Sleep is the time for relaxation and rest. With finals around the corner, assignments piling up and overall everyday life, stress of college students has been more prominent. Stress can tend to carry over into our sleep disrupting a good night. How does stress affect REM sleep?
Researchers first wanted to understand what REM sleep looks like in animals to potentially understand the connection with humans. REM sleep is a stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements associated with dreaming. There is evidence suggesting that REM sleep has a response to stress. Several areas in the brain are involved during REM sleep heightening sympathetic nervous system activity, suggesting the brain and body appear active from sleep disturbances including social stress, anxiety or depression. This can later help researchers to understand the health issues today in humans and how it affects sleep (Bernhard Schaefke et all., 2025) .
Is there anything specific you do in your nighttime routine to further ensure a restful night?
Bernhard Schaefke, Jingfei Li, Binghao Zhao, Liping Wang, Yu-Ting Tseng, Slumber under pressure: REM sleep and stress response, Progress in Neurobiology, Volume 249,
2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pneurobio.2025.102771.
The subject of this post is very interesting and it sparked a few questions. After reading the section that potentially links stress to REM sleep, it made me wonder why is REM so restorative if it is activating your SNS? For me, I often try and disconnect from my phone before I go to bed so I am not up thinking about something I saw on social media. But, even by doing so I still feel like I am still subconsciously fighting my REM sleep because I will either dream or wake up thinking about something that has been stressing me out. So, I would love to look more into the relationship between REM sleep and stress because it may help me correct my sleep patterns! Thank you for the post!
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