MyHealthNewsDaily Staff Writer
A bad day may not seem quite so painful after we dream, a new study suggests.
The results show that during nighttime dreaming, also known as REM sleep, the brain processes emotional experiences in a "safe" environment, or one in which stress chemicals are low. This processing may take the emotional edge off of difficult memories, the researchers said.
"We wake up the next day, and those experiences have been softened in their emotional strength," said study researcher Matthew Walker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley."We feel better about them, we feel we can cope."
A study has found that the brain structure called the amygdala, involved with emotions, may predict a person's number and richness of relationships.
The size of your amygdala, an almond-shaped portion of the brain involved in emotions, may be as strong a marker for having rich and varied social relationships as how many "friends" you have on Facebook, researchers say.
Scientists report in the 26 December online edition of Nature Neuroscience that people with larger and more complex social networks also have larger amygdalas.
The findings
The findings correspond to previous research that found that primates also have a larger amygdala, relative to the overall size of their brain and body. Like humans, primates live in fairly complex social groups, suggesting that a larger amygdala has evolved to help navigate these landscapes.
