But people also felt they’d been deeply asleep when they reported immersive dreams, although their EEG patterns looked more conscious.
“The brain can become more active, more awake, and still we can feel that we are deeply asleep if we are dreaming,” says Bernardi.
What that means is still a puzzle
Could dreaming make the difference between a restless night of sleep and a satisfying one? This study isn’t set up to tell us that, since it doesn’t address restfulness in the morning. Given how often people were awakened, it might be hard to tease apart the influence of dreaming and the influence of multiple awakenings on how sleepers felt.
But the study does suggest the question of how dreams are linked to sleep depth is worthy of further research.
Karen Konkoly, who studies dreaming at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and was not involved in this work, has herself participated in a similar study. “It was fascinating to observe my mind at different times of night and realize how often I actually didn’t feel like I’d been fully asleep,” she wrote in an email.
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