The guest
Dr. Matt Walker: Sleep scientist, professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley, and author of the bestseller Why We Sleep. This is the sixth and final episode of the Huberman Lab guest series on sleep.
What this episode covers
Andrew Huberman and sleep scientist Matt Walker close their six-part sleep series with a deep dive into dreaming. They cover what's happening in the brain during REM sleep, why dreams are essentially a nightly state of psychosis, and the evidence that dreaming serves creativity and acts as 'overnight therapy' for emotional wounds. Walker explains modern treatments for nightmares, the science and risks of lucid dreaming, and how memory can be edited and even erased during sleep. The episode ends with a rapid-fire audience Q&A covering sleep position, waking at 3:30am, sleep banking, menopause, and sleep supplements.
Recommended on this episode
MediaRecommended
Waking Life
Richard Linklater
“everyone should watch it”
“it was probably made famous in a brilliant movie if you haven't seen it everyone should watch it it's called Waking Life”— Matt Walker
ProductRecommended
SnoreLab
SnoreLab
“I would say download an app... just do it for a couple of nights consistently”
“I would say download an app and we can link to it I have no affiliation with whatsoever I pay my money it is called snore lab”— Matt Walker
ProductRecommended
Magtein (Magnesium L-threonate)
Magtein
“the supplements that I recommend when people ask”
“the supplements that I recommend when people ask for supplement recommendations specifically are magnesium 3 and... interchangeable with magnesium bisglycinate”— Andrew Huberman
ProductRecommended
Apigenin
Apigenin
“the supplements that I recommend when people ask for supplement recommendations specifically”
“the other one is appenine which is a essentially a derivative of chamomile”— Andrew Huberman
ProductRecommended
L-Theanine
L-Theanine
“the supplements that I recommend when people ask for supplement recommendations specifically”
“the third is theanine which is known to have a a mild uh anti-anxiety uh component to it”— Andrew Huberman
ProductRecommended
Inositol
Inositol
“I use those by the way most every night before sleep and it has improved my sleep dramatically”
“The other thing that I sometimes use is 900 milligrams of inositol which makes it easier for me to fall back asleep when I wake up in the middle of the night”— Andrew Huberman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
ProductReferenced
Eight Sleep (Pod cooling mattress)
Eight Sleep
“using these smart mattresses now I've spoken to Mato the CEO of eight sleep another fantastic product and he has had a huge amount of feedback from menopausal women”— Matt Walker
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud
“it was really Freud who put his seminal works together in 1899 and then published it in 1901 called the interpretation of dreams”— Matt Walker
ProductReferenced
Glycine
Glycine
“the first is glycine and here we're talking about doses of maybe 1.5 to two Gams of glycine has quite a reliable robust literature”— Matt Walker
ProductReferenced
Phosphatidylserine
Phosphatidylserine
“the final one I would say which has very good data to support its action is something called phosphatidylserine reliably demonstrated to Tamp down the cortisol response”— Matt Walker
ProductReferenced
Doxepin
Doxepin
“one of them that's been shown to be effective for older adults is something called dopin... doxin is a medication that's much more helpful for keeping people asleep”— Matt Walker
ProductReferenced
Trazodone
Trazodone
“there are some sleeping medications that I think do show promise... trazadone although there is some sort of push back a little bit by the community against trazadone”— Matt Walker
Big reveals from this episode
- Walker argues that everyone becomes 'flagrantly psychotic' every night when dreaming - hallucinating, delusional, disoriented, emotionally labile and amnesic.
- Studies found rats deprived of REM sleep died faster (40 days) than rats deprived of older non-REM sleep (60 days), suggesting REM may be more life-critical.
- A Japanese study using multivoxel pattern analysis could decode the general content of dreams (a car, a house, a woman) from brain scans.
- You only get the creative and emotional benefits of dreaming if you actually dream about the specific thing you're trying to resolve.
- Only about 2% of your dreams are a faithful replay of waking life; what carries over is emotional concerns and people of significance.
- A Geneva study boosted nightmare therapy success from 66% to 92% by replaying a piano chord during REM sleep (targeted memory reactivation).
- German researchers confirmed lucid dreaming is real - dreamers signaled with eye flicks and their motor cortex lit up exactly as claimed.
- Walker's 'wacky theory': forgotten dreams aren't gone - they may be implicitly stored and still shaping our behavior.
Worth remembering
- Humans are an evolutionary anomaly, spending ~20% of sleep in REM versus ~9% for most other primates.
- When eyes are darting in phasic REM sleep, there's a 95-100% chance you'll report a dream if woken.
- Sleep talking and sleepwalking are NOT dreaming - they happen during deep non-REM sleep, so they don't reflect dream content.
- Memory replay runs 10-20x faster during non-REM sleep but slows to roughly 0.5x speed during REM.
- Image Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) treats recurring nightmares by rehearsing a neutral or positive alternate ending.
- Only about 10-20% of people are natural lucid dreamers.
- Some studies suggest lucid dreaming leaves people feeling less rested, possibly because the brain is over-activated.
- You can't repay sleep debt - after deprivation you only recover about 25% of the hours you lost.
- 'Sleep banking' works in the other direction: sleeping extra in advance lessens the impact of anticipated sleep loss.
- Walker's single best sleep tip: regularity - keep your sleep and wake times consistent every day.
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