After my last week or so, I experienced one of the greatest REM rebounds I ever have felt. REM rebound is when we haven't slept much for a few nights in a row. When we finally do get a good night's sleep, we often experience much more intense dreams, even nightmares, which probably reflects a powerful bounce-back of REM sleep. For the past week, I was going through "I week" which is initiation week for the fraternity I joined. I slept for about 15 hours in 5 days. Then, Sunday night, I finally was able to sleep for a solid 9-10 hours. I usually never remember my dreams, and if I do, they are usually very spotty and aren't all that interesting. However, when I woke up Monday morning, I was shocked! I had remembered many of my dreams from last night and I could recall them as vividly as they were the night before. It was amazing how tired I was Sunday night but then when I woke up Monday morning it had felt like I had a healthy sleep schedule all week! Going into "I week" I was wondering whether or not I would have REM rebound at the end of it, and surely enough I did! It was cool to see something that we learned in class apply to my life.
This was very interesting to hear your case of REM rebound and how you were able to remember your dreams so vividly. I had an experience where I ended up working over 60 hours for two weeks and when I finally had a night off. I went to bed at 10pm and had the strangest dream that I've ever remembered and woke up feeling completely rejuvenated. Usually I'll remember bits and pieces but by the time I would want to tell someone what happened it would come out as a blank. Clever picture for your blog post.
Your case of REM rebound was really sweet to listen to! I have never personally had this happen to me, but I did have another one of the concept's happen for the first time that we learned about this year, lucid dreaming! In the middle of my dream, i realized i was in a dream and it felt really weird because it had never happened before! Right after i woke up though so that was a buzzkill!
I really enjoyed hearing about your experience with REM rebound! It's pretty crazy, right? I had a similar experience when I was on a tour bus for 40 hours within two days and literally got no more than 1 hour of SOLID sleep.. just off and on sleep. When I got back home, I experience that. It's definitely an interesting thing that happens to us when we lack sleep and then actually can get enough. It shows how important sleep really is!
This is a good example of class material applied to your life! I often experience insomnia because I am just flat out a horrible sleeper. However, after weeks that I sleep especially bad, I also have experienced more vivid dreams. I wonder if people could purposely make themselves tired to experience an intense dream one night? Maybe there is already a study/ experiment done about this. This would be an interesting topic to read/research about.
I agree with REM rebound and the ability to remember dreams more vividly. Many times this is enhanced through moments of deja vu. There are many instances where I see something going on whether it is a conversation or certain actions where I feel that I had just experienced that situation in a previous dream even though I cannot recall when that dream took place.
I think it's interesting how you integrated a topic you learned in class into your real life. I have definitely experienced REM rebound before, several times. And I probably will experience it again after this week of finals is over. I wonder how long you could remember those dreams for.