlfriend
kept calling my phone.

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I picked up, told her to leave
me alone and to go on with her life.

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I went to my girl,

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and we started to have 
an intense Kama Sutra kind of sex.

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She kept asking why I'm so mad,

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and I told her that my ex-girl
kept harassing me.

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She took my phone, called her,
and they started to curse each other.

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We were still naked, she hung up,

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and we went back to bed,
still making love.

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And then I woke up."

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Sex dreams are associated
with the next day's behavior,

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but it depends on whether
the relationship is going well.

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So if the relationship is good
and everyone's happy,

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then having a sex dream

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is associated with more love
and intimacy and closeness the next day.

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But if the relationship is
not going well and they're unhappy,

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then sex dreams are associated
with less love and closeness the next day.

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So I want to pause here
and just reflect

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because I'm sure some of you
might be thinking,

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"Okay, dreams are associated
with the behavior the next day, why?

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Why do dreams have this association?
Why do they have this effect?"

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The short answer is we still don't know.

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Dreams are one of the big,
unsolved mysteries of science.

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There are several competing theories
that might explain what's going on here.

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Patrick McNamara proposed the theory

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that dreams evolved in order
to facilitate social attachment bonds,

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especially between parents
and children and romantic partners,

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and we do see some
limited evidence for that here,

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especially with sex dreams
associated with more love and intimacy.

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What about conflict dreams
that would suggest the opposite,

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that it is almost hurting
the attachment bonds?

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And there is another theory
that might address this,

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which is more along the lines

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that dreams evolved
in order to help us solve problems,

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in order to see difficult issues
from a new perspective

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and maybe come to conclusions
or have solutions

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that we wouldn't otherwise be able to see

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to adapt to emotionally
difficult situations.

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I want to show you a few
examples from other studies

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that might support this theory.

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A lot of this research
is summarized by Deidre Barrett

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in a chapter she wrote
for "The New Science of Dreaming."

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This is a study from William Dement,
published in the early 1970s.

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He gave 500 students a brainteaser,

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and he told them to think about it
for 15 min before they went to sleep.

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How many of you have seen
this brainteaser before?

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" The letters O, T, T, F, F form
the beginning of an infinite sequence.

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Find a simple rule for determining
any or all successive letters.

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According to your rule,
what would the next two letters be?"

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Now out of the 500 students,

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there were 87 dreams that were actually
about the brainteaser,

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and a handful of them solved it.

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Here's one example of that dream.

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"I was walking down
the hall of an art gallery.

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I began to count the paintings:
one, two, three, four, five,

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but as I came to the sixth and seventh,

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the paintings had been
ripped from their frames.

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I stared at the empty frame...

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Suddenly I realized
the sixth and seventh spaces

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were the solution to the problem.

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O, T, T, F, F stands for
One, Two, Three, Four, and Five.

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Six and seven are the next two
in the sequence.

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So S and S would be
the two letters that follow."

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Here's another study, from
Erin Wamsley and Bob Stickgold

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in their lab at the Harvard Med School
Division of Sleep Research.

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They gave participants
in their study this maze,

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trained them on it, then tested their
ability to navigate it five hours later.

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They let some of the participants sleep
in between during that five hours.

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And the sleep did help
performance a little bit,

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but not nearly as much as if they reported
having a dream about the maze.

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Having a dream about the maze

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improved their performance
on the retest tenfold

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compared to the people
who did not have a dream.

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It's almost as if the dream
allows our minds

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to examine different kinds
of solutions in a creative way,

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and then we wake up, and we've something
to work with we didn't have before.

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Here's some research
by Rosalind Cartwright

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that shows when you look at women

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who are suffering from depression
after going through a divorce.

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They are actually less depressed,

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more mentally healthy
in the future at a follow-up

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if they dream about their ex-partner, 
about their former spouse.

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This might seem counterintuitive,
you might be thinking

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"How can you get over someone
if you're dreaming about them?"

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Rosalind Cartwright
calls these "dreams that work:"

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those people who incorporated
the thing that stressed them out

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into their dream were better off,
even if the dream content was negative.

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Another example of this.

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Former smokers who were trying
to quit were less likely to relapse,

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less likely to start smoking again
if they dreamt about smoking.

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Again, we are seeing this evidence

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that dreams help us to navigate
emotionally difficult situations

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and to adapt and solve problems in a way
that we would not otherwise be able to do.

00:12:56.032 --> 00:12:59.972
So dreams have this incredible
power to help us heal.

00:13:00.116 --> 00:13:01.736
As Bob Stickgold said,

00:13:01.756 --> 00:13:04.626
"When you sleep,
your brain is figuring it out

00:13:04.646 --> 00:13:08.949
and holding on to relevant information
and throwing out the rest."

00:13:09.810 --> 00:13:13.271
Dreams might also allow
for a creative spark.

00:13:13.301 --> 00:13:17.740
They're responsible for some of the
greatest innovations ever known to man.

00:13:17.830 --> 00:13:20.330
Remember the periodic table
of the elements,

00:13:20.350 --> 00:13:23.050
from high school chemistry class
perhaps for some of you.

00:13:23.080 --> 00:13:26.860
Dmitri Mendeleev
dreamt the periodic table.

00:13:26.966 --> 00:13:29.545
He had a dream that the elements
appeared before him

00:13:29.565 --> 00:13:32.185
and organized themselves
according to their atomic mass,

00:13:32.215 --> 00:13:34.550
and he woke up and drew that,

00:13:34.580 --> 00:13:37.440
and that became what we now know
as the periodic table.

00:13:37.680 --> 00:13:41.553
Paul McCartney famously
dreamt the song "Yesterday."

00:13:41.583 --> 00:13:43.536
Everybody knows that song?
♫ Yesterday ...

00:13:43.556 --> 00:13:45.227
Okay, I won't sing.

00:13:45.296 --> 00:13:49.816
But he dreamt the song,
woke up, went to his piano,

00:13:49.856 --> 00:13:52.494
thought "Great tune!
Let me see if I can figure it out,"

00:13:52.504 --> 00:13:54.524
and he found the chords,
and that became

00:13:54.534 --> 00:13:57.834
one of the most beautiful
songs ever written.

00:13:58.655 --> 00:14:00.935
Now, I think it's unfortunate

00:14:00.965 --> 00:14:05.194
most of us probably won't have
one of these deep, profound dreams

00:14:05.214 --> 00:14:06.984
that lead us to these insights.

00:14:07.004 --> 00:14:09.884
And I don't think
it's because we're not capable.

00:14:09.914 --> 00:14:12.234
I think it's because most of the time,

00:14:12.254 --> 00:14:15.174
we're not really
paying attention to our dreams.

00:14:15.194 --> 00:14:16.941
We don't take them seriously.

00:14:16.971 --> 00:14:20.157
People think that dreams are just
a bunch of nonsense and garbage.

00:14:20.177 --> 00:14:21.711
We wake up, we shrug it off,

00:14:21.731 --> 00:14:24.431
we go about our day
as if it never happens.

00:14:24.611 --> 00:14:29.461
There's a great quote
from my favorite film,

00:14:29.501 --> 00:14:31.670
"Waking Life" by Richard Linklater:

00:14:31.690 --> 00:14:34.660
"Most people are either
sleep walking through their waking life

00:14:34.680 --> 00:14:36.785
or wake walking
through their sleeping life.

00:14:36.805 --> 00:14:39.583
Either way, they're not
going to get that much out of it."

00:14:39.613 --> 00:14:42.243
If I asked you right now to tell me

00:14:42.263 --> 00:14:45.523
whether or not you're dreaming
in this very moment,

00:14:45.553 --> 00:14:48.838
most of you probably say,
"Of course not. I'm obviously awake."

00:14:48.858 --> 00:14:51.318
My response would be:
"How do you know?"

00:14:51.408 --> 00:14:55.228
How do you know
this is not a dream right now?

00:14:55.321 --> 00:14:57.086
Most of us can't tell the difference.

00:14:57.096 --> 00:14:58.796
Can you tell when you're dreaming

00:14:58.816 --> 00:15:02.239
or only when you wake up
and realize that it was a dream

00:15:02.259 --> 00:15:05.339
do you understand what was going on?

00:15:06.005 --> 00:15:08.493
So I want to conclude

00:15:08.513 --> 00:15:12.168
if you get anything from this talk,
I want you to take this home:

00:15:12.188 --> 00:15:14.869
dreams are worth your time.

00:15:14.899 --> 00:15:18.776
They're an important piece of your life
and worth paying attention to.

00:15:18.896 --> 00:15:25.503
Dreams represent this great, untapped
reservoir of information and insight

00:15:25.533 --> 00:15:27.733
that you can gain about yourself,

00:15:27.753 --> 00:15:31.663
your relationships, your work,
your physical health.

00:15:31.935 --> 00:15:34.455
So start tonight,
keep a dream journal.

00:15:34.515 --> 00:15:36.655
Put a pad of paper and a pen
next to your bed,

00:15:36.665 --> 00:15:37.981
and when you wake up,

00:15:38.001 --> 00:15:41.231
write down whatever was
in your head while you were asleep.

00:15:41.261 --> 00:15:43.595
You might be surprised at what you find.

00:15:43.625 --> 00:15:47.345
And your dreams might be trying
to tell you something really important.

00:15:47.415 --> 00:15:48.993
All right, thank you.

00:15:49.008 --> 00:15:50.418
(Applause)