People dream positive if surrounded by noise: study

London, Jun 16: If you thought that sounds of humming birds or babbling brooks could rock you to a good sleep, you couldn’t be more wrong.

Researchers are suggesting that we’re more likely to have positive dreams when we are surrounded by the noise of commuters and car horns.

Scientists studied the dreams of 8,000 individuals playing to them randomly selected soundscapes as they went to sleep.

The results were unexpected – those who heard the birds experienced dreams which were 20 percent more negative than those who heard nothing.

But those who heard the sound of the daily grind were up to 30 percent more likely to wake up feeling positive and refreshed. The worst was the ’lucid soundscape’ – the sound of someone talking – which triggered dreams 30 per cent more negative.

The experiments, Daily Mail reported, was carried out with a smartphone application that played different sounds as individuals went into the last period of rapid eye movement sleep or REM – when we dream.

University of Hertfordshire psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman said, “When we counted the positive and negative words people used to describe their dreams, we would have expected the birdsong and streams and so on, to improve people’s dreams.

“But what we saw was a lot more negativity. It was very realistic and people seemed unnerved by having birds in their room. Whereas perhaps the city scape was more familiar and comforting.”

The scientists hoped the findings could help people with depression or sleep disorders.

“We want to people maximise their ability to wake up in a good mood, which has a big psychological effect. Depression is often associated with bad dreams,” they said.

PTI