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Dreams Notes
Dream Facts:

% of your night’s sleep or 2 hours is spent dreaming.
 Sleep Thinking – Vague, uncreative,
thoughts about real-life events that take
place in
. Occur more than dreams.
 Dreams have 5 basic characteristics:
1. Emotions can be
2. Content & Organization are usually
3. Sensations are sometimes
4. Bizarre details are uncritically
5. Dream images are
 Dreams occur in both NREM and REM sleep however they are more frequent and last longer in
.
 People usually have
episodes of dreaming a night.
 Dreams happen in
Brain During REM Sleep:
 PET scans reveal that brain activity is much different in
sleep than when you’re awake.
 Frontal Lobe and Primary Visual Cortex (registers visual info from retinas) are essentially
during REM meaning you are shut out from the external world and
thought so you accept your dreams no matter how bizarre they are.

&
of the limbic system which deal with
emotion and memory are highly active as are the brain’s visual areas.
What Do We Dream About?
 Most dreams are about…
 Some themes are found across
.
 Aggression is more common than
in dreams.

cues during dreaming may be incorporated into the dream.
Why don’t we remember our dreams?
 Areas of the brain used in forming memories (
) are shut down
during
sleep and neurotransmitters that are used to make memories are greatly
.
 More likely to remember a dream if you
during it.

encoders tend to be better at remembering dreams.

dreams are more likely to be recalled.

when you awaken can cause problems with remembering dreams.
 Brain seems
to forget most of what occurs during sleep.
Types of Dreams:
 True dream—vivid, detailed dreams consisting of
sensations
experienced during
 Sleep thought—lacks vivid sensory and motor sensations, is more similar to
thinking, and occurs during
sleep
 Lucid dreaming –
Psychoanalytic Interpretation:
 Sigmund Freud – Dreams are the fulfillment of
. Unacceptable thoughts of
are repressed when you are conscious but come
forth when you are asleep in the form of dreams.
 Dreams were “the
” and a “safety valve”
that allowed for the release of unconscious and unacceptable urges.
 Two components of Dreams
o Manifest Content – actual
o Latent Content – Disguised psychological
 Research
support his theories.
Dream Theories:
 Physiological Function Theory - Neural activity during
sleep provides periodic
of the brain.
 Activation Synthesis Model - Brain
during sleep produces dream images
(activation) which are combined by the brain into a
(synthesis).
o Meaning is to be found by analyzing the way the dreamer
of the
progression of chaotic dream images.
OR, to put it another way:
o Activation of brain stem area (
) arouse other brain areas including
and
and
systems.
o Brain responds to these internally created signals and assigns them
using
memories, emotions and sensations.
 Information-Processing Theory - Dreams serve an important
- related function
by sorting and sifting through the day’s experiences
o Research suggests REM sleep helps
storage.
 Cognitive Development Theory - Dreams are a reflection of a person’s
and understanding of their
and are useful for cognitive development
REM & Memory Consolidation:
 Memory Consolidation – converting
memories into a long-term, relatively
form.
 REM seems to help with
memories (skills like riding a bike).
 REM seems to improve performance on
tasks.
 Brain areas activated during training on a task actually are
during REM sleep perhaps stabilizing the neural
training experience.
formed in the recent