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Dreams have long exercised a fascination over the human imagination. Many people have questions about them. Dreams over time have captured the interest of many. They have continued to intrigue the simplest of people because of their meaning, their occurrences and their different styles and patterns. One of the most common questions that come up about dreams is how they occur. The theory of REM explains this. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. Dreaming is simply the early stage of sleeping. It takes place during REM, using a portion of the brain called pons, which generates signals to the brain (Lewis 3). It is a known fact that everyone dreams, and that REM occurs every 90-100 minutes as stated by Deming (4). The process of dreaming is not a psychic activity but rather a somatic process, which makes itself known as psychic (Crisp 45). Dreams most commonly concern themselves mainly with the future. They are visionary wishes of fulfillment. When a person dreams they may dreams about a certain part of their day, or something that they would like to happen. It is true that everyone dreams however, remembering a dream is often not possible (Uchida 119). When looked at closer it is quite interesting to see how many people actually remember their dreams. 15% say that they never recall their dreams, 5% remember one a night and the average person recalls his/her dream 2-3 times a week (Shafton 350). It is also important to take a look at the different meanings of dreams. Dreams consist of actions such as embracement, births, deaths, being chased and falling. Embracement tends to indicate that you are reaffirming yourself. This means that you are in the process of reassurance, such as being able to trust people. This may be friends, lovers or movie stars. Then there are dreams where births take place. It is attention grabbing to know that women that are pregnant tend to dream about small cuddly animals at early stages of their pregnancy. As well as expectant fathers tend to dream about babies, birthdays parties more than married men whose wives are not pregnant (Cartwright 158). Dreams about births represent the beginning of something, religious salvation or remodeling project. There is also death. These dreams tend to focus mainly on the ending of something, specifically relationships or people who have had bad experiences in the past. These dreams also may signal to a therapist and possibly the dreamer that the time is approaching for successful course of therapy.
In a (Scientific American,2009) article, they described one viewpoint of what dreams are," dreaming is simply an epiphenomenon that is the mental activity that occurs during REM sleep. I do not believe this is the most fruitful approach to the study of dreaming."
They say, “It’s not a straight answer. Everyone does it. It naturally comes.” (Morgan, 2012) Dreaming is part of our everyday life. It isn’t something that we have to think of in order for it to happen. It is something that is going to happen either we think about it or not. “We spend one-third of our lives dreaming”, says, (Dell’Amore, 2011). Sleeping is called REM. For adults REM is about every 90 minutes (1hr 30 min). The first cycle is short for 3 minutes but can increase to 55 minutes.” (Dell’Amore, 2011) “Dreams can happen during “Non-REM” too.” (Dell’Amore, 2011) She says that “REM sleep paralyses your muscles for temporary time. It protects our body from our dreams.” This means that some of our dreams can be very powerful and actually cause us to hurt ourselves. We might feel like what we are dreaming is actually real and we would want to act upon it. We can maybe hurt ourselves For example, we have all had that one dream where we feel like are falling and we jump off our beds or we dream that we are fighting against someone or something and we end up punching something that is reals.
It is very important that people dream if they want to remain in good health. Sleepers can cycle through five stages of sleep continuously throughout the night, one of the most important being Rapid Eye Movement (REM). REM sleep can last for up to five minutes at a time, and is entered multiple times throughout sleep. On the other hand, the brain stem, which controls a person’s emotions, memory, and desires, is very active during sleep. However, the “reasoning brain” is shut down. A person’s brain also cuts off all signals from the senses and blocks messages sent to the muscles, which prevents someone from acting out his or her dreams (Andre-Clark). Dreams occur during the REM phase, the most restful time of sleep. For this reason, scientists have concluded that dreaming is beneficial to an individual’s health. Robert J. Hoss, author of Dream Language, states, “dreaming is...
Dreams are series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Dreams occur during a certain stage of sleep known as REM. Several different psychologists, including Freud and Hobson, have studied dreams. Psychologists have provided many theories as to what dreams are and the meanings behind them.
Although scientists still argue about why are we dreaming and what are dreams made of, modern science found out that dreams are endless, random stories. In the early century, where the History of dreaming starts, dreams were seen as a message from the gods. The brain plays and replays experiences during the night. Studies found out that there is also a gender difference in dreaming. Dreaming occurs during REM sleep when the brain defragments memories and daily life experiences and turns them into random neverending stories.
There are five main types of dreams - daydreams, normal dreams, false awakenings, nightmares and lucid dreams. A lot happens when one is sleeping. While sleeping there are five sleep stages a body has to go through before it gets to the final stage. The first stage is a very light sleep that you can be easily waking from. Stage two is a slight deeper sleep than one. Stages three and four represents our deepest stages of sleep. Our brain activity slows down in these two stages. About 90 minutes after we are asleep we begin REM sleep. (Rapid eye movement) REM was discovered in 1953 by University of Chicago.
Did you ever wonder why you dream? Or if your dreams mean anything? Dreams can tell you many things. Dreams are a mental activity associated with rapid-eye movement or REM period of sleep. REM is in sleep, which the eyeballs dart back and forth under closed eyelids. When awakened from REM sleep, people frequently report they had just been dreaming.(Lemonick) They are made up of visual images, scenes or thought expressed in terms of seeing rather than in those of the other senses or in words. During dreams the blood pressure and heart rate increases, and breathing is quickened, but the body is still immobile. Science has uncovered the purpose and meaning of dreams. While they were looking for their answer, they researchers are probing the minds of cats, sleepwalkers , and stroke survivors. They found it is a mix of personal stories and fascinating study results keep the show moving at a lively pace. The dreamworld affects both mental health and problem solving in our waking lives.(L.K.) Electroencephalography studies electrical; activity of the brain during REM sleep. They have shown that young adults dream for 1 ½ to 2 hours of every 8-hour period of sleep. While infants spend an average of 50% of their sleep in the REM phase. They are believed to dream more often than adults, and it will decrease steadily with age.(Hobson) Research shows that infants in the womb spend nearly all their time in REM sleep and scientist think they’re using that time to develop brain circuitry, which suggests that the very structure of our minds may be something we have dreamed up. While extensive experiments on maze-running rats and video game playing humans, along with studies of people experiencing failing relationships and depression, have demons...
Despite the large amount of time we spend asleep, surprisingly little is actually known about sleeping and dreaming. Much has been imagined, however. Over history, sleep has been conceived as the space of the soul, as a state of absence akin to death, as a virtual or alternate reality, and more recently, as a form of (sub)consciousness in which memories are built and erased. The significance attributed to dreams has varied widely as well. The Ancient Greeks had surprise dream encounters with their gods. Native Americans turned to their dreams for guidance in life. Shamans dreamed in order to gather information from the spirits.
Many associate sleeping with peace and quiet, but actually our brains are found to be more active during sleep than at any other time of the day. After reading the title to my essay many would put this paper down and claim that they have never experienced REM sleep, but that’s not entirely true, we all dream, every time we sleep, yet only 40% of people can recall they had one and only 32% will be able to recall some content with a smaller percentage being able to recall the dream in detail. ‘There's a time limit to how much you can remember about your dream’ .
...esults. One interesting thing found, is that although it is though that dreams happen in a blink of an eye that they actually happen in a realistic time span (General Information). Another is that dreams generally take place in familiar settings and are random leftover thoughts from the previous day. What’s interesting though, is that during studies in which participants were woken on a regular basis, scientists found that the dreams remembered the following morning were “more coherent, sexier, and generally more interesting” than the dream descriptions that were collected in data for research. Most participants remembered very little of their dreams and only about the last fifteen minutes of dreaming before awoken.
Dreaming has always been more of a controlled thing. In a way, dreams can determine what he want to eat, what they want to wear, or even who he may be marrying one day. An Australian doctor has found that dreams are not messages from the spirits but dreams are messages from ourselves (Andre-Clark). In most cases dreams do reflect reality, because dreams are communications from yourself rather trying to contact a person through their dreams, and tell them something that may happen in the future. Dreams may or can reflect things that have happened to anyone. Dreams do not say anything about the future nor predict anything. Dreams may comfort someone or help them understand something that has happened to them in the past.
First, let examined the definition of dream according to Sigmund Freud “dream is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. Dreams are constructed like a neurotic symptom: they are compromises between the demands of a repressed impulse and the resistance of a censoring force in the ego” (Freud, 28). This simple means that all dreams represent the fulfilment of a wish by the dreamer. Dreams are the mind way of keeping an individual asleep and to digest and work out all that we have going on inside our brains, the negative, positive, fear and unclear thoughts and actions. This set the framework for dream work. Freud also stresses that even anxiety dreams and nightmares are expressions of unconscious desire. Freud further went on to say that, “the general function of dreaming is to fending off, by a kind of soothing action, external or internal stimuli which would tend to arose the sleeper, and thus of securing sleep against interpretation” (Freud, 28). With this, it shows that a dreamer can take apart his dream and analysis it, if he or she remembers, once conscious.
For thousands of years humans have experienced a phenomenon which we describe today as dreaming. It has puzzled and sparked interest to all whom experience it. For as long as people have been dreaming, there have been people trying to understand and interpret them. This research paper examines the causation and deeper meaning of dreams. It will compare and contrast the differentiating ideas on the subject by famous psychologists and also examine first-hand accounts from real individuals. The objective of paper is to shed some light on this complex and bizarre behavior.
We spend one third of our lives sleeping and 15-20% of that time is spent dreaming. (1) Dreams are a sequence of images that appear involuntary to the mind of somebody who is sleeping, often a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events, according to the Encarta dictionary. There are many types of dreams. Lucid dreams can be the most fascinating if one can master them. In lucid dreams you realize that you are dreaming and instead of automatically waking up you stay asleep and control every aspect of your dream. Your thoughts can effortlessly paint any dreamscape and you have full mental faculties as you would if you were awake.(4) Your imagination is the limit! Another more mysterious type of dream is precognitive dreams. This is where time and space no longer seem to fit any rational logical meaning. Precognition is an ability to know and experience a future event before it ever occurs (4) Many experience this type of dream and slowly forget it over time, until it happens in real life. When it occurs in real life you automatically feel a sense of déjà vu and you notice something familiar about the s...
During sleep, a person goes through four to five REM periods. REMs are states of rapid eye movement that last from 30 to 90 minutes in length . During REM periods, brain waves that are detected through electroencephalography are similar to that of person who is awake . Besides REM periods, sleeping people go through periods of NREM, non-rapid eye movement. NREM periods occur in between REM periods and last as long as REM periods. Dreams most commonly occur during REM cycles due the increased activity in brain waves . Dreams can occur during NREM periods of sleep, but they are not as common and tend to be less visual . On average, a person will experience a dream once out of three nights, whether they are able to recall it or not . Dreams are more common among infants and gradually decrease as they age