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Dreams are stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. They can exist entertaining, fun, romantic, disturbing, frightening, and sometimes baroque.

They are an indelible source of mystery for scientists and psychological doctors. Why do dreams occur? What causes them? Tin we control them? What practice they mean?

This article will explore the current theories, causes, and applications of dreaming.

Everyone probably dreams
Dreams: Do they represent our unconsious desires?

At that place are several theories about why we dream. Are dreams merely role of the slumber cycle, or do they serve another purpose?

Possible explanations include:

  • representing unconscious desires and wishes
  • interpreting random signals from the brain and body during sleep
  • consolidating and processing information gathered during the mean solar day
  • working as a form of psychotherapy

From evidence and new research methodologies, researchers accept speculated that dreaming serves the post-obit functions:

  • offline retentivity reprocessing, in which the encephalon consolidates learning and memory tasks and supports and records waking consciousness
  • preparing for possible future threats
  • cognitive simulation of existent life experiences, as dreaming is a subsystem of the waking default network, the role of the listen active during daydreaming
  • helping develop cerebral capabilities
  • reflecting unconscious mental role in a psychoanalytic fashion
  • a unique state of consciousness that incorporates experience of the nowadays, processing of the by, and preparation for the future
  • a psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory, or highly circuitous notions tin can be brought together past the dreaming ego, notions that would be unsettling while awake, serving the need for psychological balance and equilibrium

Much that remains unknown near dreams. They are past nature hard to study in a laboratory, just applied science and new research techniques may help ameliorate our understanding of dreams.

Phases of slumber

Dreams most likely happen
Dreams most likely happen during REM sleep.

In that location are five phases of sleep in a sleep cycle:

Stage 1: Light sleep, tiresome middle movement, and reduced muscle action. This stage forms four to 5 percent of total slumber.

Phase 2: Eye movement stops and brain waves get slower, with occasional bursts of rapid waves called slumber spindles. This stage forms 45 to 55 percent of full sleep.

Phase 3: Extremely slow encephalon waves chosen delta waves begin to appear, interspersed with smaller, faster waves. This accounts for 4 to 6 percent of total slumber.

Stage 4: The brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. It is difficult to wake someone during stages 3 and iv, which together are called "deep sleep." There is no eye move or muscle activity. People awakened while in deep sleep do non adjust immediately and oftentimes feel disoriented for several minutes afterward waking up. This forms 12 to 15 percent of full sleep.

Phase 5: This stage is known as rapid eye movement (REM). Breathing becomes more than rapid, irregular, and shallow, eyes jerk speedily in various directions, and limb muscles become temporarily paralyzed. Center rate increases, blood pressure rises, and males develop penile erections. When people awaken during REM sleep, they often describe bizarre and illogical tales. These are dreams. This stage accounts for twenty to 25 percentage of full sleep time.

Neuroscience offers explanations linked to the rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep as a likely candidate for the cause of dreaming.

Dreams are a universal human experience that tin can exist described every bit a state of consciousness characterized past sensory, cognitive and emotional occurrences during sleep.

The dreamer has reduced control over the content, visual images and activation of the retentivity.

In that location is no cognitive country that has been every bit extensively studied and withal as often misunderstood equally dreaming.

In that location are meaning differences betwixt the neuroscientific and psychoanalytic approaches to dream analysis.

Neuroscientists are interested in the structures involved in dream production, dream arrangement, and narratability. Still, psychoanalysis concentrates on the pregnant of dreams and placing them in the context of relationships in the history of the dreamer.

Reports of dreams tend to be full of emotional and bright experiences that incorporate themes, concerns, dream figures, and objects that correspond closely to waking life.

These elements create a novel "reality" out of seemingly nothing, producing an experience with a lifelike timeframe and connections.

Nightmares

Nightmares are pitiful dreams that crusade the dreamer to feel a number of disturbing emotions. Common reactions to a nightmare include fear and anxiety.

They can occur in both adults and children, and causes include:

  • stress
  • fearfulness
  • trauma
  • emotional difficulties
  • affliction
  • use of certain medications or drugs

Lucid dreams

Lucid dreaming is the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. They may have some control over their dream.

This measure of command can vary between lucid dreams. They often occur in the heart of a regular dream when the sleeping person realizes suddenly that they are dreaming.

Some people feel lucid dreaming at random, while others have reported being able to increase their capacity to control their dreams.

What goes through our minds only before we fall comatose could impact the content of our dreams.

For case, during exam time, students may dream about course content. People in a relationship may dream of their partner. Web developers may run across programming code.

These coexisting observations advise that elements from the everyday re-sally in dream-like imagery during the transition from wakefulness to sleep.

Characters

Studies have examined the "characters" that appear in dream reports and how they the dreamer identifies them.

A study of 320 developed dream reports constitute:

  • Forty-eight per centum of characters represented a named person known to the dreamer.
  • Thirty-five pct of characters were identified by their social office (for example, policeman) or relationship to dreamer (such as a friend).
  • Sixteen percent were non recognized

Amongst named characters:

  • Thirty-ii percent were identified by appearance
  • Xx-one percent were identified by behavior
  • Xl-5 per centum were identified by face
  • Forty-iv percent were identified by "just knowing"

Elements of bizarreness were reported in 14 percent of named and generic characters.

Another written report investigated the relationship betwixt dream emotion and dream character identification.

Affection and joy were usually associated with known characters and were used to identify them even when these emotional attributes were inconsistent with those of the waking state.

The findings propose that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, associated with short-term memory, is less active in the dreaming brain than during waking life, while the paleocortical and subcortical limbic areas are more than active.

Memories

The concept of 'repression' dates dorsum to Freud. Freud maintained that undesirable memories could go suppressed in the mind. Dreams ease repression by allowing these memories to exist reinstated.

A study showed that sleep does non help people forget unwanted memories. Instead, REM sleep might even counteract the voluntary suppression of memories, making them more accessible for retrieval.

Two types of temporal effects characterize the incorporation of memories into dreams:

  • the solar day-residue effect, involving firsthand incorporations of events from the preceding day
  • the dream-lag effect, involving incorporations delayed by about a calendar week

The findings of one study suggest that:

  • processing memories into dream incorporation takes a cycle of effectually seven days
  • these processes help further the functions of socio-emotional adaptation and memory consolidation

Dream lag

Dream-lag is when the images, experiences, or people that emerge in dreams are images, experiences, or people you have seen recently, mayhap the previous twenty-four hours or a week earlier.

The idea is that certain types of experiences take a week to go encoded into long-term retentiveness, and some of the images from the consolidation process volition appear in a dream.

Events experienced while awake are said to feature in ane to ii percent of dream reports, although 65 percent of dream reports reflect aspects of recent waking life experiences.

The dream-lag effect has been reported in dreams that occur at the REM stage simply not those that occur at phase 2.

Memory types and dreaming

Two types of memory tin form the basis of a dream.

These are:

  • autobiographical memories, or long-lasting memories most the self
  • episodic memories, which are memories about specific episodes or events

A study exploring different types of memory within dream content amid 32 participants found the following:

  • One dream (0.5 percent) contained an episodic memory.
  • Most dreams in the written report (80 per centum) independent low to moderate incorporations of autobiographical memory features.

Researchers propose that memories of personal experiences are experienced fragmentarily and selectively during dreaming. The purpose may exist to integrate these memories into the long-lasting autobiographical memory.

A hypothesis stating that dreams reverberate waking-life experiences is supported by studies investigating the dreams of psychiatric patients and patients with slumber disorders. In brusk, their daytime symptoms and problems are reflected in their dreams.

In 1900, Freud described a category of dreams known equally "biographical dreams." These reflect the historical experience of being an baby without the typical defensive function. Many authors concord that some traumatic dreams perform a role of recovery.

1 paper hypothesizes that the main aspect of traumatic dreams is to communicate an experience that the dreamer has in the dream but does not understand. This can help an individual reconstruct and come to terms with past trauma.

Themes

The themes of dreams can be linked to the suppression of unwanted thoughts and, as a issue, an increased occurrence of that suppressed idea in dreams.

Fifteen good sleepers were asked to suppress an unwanted thought 5 minutes prior to sleep.

The results demonstrate that there were increased dreams about the unwanted idea and a tendency to have more distressing dreams. They also imply that idea suppression may lead to significantly increased mental disorder symptoms.

Research has indicated that external stimuli presented during sleep can affect the emotional content of dreams.

For example, the positively-toned stimulus of roses in 1 study yielded more positively themed dreams, whereas the negative stimulus of rotten eggs was followed past more negatively themed dreams.

Typical dreams are defined as dreams similar to those reported by a high pct of dreamers.

Up to at present, the frequencies of typical dream themes have been studied with questionnaires. These accept indicated that a rank club of 55 typical dream themes has been stable over different sample populations.

Some themes
Some themes are familiar to many people, such as flying, falling, and arriving late.

The 55 themes identified are:

  • school, teachers, and studying
  • beingness chased or pursued
  • sexual experiences
  • falling
  • arriving besides late
  • a living person being dead
  • a person now dead being alive
  • flying or soaring through the air
  • failing an examination
  • being on the verge of falling
  • being frozen with fear
  • existence physically attacked
  • beingness nude
  • eating succulent food
  • swimming
  • being locked upwardly
  • insects or spiders
  • beingness killed
  • losing teeth
  • being tied up, restrained, or unable to move
  • being inappropriately dressed
  • existence a child again
  • trying to complete a task successfully
  • being unable to detect toilet, or embarrassment about losing 1
  • discovering a new room at abode
  • having superior knowledge or mental ability
  • losing control of a vehicle
  • fire
  • wild, tearing beasts
  • seeing a face very close to yous
  • snakes
  • having magical powers
  • vividly sensing, just not necessarily seeing or hearing, a presence in the room
  • finding money
  • floods or tidal waves
  • killing someone
  • seeing yourself as dead
  • being half-awake and paralyzed in bed
  • people behaving in a menacing way
  • seeing yourself in a mirror
  • existence a member of the opposite sex
  • being smothered, unable to breathe
  • encountering God in some grade
  • seeing a flying object crash
  • earthquakes
  • seeing an angel
  • part animal, role human creatures
  • tornadoes or potent winds
  • being at the movie
  • seeing extra-terrestrials
  • traveling to another planet
  • being an fauna
  • seeing a UFO
  • someone having an abortion
  • being an object

Some dream themes appear to alter over time.

For instance, from 1956 to 2000, there was an increase in the percentage of people who reported flying in dreams. This could reflect the increase in air travel.

What do they mean?

Relationships: Some have hypothesized that ane cluster of typical dreams, including being an object in danger, falling, or being chased, is related to interpersonal conflicts.

Sexual concepts: Some other cluster that includes flight, sexual experiences, finding money, and eating delicious nutrient is associated with libidinal and sexual motivations.

Fright of embarrassment: A third grouping, containing dreams that involve beingness nude, failing an test, arriving too belatedly, losing teeth, and being inappropriately dressed, is associated with social concerns and a fear of embarrassment.

Brain action and dream types

In neuroimaging studies of brain activity during REM sleep, scientists found that the distribution of brain activity might also be linked to specific dream features.

Several baroque features of normal dreams have similarities with well-known neuropsychological syndromes that occur after brain harm, such as delusional misidentifications for faces and places.

Dreams and the senses

Dreams were evaluated in people experiencing different types of headache. Results showed people with migraine had increased frequency of dreams involving gustation and scent.

This may advise that the role of some cerebral structures, such as amygdala and hypothalamus, are involved in migraine mechanisms as well equally in the biology of slumber and dreaming.

Music in dreams is rarely studied in scientific literature. Nonetheless, in a written report of 35 professional musicians and 30 non-musicians, the musicians experienced twice equally many dreams featuring music, when compared with non-musicians.

Musical dream frequency was related to the age of first of musical instruction but not to the daily load of musical activity. Nearly half of the recalled music was not-standard, suggesting that original music can be created in dreams.

Pain

It has been shown that realistic, localized painful sensations can exist experienced in dreams, either through direct incorporation or from memories of pain. However, the frequency of hurting dreams in healthy subjects is low.

In one written report, 28 non-ventilated burn victims were interviewed for 5 sequent mornings during their first week of hospitalization.

Results showed:

  • Xxx-ix percent of people reported pain dreams.
  • Of those experiencing pain dreams, xxx percent of their total dreams were pain-related.
  • Patients with hurting dreams showed evidence of reduced sleep, more nightmares, higher intake of anxiolytic medication, and college scores on the Impact of Issue Scale.
  • Patients with pain dreams besides had a trend to report more intense pain during therapeutic procedures.

More than half did not written report pain dreams. Nonetheless, these results could suggest that hurting dreams occur at a greater frequency in populations currently experiencing hurting than in normal volunteers.

Self-awareness

1 written report has linked frontotemporal gamma EEG activity to conscious awareness in dreams.

The study found that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences on-going brain activeness and induces self-reflective sensation in dreams.

Researchers ended that higher lodge consciousness is related to oscillations around 25 and 40 Hz.

Relationships

Contempo research has demonstrated parallels between styles of romantic attachment and full general dream content.

Assessment results from 61 student participants in committed dating relationships of 6 months duration or longer revealed a significant association between relationship-specific attachment security and the degree to which dreams about romantic partners followed.

The findings illuminate our understanding of mental representations with regards to specific attachment figures.

Decease in dreams

Researchers compared the dream content of different groups of people in a psychiatric facility. Participants in 1 group had been admitted afterwards attempting to take their own lives.

Their dreams of this group were compared with those of three control groups in the facility who had experienced:

  • low and thoughts about suicide
  • depression without thinking near suicide
  • carrying out a tearing human activity without suicide

Those who had considered or attempted suicide or carried out violence had were more likely to accept dreams with content relating to expiry and subversive violence. Ane factor affecting this was the severity of an individual'southward depression.

Left and right side of the brain

The right and left hemispheres of the encephalon seem to contribute in different ways to a dream formation.

Researchers of ane study concluded that the left hemisphere seems to provide dream origin while the right hemisphere provides dream vividness, figurativeness and affective activation level.

A study of adolescents aged 10 to 17 years establish that those who were left-handed were more probable to experience lucid dreams and to remember dreams within other dreams.

Studies of brain action propose that almost people over the age of x years dream between iv and 6 times each night, but some people rarely remember dreaming.

It is oftentimes said that 5 minutes later a dream, people have forgotten 50 percent of its content, increasing to 90 percent another 5 minutes later.

Most dreams are entirely forgotten by the time someone wakes up, only information technology is not known precisely why dreams are so hard to recall.

Steps that may help improve dream think, include:

  • waking up naturally and non with an alarm
  • focusing on the dream as much equally possible upon waking
  • writing down as much near the dream equally possible upon waking
  • making recording dreams a routine

Who remembers their dreams?

There are factors that tin potentially influence who remembers their dreams, how much of the dream remains intact, and how bright it is.

Historic period: Over fourth dimension, a person is likely to experience changes in sleep timing, structure, and electroencephalographic (EEG) activity.

Prove suggests that dream recall progressively decreases from the beginning of adulthood, only not in older historic period. Dream also get less intense. This evolution occurs faster in men than women, with gender differences in the content of dreams.

Gender: A study of dreams experienced past 108 males and 110 females establish no differences betwixt the amount of assailment, friendliness, sexuality, male characters, weapons, or clothes that feature in the content.

However, the dreams of females featured a higher number of family unit members, babies, children, and indoor settings than those of males.

Sleep disorders: Dream recall is heightened in patients with indisposition, and their dreams reflect the stress associated with their condition. The dreams of people with narcolepsy may a more bizarre and negative tone.

Dream remember and well-being

One written report looked at whether dream recall and dream content would reflect the social relationships of the person who is dreaming.

College pupil volunteers were assessed on measures of attachment, dream recollect, dream content, and other psychological measures.

Participants who were classified equally "high" on an "insecure attachment" scale were significantly more probable to:

  • report a dream
  • dream frequently
  • experience intense images that contextualize strong emotions in their dreams

Older volunteers whose attachment style was classed as "preoccupied" were significantly more probable to:

  • report a dream
  • study dreams with a college hateful number of words

Dream recall was lowest for the "avoidant" subjects and highest for the "preoccupied" subjects.

Everyone dreams, although we may non retrieve our dreams. At different times of life or during different experiencs, our dreams might alter.

Children'due south dreams

A written report investigating anxiety dreams in 103 children anile nine to eleven years observed the following:

  • Females more often had dreams containing feet than males, although they could not recollect their dreams as oft.
  • Girls dreamt more often than boys about the loss of some other person, falling, socially disturbing situations, minor or aggressive animals, family unit members, and other female people they may or may not recognize.

Pregnancy

Studies comparing the dreams of pregnant and non-pregnant women showed that:

  • Infant and child representations were less specific in women who were not pregnant. Among those who were pregnant, these images were more than likely in the late 3rd trimester than in the early on 3rd trimester.
  • During pregnancy, dreams were more likely to include the themes of pregnancy, childbirth, and fetuses.
  • Childbirth content was college in the belatedly third trimester than early in the trimester.
  • The group who were pregnant had more than morbid elements in their dreams than those who were non.

Caregivers

Those that requite intendance to family or people who take long-term illnesses oftentimes accept dreams related to that individual.

A study post-obit the dreams of adults that worked for at least a year with individuals at United States hospice centers noted:

  • Patients tended to be clearly present in the dreams of caregivers, and the dreams were typically realistic.
  • In the dream, the caregiver typically interacted with the patient in their usual capacity merely was as well typically frustrated by the disability to help as fully equally desired.

Bereavement

It is widely believed that oppressive dreams are frequent in people going through a time of bereavement.

A study analyzing dream quality, every bit well as the linking of oppressive dreams in bereavement, discovered that oppressive dreams:

  • were more frequent in the first year of bereavement
  • were more likely in those experiencing symptoms of feet and depression

In another study of 278 people experiencing bereavement:

  • Fifty-eight percent reported dreams of their deceased loved ones, with varying levels of frequency.
  • Virtually participants had dreams that were either pleasant or both pleasant and disturbing, and few reported purely agonizing dreams
  • Prevalent themes included pleasant past memories or experiences, the deceased existence free of illness, memories of the deceased's illness or time of death, the deceased in the afterlife appearing comfortable and at peace, and the deceased person communicating a message.
  • Threescore percent felt that their dreams impacted upon their bereavement process.

Does everyone dream in color?

Dreams may help us consolidate memories
Younger people are more than probable to dream in color.

Researchers discovered in a study that:

  • About fourscore per centum of participants younger than 30 years sometime dreamed in color.
  • At 60 years old, 20 percent said they dreamed in color.

The number of people aged in their 20s, 30s and 40s dreaming in color increased through 1993 to 2009. Researchers speculated that color television might play a part in the generational difference.

Another study using questionnaires and dream diaries also found older adults had more black and white dreams than the younger participants.

Older people reported that both their color dreams and black and white dreams were every bit vivid. However, younger participants said that their black and white dreams were of poorer quality.

Can dreams predict the future?

Some dreams may seem to predict future events.

Some researchers claim to have evidence that this is possible, simply there is not plenty evidence to prove it.

Most often, this seems to exist due to coincidence, a false memory, or the unconscious mind connecting together known information.

Dreams may help people learn more than about their feelings, beliefs, and values. Images and symbols that announced in dreams will have meanings and connections that are specific to each person.

People looking to brand sense of their dreams should think about what each function of the dreams hateful to them every bit an individual.

Books or guides that give specific, universal meanings to images and symbols may not exist useful.

However, for those who are interested in such books, there is a selection bachelor for purchase online.

Drug withdrawal

One report followed the dream content of people who regularly utilize scissure cocaine in Trinidad and Tobago during a flow of abstinence:

  • Almost 90 percent of individuals reported drug-related dreams during the first calendar month, mainly of using the drug.
  • Nearly 61 per centum had drug-related dreams after 6 months, mainly of using or refusing the drug.

People with complete vision loss take fewer visual dream impressions compared with sighted participants.

People who have been unable to meet from birth study more auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory dream components, compared with sighted participants.

The ability to see does not appear to affect emotional and thematic dream content.

Those with other abilities

One small study explored the dream diaries of 14 people with impairments.

Iv were born with paraplegia, and 10 were born unable to hear or speak.

Deafness: When compared with 36 able-bodied individuals, findings showed that around lxxx percent of the dream reports of participants with deafness gave no indication of their impairment.

Many spoke in their dreams, while others could hear and understand speech.

Paraplegia: Similarly, the dream reports of those with paraplegia showed that the participants ofttimes walked, ran, or swam in their dreams, none of which they had always done in their waking lives.

A second study looked at the dream reports of 15 people who were either born with paraplegia or acquired it later in life, due to a spinal-string injury.

Their reports revealed that 14 participants with paraplegia had dreams in which they were physically active, and they dreamed about walking as often as the 15 control participants who did not accept paraplegia.

Other research has suggested that the brain has the genetically determined ability to generate experiences that mimic life, including fully functioning limbs and senses.

People who are born without hearing or unable to move are likely tapping into these parts of the encephalon as they dream well-nigh tasks they cannot perform while awake.

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