Interestingly, he managed to test this idea in 2004. We know that a large number of our dreams come from REM sleep, so Wegner hypothesised that we would see a lot of suppressed thoughts making a reappearance in dreams. During REM sleep parts of the brain that are needed for thought suppression – such as those involved in attention, control and working memory – are deactivated. Wegner suggested that these processes might fail during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Thought suppression is therefore complicated and can only be achieved when the two processes are working together harmoniously. He suggested that this is because we have two psychological processes at work at the same time when we try to suppress a thought: an operating process that actively suppresses it, and a monitoring process that keeps an eye out for the suppressed thought. The first of these experiments was conducted by Daniel Wegner, who noticed that when we are trying hard to ignore or suppress a thought, it often just keeps coming back.
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