Brain Waves: Dreams And The Stages Of Dreams

Have you ever woken up feeling like you’ve been to the end of the world and back, yet never left your bed? Or maybe you might have had all your worst fears realized when you were asleep? In that case, you were probably dreaming. Dreams are a “series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep” (The American Heritage High School Dictionary, 2004). Everyone has about three to seven dreams a night, but it has been estimated that we forget up to 95 percent of them ( Stevens 2011). Although no one really knows why we dream every night, it’s more likely than not a way for our brain to help us solve problems.

Brain Waves

Dreams are exceptional and complicated phenomenon that happen while we sleep. But even sleep itself is a mystery. There are still some things we know, though. For instance, there are four distinctly different brain waves that our brain produces. Beta waves are the fastest and the ones that are most active while awake and alert. These could be engaged while working on math problems or playing soccer. Alpha waves, the second-fastest, flood our brain when relaxed and comfortable, possibly during a long car ride. Theta waves occur when the body is doing something repetitive that doesn’t require much concentration, like running laps. And finally, delta waves, the slowest of them all, are produced when in deep sleep.

Stages of Sleep

These waves are also active during the different stages of sleep. In the first stage, also dubbed light sleep, which is after the breathing becomes shallow and we start nodding off, the most common waves found in the brain would be theta waves, but there would still be a large amount of delta waves, too. These continue throughout...

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...or of the sewing machine, got the idea of threading the strand through the tip of the needle from a nightmare where native tribesmen were chasing him with spears that had holes on the end. Robert Louis Stevenson also got an idea for his book from a nightmare. At a time when he had next to no money, Stevenson dreamed of a scene that would eventually become the base for his famous novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Dreams are incredible events that occur to each of us every single night. From lucid dreaming to nightmares, they’ve had a huge impact on life as we know it today, yet we’ve barely scratched the surface on knowing how they work and what they mean. Maybe it’s our brain trying to solve our life’s problems, or maybe it’s just a mess of thoughts and experiences from the past few days. No one really knows, and that’s why they’re so compelling.