by Dimitra Bella-Velidi
Teacher: Zafi Mandali
Dream
During a typical lifespan,
a human spends a total of
about six years dreaming
A mental activity
(thoughts, images, emotions)
occurring during sleep.
about 2 hours each night
The contents and purpose of dreams are not fully understood and they have been a
topic of discussion for many years. There is no universally agreed definition of
dreaming. It is unknown where in the brain dreams originate, if there is a single
origin for dreams or what the purpose of dreaming is for the body or mind.
There are many hypotheses about the function of
dreams.
Freud suggested that bad dreams let the brain learn to gain
control over emotions resulting from distressing experiences.
Dreams also let the mind express things that would normally be
suppressed in the real world and keeping itself in harmony.
Dreams may also allow a person to see some future events or
prepare for them, for example: a work presentation, a job
interview, or a first date.
Dreams may also create new ideas which are not real. Some of
these may be rejected by the mind as useless, while others may be
seen as valuable and remain.
Dreams may also “change” the mood. Hartmann says dreams
may function like psychotherapy, by "making connections in a
safe place" and allowing the dreamer to connect thoughts that
may be irrelevant while the person is awake.
Recent research suggest that dreaming metaphorically
completes patterns of emotional expectation and lowers stress
levels.
REM-sleep
Most dreams occur in connection with rapid eye movements, and are said to happen
during REM-sleep, during which there is a lot brain activity to be most like that of
a sleepless person. The REM period takes up 20-25% of sleep time. Babies and little
children are believed to dream during about 50% of their sleep time.
NREM-sleep
Dreams occurring during non-REM periods are said to happen during NREMsleep. Dreams during non-REM sleep are usually more “colorless” in comparison.
Sleep researchers divide up sleep time into stages, usually by seeing the brain
waves into an electroencephalograph (EEG). The EEG records electrical
activity in the brain by connecting some electrodes to the scalp.
Typically, a person will have four or five REM periods a night, each one
lasting from 5 to 45 minutes. There is some evidence, however, that REMsleep happens before dreaming and that these two are completely different
from each other.
An EEG showing
brainwaves during
REM sleep
When a person is in deep sleep
there is no dreaming and the waves
(called delta waves) come at a high
vibration about 3 per second.
The REM-dream state is a neurologically and physiologically active state. In this
state the waves come at a rate of about 60-70 per second and the brain generates
about five times as much electricity as when awake. Blood pressure, heart rate,
breathing rate, etc. can change dramatically during REM-sleep. Since there is
generally no external physical cause of these states, the stimuli must be internal, i.e.,
in the brain, or external and non-physical.
Brain stem mechanisms protect us during sleep from activities that could have as
a result self-injury or injury to others. That is, most of us are paralyzed during sleep.
However, some people suffer from sleep disorders where those activities are not
prevented. People who suffer from this disorder flail, sleepwalk, etc., and can be a
danger to themselves or others. Such people often leave their beds during sleep.
Another curious quality of brain activity during dreaming is that almost all
dreams are forgotten. We call this dream amnesia. This is not due to anything
paranormal or supernatural, but to weak encoding.
Perhaps the most curious quality of dreams is that we most of the time are not
aware that we are dreaming while we are dreaming. This may account for time
distortion, lack of reflection on one's plight, and the amnesia that often follows
waking.
Nowadays, hardly anyone believes that dreams are messages from the
gods. But some parapsychologists, believe that dreams offer an opening
to another universe.
Others have studied the subject of whether the mind is open to
telepathic input during sleep and have failed to find evidence of psychic
ability while dreaming. They seem to think that brain waves represent
states of consciousness and that sleep is an altered state of
consciousness. However, sleep is not a state of consciousness, but
unconsciousness.
A lucid dream, also known as a conscious dream, is a dream in which the person is
aware that he/she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams,
it is possible to gain control of the dream characters and environment, as well as to
other impossible feats.
Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well
established. Allan Hobson, with his neurophysiological approach, has helped to
understand the lucid dream into a less complicated way.
The prophetic or clairvoyant dream is perhaps the strongest reason for believing that
dreaming is a gateway to another world. Some dreams seem bizarre. They seem to
foretell events.
If a significant number of dreams of just a single person corresponded to future
events, this would be a great benefit to humankind and we should try to find out
how does it work. However, no such person has been found yet.
However, most parapsychologists are not interested in the physiology of dreaming.
They focus instead on the content of dreams, which they believe reveals a passage to
the paranormal or the supernatural.
A nightmare is a dream which causes fear or horror, or the feelings of pain, falling,
drowning or dying. Such dreams can be related to physical causes such as a high
fever, or psychological ones such as psychological trauma or stress in that persons
life. If a person has experienced a psychologically traumatic situation in life, for
example, a person who may have been captured and tortured, the experience may
come back to haunt them in their nightmares. Sleepers may stay awake and be
unable to get back to sleep for some time.
Dream interpretation is the process of giving a meaning to dreams.
In many of the ancient societies, including Egypt and Greece,
dreaming was considered a supernatural communication, whose
message could be made clear by those with certain powers. In
modern times, various schools of psychology have offered theories
about the meaning of dreams.
success, values
obedience
love, romance
If you want to learn more about
dream interpretation and what
each thing symbolizes, simply go to
www.dreammoods.com
Most dream themes, such as being chased or falling are said to have a
connection with our hunter-gatherer days. We have these dreams because
our ancestors were chased by sharp-toothed tigers and slept in trees. The
evidence for such beliefs is minimum. If the dream-state is a gateway to
anything, it is probably a gateway to personal fears and desires, rather
than to ancient ones of other people. We assume dreaming has a purpose,
but that purpose is more likely to be rooted in this life than in some other
one.
It is most likely that dreams are a result of electrical energy stimulating
memories located in various regions of the brain. Why does the brain keeps
memories, remains a mystery, though there are several explanations.
Explanations in terms of the paranormal and supernatural are not as
likely to have a connection with those that limit themselves to biological
and emotional mechanisms linked to brain activity.