Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Lewis Howes/Getty Stock Images
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Sleep, Science, Health
Olivia Burke
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Sleep, Science, Health
Whether you'd like to admit it or not, we've all been there - waking up after a dirty dream and wondering what on earth brought that on.
Maybe you're going through a dry spell in real life, fancied living out one of your fantasies, or you simply have a sexually charged subconscious, but this brain surgeon believes there's a lot more too it than just that.
Dr Rahul Jandial has dug deep into the science behind some of our bizarre dreams and why we have them in a bid to unlock the secrets of the adventures we go on in our minds when we sleep, and it turns out our fornication-themed ones go a lot deeper than most people presume.
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During an appearance on Lewis Howes' podcast The School of Greatness in April this year, the author spilled some very interesting information about why the most important and complex organ in our bodies seems to conjure up dreams about us getting down and dirty so much.
The neuroscientist - who specialises in complex surgical treatments for cancer patients - began by pointing out that our introduction to eroticism isn't 'built in' like our other capabilities as humans, but rather developed over time.
"That capacity develops in the human brain around the time of 11, 12 and 13," Dr Jandial explained. "You don't go through bodily puberty and then say, 'I think I'm turned on.'
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"It's different - your brain develops the ability to be turned on, I believe, through erotic dreams," the expert said.
"It's not prepubescent, it's not there. It must come at a certain time. It's not the body saying, 'I like it, let's think more about it'.
"I think it's the other way around."
So, our brains essentially have some kind of sexual awakening at an undefined point in time and Dr Jandial has a theory that we're somewhat all wired to be down for procreation and intimacy after hitting a certain age.
According to the brain surgeon, this doesn't follow the same route as our 'normal' neurodevelopmental pathways, which he says we are already equipped with and then go on to refine.
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"Here, it arrives," Dr Jandial continued. "Erotic dreams...like in that J Cole song, 'Wet Dreamz', he says, 'I think I'm smashing but I'm sleeping.'
"So before he has his first intimate relationship with this person, he's rapping about performing the act in his dreams, in his erotic dreams, before they even happened in real life.
"That's not the usual order of how the brain and nerves work, so again, my humble opinion is erotic dreams are the embodiment of desire."
If he's dropping J Cole references, you know this guy must be talking a bit of sense.
He told Howes that when we're in the land of nod, we can tap into parts of ourselves which we 'don't have access to' while we are awake, before he then delved deeper into what these saucy dreams might actually mean.
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"If we look at what is happening in the dreaming brain, it's hyper emotional, it's hyper visual, and this is some real profound stuff," the US boffin went on.
"Your brain is at it's most emotional - metabolically, electrically - in dreaming.
"So then it says to me, if there is a meaning, if I can gain further insight into myself, I must look at the way my dreaming brain is exceptional.
"I'm not going to look at my dreaming brain for a math solution, but I might look at my what my dream brain is putting forth for an emotional solution, an emotional insight.
"When people have injury to these areas [of the brain], they can't even make any decisions. Decision making requires emotion, instinct requires emotion. There's some brilliance to emotion."
The neuroscientist said: "Don't get me wrong, you've got to wake up, you've got to go to work, you got to get it done, and that takes the waking brain - but if you want insights that can't be gained through always focusing outward, then you are getting glimpses of your own brain, your own life's hyper emotional states through dreaming and I think there's insight to be found in that."
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Basically, Dr Jandial believes that 'contributions' from our dreaming brains play a huge part in decisions which our waking brains make, so those erotic dreams can be an indication of our deepest desires in life which we may or may not have realised yet, as well as our emotional wants and needs.
Maybe you want some more excitement in general, or to grow closer to the person you were fictionally rolling around in the sheets with, but according to the brain surgeon, it all comes back to what we long for.