What are nightmares, and why do we have them? Patrick McNamara, an experimental neuroscientist who studies the neurobiology of sleep, dreams, and religion, believes nightmares have both important spiritual and emotional functions for our minds.

While nightmares can be deeply unpleasant, they have been experienced and recorded by humans for thousands of years, and historically those who were able to withstand and control their nightmares were held in high societal regard — appointed as spiritual guides, or shamans.

Beyond the spiritual, McNamara explains that nightmares can provide insights into the neurobiology of our REM sleep, where we can confront and process trauma. Nightmares can create a kind of exposure therapy, assisting emotional regulation and helping to maintain healthy emotional responses to the environment. That’s why REM sleep is crucial for processing emotional trauma: it allows us to integrate traumatic experiences into our long-term memory stores.

0:00 When REM sleep goes off the rails

0:30 Your brain on nightmares

1:33 Investigating religious nightmares & demonic possession

3:52 Those who conquer demons

4:45 REM neurobiology: Trauma processing

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About Patrick McNamara:

Patrick McNamara is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northcentral University. He also holds appointments in the departments of Neurology at the University of Minnesota and Boston University School of Medicine. He is a founding editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior, the flagship journal for the emerging field of neuroscience of religion. McNamara's current research centers on the evolution of the frontal lobes, the evolution of the two mammalian sleep states (REM and NREM), and the evolution of religion in human cultures.

McNamara is the editor of Where God and Science Meet and Science and World Religions, and the author of The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge University Press), Religion, Neuroscience and the Self: A New Personalism (Routledge), and numerous publications on the neurology and psychology of religion. McNamara is a John Templeton Foundation award recipient for his research project The Neurology of Religious Cognition.