What if you could control what kind of dream you had. Scientist are now looking at something that could do just that. In a recent study, scientist found that if someone smelled a rose while they were asleep, they had more pleasant dreams while people who smelled rotten eggs had bad dreams. No, they didn't dream about roses or rotten eggs, just the mood of the dream changed. It is widely known throughout the scientific community that your sense of smell is closely linked to the part of your brain that deals with emotion, but this study even surprised specialist in that field. The study tested 15 healthy women (widely believed to have better noses) in thir 20s. When they entered REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, they got a ten second burst of scent, then were waken up 1 minute later and asked about their dreams. Only one person dreamed about the scent they were smelling. Some people are saying that if they had slept longer, the sent might have incorporated itself into their dreams, but no one knows for sure. More test will be conducted to address this and other theroies.
Carrol, Rebecca. "Smells Influence Dreams, Study Says" National Geographic. 23 Sep. 2008. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080923-smell-sleep.html>.
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5 comments:
I find this very interesting. It would be very cool to control, or at least shape, the type of dream I had. If I was in the mood for a nightmare, I could take a whif of a harsh smelling food and if I was in the mood for a happy dream, I could smell a sweet, lovely scent. When more information comes out regarding this, I will be itching to read about it because I would love to shape my dreams.
I agree with Punky that it is very cool to control what kind of dream you have. I remeber hearing something else on how to control what you are dreaming, it is called "lucid dreaming". This happens when you are in a dream and realize you are in a dream and then you can do whatever you want, and some people are skilled enpugh to do it anytime they sleep! But I would also like to hear more about this way.
I found this article entertaining. It was interesting to find out about this crazy connection between smelling and dreaming, who would have thought. However, I think it would be beneficial to test more people as well as people of different ages, genders, and also for different amounts of time.
I think that they will test a variety of people in the futre, but for the first test I think they wanted people with the best nose, so if there was any correlation they would see it.
Dreams are something that have always fascinated me and it's exciting to hear how scientists are studying more about them. I'm not sure if I would like being able to control my dreams. There's something about the unexpected nature of them which I like.
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