As a neurosurgeon and a research scientist, dreams hold a particular fascination for me. Having spent my life immersed in the brain, I am not only infatuated with its infinite complexity but also captivated to the point of obsession by what remains one of its greatest and most mysterious features: dreaming. The source of dreams is the same as all mental activity — waves of electricity moving across the brain every moment we’re alive.
Dreams are a product of normal brain function, and an extraordinary transformation that occurs in the brain each night when we sleep, following the circadian rhythms — the day-night cycles — that biologically govern life. Each night, our brains and bodies follow a repeating 90-minute cycle of light sleep followed by deep sleep, where the brainwaves are slow and rhythmic. The eyes start rolling under their lids and most of the muscles in the body become paralysed.
When the eyes are fluttering under the eyelids, this is known as rapid eye movement or REM sleep. REM sleep and dreaming are often described as synonymous, but this is inaccurate. We can dream in all stages of sleep. But REM sleep is when the most intense and bizarre dreams occur. Dreams change as the night progresses.
Early-night dreams tend to include more elements from our waking life. Dreams at the end of the night are more likely to be emotional and incorporate older autobiographical memories, and it’s these dreams, which we have just before we wake up, that we’re most likely to remember. The tenor of our dreams shifts, too. Dreams are more negative at the beginning of the night and become more positive as the night goes on.
Dreams affect us deeply because we experience them as real. The joy we feel in dreams is physiologically no different from the joy felt when we are awake; neither is the terror, frustration, sexual excitement, anger and fear. Run in our dreams and the motor cortex is activated — the same part of your brain that you’d use if you were actually running. Feel a lover’s touch in your dream, and the sensory cortex is stimulated, just as it would be in your waking hours.
If we’re sleep deprived, the first thing we catch up on is dreaming. If we’ve had enough sleep but are dream deprived, we will immediately start dreaming as soon as we fall asleep. These days, there is much focus on needing sleep to be healthy, but it may be that it’s not the sleep we really need, but the dreams.
Erotic dreams are part of human nature. You couldn’t stop them even if you wanted to. Menopause does not extinguish them, nor does chemical castration. It doesn’t matter whether you are sexually active, celibate, married or single. Erotic dreams are universal. In surveys, sexual dreams were reported by 90 per cent of Brits, 87 per cent of Germans, 77 per cent of Canadians, 70 per cent of Chinese, 68 per cent of Japanese, and 66 per cent of Americans.
An estimated one in 12 of all dreams contains sexual imagery, the commonest being, in order: kissing, intercourse, sensual embrace oral sex and masturbation. The dreams can leave us flushed with pleasure or filled with jealousy. They are often unsettling, too. What does it mean to have a sexual dream about an ex?
What if your partner has one about someone else? Do they reveal anything about our desires? single men have a higher frequency of erotic dreams compared to men in stable partnerships. On the other hand, women report more sexual dreams when they miss their partners or are at the height of a love affair. Men report no similar surge in erotic dreams in those scenarios. But there’s one way in which the dreaming life of men and women align — almost all of us cheat in our dreams.
What should we make of this? As creators of our dreams, we select the cast of our nocturnal dramas, the stage and the action. The dreams we conjure are our own sensual productions. Wouldn’t a dream where we cheat on a partner be a sign that we are looking to be unfaithful, or are at least open to it? Surely an erotic dream is our libido unfiltered and unleashed. If not, then what could it possibly be? All dreams are the product of the Imagination Network in our brains, unbound by the rules and logic of our waking life.
When we’re dreaming, the imagination is unfettered, free to find loose associations and connections in our memories. It can lead us to think about the people in our lives in surprising, disturbing and even erotic ways. Because the logical Executive Network in our brains is shut down during dreaming, we can’t stop these erotic flights of fancy before they take off.
They are also free from judgment — even our own. In erotic dreams we are liberated to imagine sexual encounters that would be taboo or inconceivable in our waking lives. They will probably not involve our current partner. Instead, we have more of an inclination towards novel sexual interactions. So, what do erotic dreams really mean? Researchers have conducted surveys on sexual activity, asking how happy people are in their romantic relationships, whether they have jealous personalities and how these characteristics impact on their dreams.
The scientists tried to provoke erotic dreams by asking participants to watch porn. What they found was surprising. Erotic dreams are not tied to how much sex you are having in your waking life, nor to whether you masturbate. They are not even connected to how much porn you consume. The best predictor of erotic dreaming seems to be how much of our waking life we spend daydreaming about erotic fantasies.
This makes us more open to erotic dreams at night. However, there’s one key difference between daytime fantasies and erotic dreams. When we fantasise during the day, our thoughts are reined in by the rational part of our brain, the Executive Network , which constrains sexual desires. This moderating influence is gone when we dream, allowing our erotic dreams to be wildly creative and exploratory.
From this I conclude that erotic dreams are more like thought experiments than a sign of the type of latent desires that Freud wrote about. We can switch genders or become bisexual, even if it never crosses our minds during the day. Erotic dreams are undeniably deeply pleasurable. In a survey of university students in China, they agreed overwhelmingly with the following statements: ‘I hope to immerse myself in a sexual dream and never wake up’, ‘I feel lucky to have sexual dreams’, and ‘I am sad after waking up from a sexual dream because I find it was just a dream.’
How can it be that imagined sex carries such emotional, libidinal weight? These are, after all, solitary, imagined events outside of our conscious control. It seems implausible that they could mean so much to us, but they do. The answer is that erotic dreams have this kind of power because the brain is our most powerful sex organ. Erotic dreams do more than just reflect or release our emotions, imagination and libido.
They can deliver the same intense pleasure as actual sex. They might even be better than the real thing. In erotic dreams, the brain is not receiving any signals of touching or of being touched. Erotic dreams occur in the brain alone. Even so, more than two-thirds of men and more than a third of women say they’ve experienced orgasms simply as the result of a dream. Consider what is happening in the brain during the physical act of sex.
Sexual activity draws upon every bit of our central nervous system, which sends signals to the brain during sex. The crucial thing is that the brain interprets them. You can be touched in the same place, with the same pressure, in the same fashion, and your brain can view it as something insignificant. Or see it as a frisson or a caress. In which case, it doesn’t matter where you’re touched. The brain alone is what determines sexual significance, causes us to feel attraction (or not), to become aroused (or not), our breathing to quicken (or not) and our heart to race (or not). In erotic dreams, however, the body is silent.
During our most vivid dreams, muscles needed for coordinated movement are essentially paralysed below the neck. The brain is not reacting to signals from the body, but is instead acting out its own imagination. As erotic dreams show us, the brain doesn’t need the rest of the body at all. The mind is its own erogenous zone, and dreams can pursue the pleasures of the flesh without any flesh other than the brain itself.
If this all sounds impossible, think about other aspects of how we perceive and respond to the world. Consider sight, for example. The lens and cornea work together to focus light on the retina at the back of the eye, but it is the brain that processes what is seen into a single, clear view of the world. Without the brain, we do not see. Erotic dreams are the same. With no sensory inputs at all, the brain creates and perceives full-bodied pleasure.
Sex and other erotic pleasures we experience in our dreams are not felt any differently because, as far as the brain is concerned, there is no difference. The brain does not experience real orgasms or fake ones; to the brain, they are all real. And since, during dreams, our unrestrained emotional system can exceed levels we reach in waking life, it’s reasonable to conclude that a dream orgasm can take us to heights that waking sex cannot. What, then, do erotic dreams reveal about our relationships?
The science suggests that dreams of infidelity are unlikely to be a signal that we want to be unfaithful. They are far more likely to be the brain’s Imagination Network in action. Cheating on a partner in a dream may simply be a sign of curiosity and normal sexual arousal, rather than a desire to stray from the relationship. Nor are dreams where we explore a different sexual orientation a sign of a repressed desire.
This, too, appears to be more curiosity, libido and imagination at play. Even so, erotic dreams have plenty to tell us about both the health of our current romantic relationships and how well we have got over former partners, but perhaps not in the way we may expect. Sexual dreams can elicit strong feelings of desire, jealousy, love, sadness or joy powerful enough to affect how we feel about our partner the next day.
Just like the sensations in the dream, the brain perceives the emotions as real. Researchers have found conflict with a partner in a dream tends to result in conflict the following day. In unhealthy relationships, infidelity dreams are associated with decreased feelings of love and intimacy in the days that follow. In healthy relationships, infidelity dreams don’t have much of an effect at all. How we feel about a partner during our waking hours can also affect our dreams.
Feelings of jealousy during the day can produce dreams of infidelity, which in turn affect a dreamer’s behaviour towards their partner. In these cases, dreams and reality appear to feed on each other in a negative loop. It’s likely that negative emotions in an erotic dream about a partner could serve as an important signal of how you feel about that person. But the emotions associated with erotic dreams are far more important than the dream narrative itself.
If you or your partner have a dream of being unfaithful, this is not a sign of anyone’s true desires. Even though you may wake up unsettled or upset, remember that dreams are designed to make us think divergently, including about our sex lives. What really counts is not our erotic dream narrative or our partner’s, but how we react to these dreams.
Ex-pARTNERS can and do show up in dreams long after they have ceased to be a part of our lives. While dreams of current partners often involve doing something together, dreams of ex-partners are more likely to be erotic. You may be tempted to conclude that this means we’re longing for an ex. But based on a number of studies, the opposite is usually true.
These dreams appear to be helping us to get over our former partners. They may simply be a way of processing the emotions of a break-up. There may, though, be a more fundamental purpose to erotic dreams — as a way our brains have evolved to protect humanity and prepare it for procreation.
My belief is that erotic dreams are a cognitive platform on which sexual fluidity and ingenuity are created; ‘wildcards’ that could help our species to survive by giving us flexible desires so that we have the means to reproduce even in the most extreme circumstances. If, say, half our tribe was wiped out by disease, erotic dreams like these could have readied our ancestors for new engagements and entanglements within our tribe.
This may also help explain why erotic dreams tend to stick close to home. The characters in our erotic dreams are rarely inventive, but the interactions often are. In this way, erotic dreams are more than our true desires — they are the embodiment of desire itself. They prime us for sexual exploration and a breadth of sexual impulses. This makes sense when we remember that the essential biological imperative of life is to survive long enough to reproduce. Our brains have developed so they are highly tuned to erotic thinking. Fantasy, erotic dreaming — and ultimately our sexuality — arose from the drive to procreate.
作为一名神经外科医生和研究科学家，梦对我来说有着特殊的吸引力。我一生都在研究大脑，我不仅迷恋它的无限复杂性，而且对它最伟大、最神秘的特征之一–做梦–也着迷到了痴迷的地步。梦的来源与所有精神活动一样–我们活着的每时每刻都有电波在大脑中流动。
梦是大脑正常功能的产物，也是我们每晚睡觉时，大脑按照昼夜节律–昼夜循环–发生的非凡变化，而昼夜节律正是生物生命的主宰。每晚，我们的大脑和身体都会重复 90 分钟的轻度睡眠周期，然后是深度睡眠，在深度睡眠中，脑电波缓慢而有节奏。眼睛开始在眼睑下转动，身体的大部分肌肉都会变得麻痹。
当眼球在眼皮下跳动时，这被称为快速眼动睡眠或快速动眼睡眠。快速眼动睡眠和做梦通常被描述为同义词，但这是不准确的。我们在睡眠的各个阶段都会做梦。但快速眼动睡眠是梦境最强烈、最离奇的时候。梦境会随着夜晚的进展而变化。
清晨的梦往往包含更多清醒生活中的元素。夜深人静时做的梦更有可能是情绪化的，并包含较早的自传体记忆，而我们最有可能记住的正是这些在我们醒来之前做的梦。梦境的基调也会发生变化。夜晚开始时，梦境会变得更加消极，而随着时间的推移，梦境会变得更加积极。
梦深深地影响着我们，因为我们把它们当作真实的体验。我们在梦中感受到的快乐与清醒时感受到的快乐在生理上并无不同；恐怖、沮丧、性兴奋、愤怒和恐惧也是如此。在梦中奔跑，大脑运动皮层会被激活–如果你真的在奔跑，你也会用到大脑的这一部分。在梦中感受爱人的抚摸，感觉皮层也会受到刺激，就像在清醒时一样。
如果我们睡眠不足，首先要做的就是做梦。如果我们有足够的睡眠，但却缺少梦境，那么我们一入睡就会立即开始做梦。如今，人们越来越关注睡眠对健康的重要性，但我们真正需要的可能不是睡眠，而是梦。
做春梦是人类天性的一部分。即使你想阻止，也阻止不了。更年期不会让它们消失，化学阉割也不会。无论你是性活跃者、独身者、已婚者还是单身者，这都无关紧要。性梦是普遍存在的。在调查中，90% 的英国人、87% 的德国人、77% 的加拿大人、70% 的中国人、68% 的日本人和 66% 的美国人都做过性梦。
据估计，每 12 个梦中就有一个包含性意象，最常见的依次是：接吻、性交、性感拥抱、口交和手淫。这些梦境可能让我们兴奋不已，也可能让我们充满嫉妒。它们通常也会让人感到不安。做关于前男友的性梦意味着什么？
如果你的伴侣做了关于别人的性梦呢？这些梦是否揭示了我们的欲望？与有稳定伴侣的男性相比，单身男性做春梦的频率更高。另一方面，女性会在思念伴侣或处于热恋期时做更多的性梦。在这些情况下，男性的春梦次数并没有出现类似的激增。但是，有一种方式让男性和女性的梦境生活趋于一致–我们几乎所有人都会在梦中出轨。
我们应该如何看待这个问题呢？作为梦境的创造者，我们选择了夜间戏剧的演员、舞台和动作。我们所做的梦是我们自己的感性作品。如果我们梦见自己欺骗了伴侣，这难道不是表明我们想要不忠，或者至少是愿意不忠吗？情色梦境肯定是我们的性欲未经过滤的释放。如果不是，那它又是什么呢？所有的梦都是我们大脑中想象力网络的产物，不受清醒生活的规则和逻辑约束。
当我们做梦时，想象力不受束缚，可以自由地在记忆中寻找松散的联想和联系。它会引导我们以令人惊讶、不安甚至色情的方式去思考生活中的人。由于大脑中的逻辑执行网络在做梦时关闭，我们无法在这些色情幻想起飞前阻止它们。
它们也不受评判，甚至不受我们自己的评判。在情色梦境中，我们可以自由地想象那些在清醒时是禁忌或难以想象的性接触。它们可能不会涉及我们现在的伴侣。相反，我们更倾向于新奇的性互动。那么，春梦到底意味着什么呢？研究人员对性活动进行了调查，询问人们在恋爱关系中的幸福程度、是否具有嫉妒性格以及这些特征对他们的梦境有何影响。
科学家们试图通过让参与者观看色情片来激发色情梦。他们的发现令人吃惊。情色梦与你清醒时的性生活次数无关，也与你是否手淫无关。它们甚至与你看了多少色情片也没有关系。最能预测情色梦境的因素似乎是我们在清醒的生活中花了多少时间做情色白日梦。
这让我们在晚上更容易做春梦。然而，白天的幻想和春梦之间有一个关键的区别。当我们在白天幻想时，我们的思想会受到大脑中理性部分（执行网络）的控制，从而抑制性欲望。而当我们做梦时，这种调节作用就会消失，从而使我们的春梦充满创造性和探索性。
由此我得出结论，情色梦更像是思想实验，而不是弗洛伊德笔下那种潜在欲望的表现。我们可以转换性别或成为双性恋，即使我们白天从未想过这一点。不可否认，春梦会给人带来极大的快感。在一项针对中国大学生的调查中，他们绝大多数都同意以下说法： 我希望沉浸在性梦中，永远不要醒来”、”我为做性梦感到幸运”、”从性梦中醒来后，我很难过，因为我发现那只是一场梦”。
想象中的性爱怎么会有如此强烈的情感和性欲呢？毕竟，这些都是单独的、想象出来的事件，不受我们意识的控制。它们对我们如此重要似乎难以置信，但它们确实如此。答案是，情色梦之所以具有这种力量，是因为大脑是我们最强大的性器官。情色梦不只是反映或释放我们的情感、想象力和性欲。
它们能带来与真实性爱同样强烈的快感。它们甚至可能比真实的性爱更美妙。在情色梦中，大脑不会接收到任何触摸或被触摸的信号。情色梦境只发生在大脑中。即便如此，仍有超过三分之二的男性和超过三分之一的女性表示，他们仅仅因为梦境而体验过性高潮。想想在性爱过程中大脑会发生什么吧。
性活动动用了我们中枢神经系统的每一个部分，而中枢神经系统会在性活动中向大脑发送信号。关键在于大脑如何解读这些信号。你可以在同一个地方，用同样的压力，以同样的方式被抚摸，而你的大脑可以将其视为无关紧要的事情。或者将其视为一种刺激或爱抚。在这种情况下，你被触摸的地方并不重要。只有大脑才能决定性的意义，让我们感受到吸引（或没有），唤起（或没有），呼吸加快（或没有），心跳加速（或没有）。然而，在情色梦境中，身体是沉默的。
在我们最生动的梦境中，颈部以下协调运动所需的肌肉基本上处于瘫痪状态。大脑没有对来自身体的信号做出反应，而是在发挥自己的想象力。情色梦境告诉我们，大脑根本不需要身体的其他部分。大脑是自己的性感带，梦境可以追求肉体的快感，除了大脑本身，不需要任何肉体。
如果这一切听起来不可能，那就想想我们如何感知和回应世界的其他方面。比如说视觉。晶状体和角膜共同作用，将光线聚焦到眼球后部的视网膜上，但大脑将所看到的东西处理成单一、清晰的世界观。没有大脑，我们就看不见。春梦也是如此。在没有任何感官输入的情况下，大脑会创造并感知全身心的愉悦。
我们在梦中体验到的性爱和其他情欲快感并没有什么不同，因为在大脑看来，它们并没有什么不同。大脑不会体验到真正的高潮或虚假的高潮；对大脑来说，它们都是真实的。既然在梦中，我们无拘无束的情感系统可以超越清醒时的水平，那么我们有理由得出结论，梦中的性高潮可以让我们达到清醒时性爱无法达到的高度。那么，色情梦对我们的人际关系有何启示呢？
科学表明，梦见不忠不太可能是我们想要不忠的信号。它们更有可能是大脑的想象网络在起作用。在梦中欺骗伴侣可能只是好奇心和正常的性兴奋的表现，而不是想要脱离这种关系。我们在梦中探索不同的性取向，也不是压抑欲望的表现。
这似乎也是好奇心、性欲和想象力在作祟。即便如此，情色梦境还是能告诉我们很多信息，包括我们当前恋爱关系的健康状况，以及我们对前任伴侣的忘却程度，但也许并不是我们所期望的那样。性梦会引发强烈的欲望、嫉妒、爱、悲伤或喜悦，足以影响我们第二天对伴侣的感觉。
就像梦中的感觉一样，大脑会把这些情绪视为真实的。研究人员发现，梦中与伴侣的冲突往往会导致第二天的冲突。在不健康的人际关系中，不忠的梦与第二天爱和亲密感的减少有关。而在健康的人际关系中，不忠之梦根本不会产生太大的影响。我们在清醒时对伴侣的感觉也会影响我们的梦境。
白天的嫉妒情绪会产生不忠之梦，进而影响做梦者对伴侣的行为。在这种情况下，梦境和现实似乎在一个消极的循环中相互促进。情色梦境中关于伴侣的负面情绪很可能是你对伴侣感觉的重要信号。但是，与情色梦境相关的情绪远比梦境叙述本身更重要。
如果你或你的伴侣梦见自己不忠，这并不代表任何人的真实欲望。尽管你醒来后可能会感到不安或沮丧，但请记住，梦的目的是让我们发散思维，包括对性生活的思考。真正重要的不是我们或伴侣的色情梦境，而是我们对这些梦境的反应。
前伴侣可能会出现在梦中，而且在他们不再是我们生活的一部分之后很久也确实会出现在梦中。现任伴侣的梦境通常涉及一起做某事，而前任伴侣的梦境则更有可能是色情的。你可能会认为这意味着我们在渴望前任。但根据多项研究，事实通常恰恰相反。
这些梦似乎在帮助我们忘掉前任伴侣。它们可能只是处理分手情绪的一种方式。不过，情色梦可能有更根本的目的–是我们的大脑进化到保护人类和为生育做准备的一种方式。
我认为，情色梦是一个认知平台，在这个平台上，性的流动性和独创性得以产生；”通配符 “可以帮助我们这个物种生存下去，因为它赋予了我们灵活的欲望，使我们即使在最极端的情况下也有办法繁衍后代。比方说，如果我们的部落有一半被疾病消灭了，像这样的情色梦境可以让我们的祖先做好准备，在部落内部进行新的交往和纠葛。
这或许也有助于解释为什么情色梦境倾向于贴近家庭。我们情色梦境中的人物很少别出心裁，但互动却往往别出心裁。这样一来，情色梦就不仅仅是我们的真实欲望–它们是欲望本身的体现。它们为我们的性探索和广泛的性冲动提供了条件。如果我们记得，生命的基本生理要求是存活足够长的时间以繁衍后代，那么这就说得通了。我们的大脑已经发展到高度适应色情思维的程度。幻想、情色梦境–以及最终我们的性欲–都源于繁衍后代的动力。
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陳旭@perth 