DREAM

 

One factor affecting this was the severity of an individual’s depression.

Left and right sides of the brain

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

Researchers of one study conclude trusted Source 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 found that those who were left-handed were more likely to experience lucid dreams and to remember dreams within other dreams.

. Why do dreams occur? What causes them? Can we control them? What do they mean?

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

Fast facts on dreams

We may not remember dreaming, but everyone is thought to dream between 3 and 6 times per night

It is thought that each dream lasts between 5 to 20 minutes.

Around 95 percent of dreams are forgotten by the time a person gets out of bed.

Dreaming can help you learn and develop long-term memories.

Blind people dream more with other sensory components compared with sighted people.

Causes

Dreams: Do they represent our unconscious desires?

There are several theories about why we dream. When people awaken during REM sleep, they often describe bizarre and illogical tales. Results showed people with migraine had an increased frequency of dreams involving taste and smell.

This may suggest trusted Source that the role of some cerebral structures, such as the amygdala and hypothalamus, are involved in migraine mechanisms as well as in the biology of sleep and dreaming.

Music in dreams is rarely studied in scientific literature. People in a relationship may dream of their partner. The purpose may be to integrate these memories into the long-lasting autobiographical memory.

A hypothesis stating that dreams reflect waking-life experiences is supported by studies investigating the dreams of psychiatric patients and patients with sleep disorders. 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 result, an increased occurrence of that suppressed thought in dreams.

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

The results demonstrate trusted Source that there were increased dreams about the unwanted thought and a tendency to have more distressing dreams. Common reactions to a nightmare include fear and anxiety.

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

stress

fear

trauma

emotional difficulties

illness

use of certain medications or drugs

Lucid dreams

Lucid dreaming is the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. They can be entertaining, fun, romantic, disturbing, frightening, and sometimes bizarre.

They are an enduring source of mystery for scientists and psychological doctors. However, the frequency of pain dreams in healthy subjects is low.

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

Results showed Trusted Source:

Thirty-nine percent of people reported pain dreams.

Of those experiencing pain dreams, 30 percent of their total dreams were pain-related.

Patients with pain dreams showed evidence of reduced sleep, more nightmares, higher intake of anxiolytic medication, and higher scores on the Impact of Event Scale.

Patients with pain dreams also had a tendency to report more intense pain during therapeutic procedures.

More than half did not report pain dreams. They often occur in the middle of a regular dream when the sleeping person realizes suddenly that they are dreaming.

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

Interpretations

What goes through our minds just before we fall asleep could affect the content of our dreams.

For example, during exam time, students may dream about the course content. These have indicated trusted Sources that a rank order of 55 typical dream themes has been stable over different sample populations.

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

The 55 themes identified are:

school, teachers, and studying

being chased or pursued

sexual experiences

falling

arriving too 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 fright

being physically attacked

being nude

eating delicious food

swimming

being locked up

insects or spiders

being killed

losing teeth

being tied up, restrained, or unable to move

being inappropriately dressed

being a child again

trying to complete a task successfully

being unable to find toilet or embarrassment about losing one

discovering a new room at home

having superior knowledge or mental ability

losing control of a vehicle

fire

wild, violent beasts

seeing a face very close to you

snakes

having magical powers

vividly sensing, but 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

being a member of the opposite sex

being smothered, unable to breathe

encountering God in some form

seeing a flying object crash

earthquakes

seeing an angel

part animal, part human creatures

tornadoes or strong winds

being at the movie

seeing extra-terrestrials

traveling to another planet

being an animal

seeing a UFO

someone having an abortion

being an object

Some dream themes appear to change over time.

For example, from 1956 to 2000, there was an increase in the percentage Trusted Source of people who reported flying in dreams. People awakened while in deep sleep do not adjust immediately and often feel disoriented for several minutes after waking up. In short, their daytime symptoms and problems are reflected Trusted Source in their dreams.

In 1900, Freud described a category of dreams known as “biographical dreams.” These reflect the historical experience of being an infant without the typical defensive function. They also imply that thought suppression may lead to significantly increased mental disorder symptoms.

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

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

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

Up to now, the frequencies of typical dream themes have been studied with questionnaires. Web developers may see programming code.

These circumstantial observations suggest that elements from the everyday re-emerge 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 adult dream reports Trusted Source found:

Forty-eight percent of characters represented a named person known to the dreamer.

Thirty-five percent of characters were identified by their social role (for example, policeman) or relationship to dreamer (such as a friend).

Sixteen percent were not recognized

Among named characters:

Thirty-two percent were identified by appearance

Twenty-one percent were identified by behaviour

Forty-five percent were identified by face

Forty-four percent were identified by “just knowing”

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

Another study investigated the relationship between dream emotion and dream character identification.

Affection and joy were commonly 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 suggest that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, associated with short-term memory, is less active in the dreaming brain than during waking life, while the paleo cortical and subcortical limbic areas are more active.

Memories

The concept of ‘repression’ dates back to Freud. They are by nature difficult to study in a laboratory, but technology and new research techniques may help improve our understanding of dreams.

Phases of sleep

Dreams most likely happen during REM sleep.

There are five phases of sleep in a sleep cycle:

Stage 1: Light sleep, slow eye movement, and reduced muscle activity. 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 day-residue effect, involving immediate incorporations of events from the preceding day

the dream-lag effect, involving incorporations delayed by about a week

The findings of one study trusted Source suggest that:

processing memories into dream incorporation takes a cycle of around 7 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, perhaps the previous day or a week before.

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

Events experienced while awake are said to feature in 1 to 2 percent of dream reports, although 65 percent of dream reports reflect aspects of recent waking-life experiences.

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

Memory types and dreaming

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

These are:

autobiographical memories, or long-lasting memories about the self

episodic memories, which are memories about specific episodes or events

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

One dream (0.5 percent) contained an episodic memory.

Most dreams in the study (80 percent) contained low to moderate incorporations of autobiographical memory features.

Researchers suggest that memories of personal experiences are experienced fragmentarily and selectively during dreaming. This stage accounts for 20 to 25 percent of total sleep time.

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

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What are dreams?

Dreams are a universal human experience that can be described as a state of consciousness characterized by sensory, cognitive, and emotional occurrences during sleep.

The dreamer has reduced Trusted Source control over the content, visual images and activation of the memory.

There is no cognitive state trusted Source that has been as extensively studied and yet as frequently misunderstood as dreaming.

There are significant differences between the neuroscientific and psychoanalytic approaches to dream analysis.

Neuroscientists are interested intrusted Source the structures involved in dream production, dream organization, and narratability. It is difficult to wake someone during stages 3 and 4, which together are called “deep sleep.” There is no eye movement or muscle activity. Breathing becomes more rapid, irregular, and shallow, eyes jerk rapidly in various directions, and limb muscles become temporarily paralyzed. Heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, and males develop penile erections. This accounts for 4 to 6 percent of total sleep.

Stage 4: The brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. However, these results could suggest that pain dreams occur at a greater frequency in populations currently experiencing pain than in normal volunteers.

Self-awareness

One study has linked trusted Source 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 activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams.

Researchers concluded that higher-order consciousness is related to oscillations around 25 and 40 Hz.

Relationships

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

Assessment results from 61 student participants in committed dating relationships of six months duration or longer revealed a significant association trusted Source 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.

Death in dreams

Researchers compared the dream content of different groups of people in a psychiatric facility. Many authors agree that some traumatic dreams perform a function of recovery.

One paper hypothesizesTrusted Source that the main aspect of traumatic dreams is to communicate an experience that the dreamer has in the dream but does not understand. This could reflect the increase in air travel.

What do they mean?

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

Sexual concepts: Another cluster that includes flying, sexual experiences, finding money, and eating delicious food is associated with libidinal and sexual motivations.

Fear of embarrassment: A third group, containing dreams that involve being nude, failing an examination, arriving too late, losing teeth, and being inappropriately dressed, is associated with social concerns and a fear of embarrassment.

Brain activity 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 bizarre features of normal dreams have similarities between Trusted Source with well-known neuropsychological syndromes that occur after brain damage, such as delusional misidentifications for faces and places.

Dreams and the senses

Dreams were evaluated in people experiencing different types of headaches. They may have some control over their dream.

This measure of control can vary between lucid dreams. Freud maintained that undesirable memories could become suppressed in the mind. Dreams ease repression by allowing these memories to be reinstated.

A study showed that sleep does not help trusted Source people forget unwanted memories. Dreams are stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. Participants in one group had been admitted after 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:

depression and thoughts about suicide

depression without thinking about suicide

carrying out a violent act without suicide

Those who had considered or attempted suicide or carried out violence had were more likely to have rusted Source dreams with content relating to death and destructive violence. Nearly half of the recalled music was non-standard, suggesting that original music can be created in dreams.

Pain

It has been shown that realistic, localized painful sensations can be experienced in dreams, either through direct incorporation or from memories of pain. However, psychoanalysis concentrates on the meaning of dreams and places them in the context of relationships in the history of the dreamer.

Reports of dreams tend to be be Trusted Sources full of emotional and vivid experiences that contain themes, concerns, dream figures, and objects that correspond closely to waking life.

These elements create a novel “reality” out of seemingly nothing, producing an experienced trusted Source with a lifelike timeframe and connections.

Nightmares

Nightmares are distressing dreams that cause the dreamer to feel a number of disturbing emotions. Are dreams merely part of the sleep cycle, or do they serve some other 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 day

working as a form of psychotherapy

From evidence and new research methodologies, researchers have speculated that dreaming serves the following functions:

offline memory reprocessing, in which the brain consolidates learning and memory tasks and supports and records trusted Source waking consciousness

preparing for possible future treats trusted Source

cognitive simulation of real-life experiences, as dreaming is a subsystem of the waking default network, the part of the mind active during daydreaming

helping develop cognitive Trusted Source capabilities

reflecting unconscious mental function Trusted Source in a psychoanalytic way

a unique state of consciousness that incorporates experience trusted Source of the present, processing of the past, and preparation for the future

a psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory, or highly complex notions can be brought together trusted Source by the dreaming ego, notions that would be unsettling while awake, serving the need for psychological balance and equilibrium

Much remains unknown about dreams. However, in a study of 35 professional musicians and 30 non-musicians, the musicians experienced trusted Source twice as many dreams featuring music, when compared with non-musicians.

Musical dream frequency was related to the age of commencement of musical instruction but not to the daily load of musical activity. This forms 12 to 15 percent of total sleep.

Stage 5: This stage is known as rapid eye movement (REM). These are dreams. This stage forms 45 to 55 percent of total sleep.

Stage 3: Extremely slow brain waves called delta waves to begin to appear, interspersed with smaller, faster waves. This stage forms 4 to 5 percent of total sleep.

Stage 2: Eye movement stops and brain waves become slower, with occasional bursts of rapid waves called sleep spindles.