As professor of neuroscience Matthew Walker explains, when asleep we are no longer conscious of the outside world, yet all of our senses are still working and this sensory information continues to be sent to the sensory convergence area in the centre of the brain. However, the thalamus prevents this information from being sent to the top of the brain to be consciously percieved. And while the conscious, thinking brain has quietened down, our subconscious, emotional brain becomes a lot more active. Matthew Walker's research shows us that in sleep, our brain transfers all of the newly learned information from the day, to the long term storage area of our memory. During REM, dream sleep, the brain can then integrate the new information with our entire database of information from all of our life experiences, to form new connections, solutions and create new meaning. Our subconscious is truly our inner wisdom. These processes aren't just responsible for our cognitive creativity but also our emotional intelligence, involving our feeling memory and the emotional circuits in the brain.
It might fascinate you to know that you have the ability to access these natural subconscious processes, to let go of unwanted feelings, responses and behaviour patterns, that result from negative emotional memory and traumatic memory. We can all think of a time when we've had a difficult day but after a good sleep, we felt better. Similarly, we've all had emotionally painful experiences that, over several sleeps, lose their intensity. Then there are some experiences that have a lasting impact on us and this is when P.S.H. is required as a therapuetic intervention.
In this four minute clip, Professor of neuroscience and psychology, Matthew Walker explains how we process our emotional memory and heal during sleep:
