Mckenna Omoruyi
Staff Reporter
Dreams have been a mysterious phenomenon for centuries. We still do not have a clear understanding of why they occur or where they come from but there are many supported theories and studies that have been done to try and gain a better knowledge on them.
There are many different types of dreams including Daydreams, Nightmares, Lucid Dreams, Recurring Dreams, Prophetic Dreams. Each one has a meaning. Sometimes our dreams can come in the form of memories- we can access general memories about people and places, which form the backbone of our dreams. At the same time, activity in brain regions involved in emotional processes are cranked up, forming an overly emotional narrative that stitches these memories together. During our dreams, another part of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which controls our powers of both logical reasoning and decision making, is also shut down. Thanks to this, we can be dreaming about being in our house one moment and in the next one we are falling through a painting and we do not stop to question it. We just go along with it like it is a normal occurrence.
Ordinary dreams tend to have two different types of meanings: a general meaning where the dream is told as a symbolic story and an individual meaning, which is specific to the dreamer. Ordinary dreams often mirror real life experiences but can also include fantasies. Ordinary dreams can link to actual experiences and sensations i.e. when a phone is ringing the dreamer might hear this in their dream. Studies of dreams have found that about three quarters of dream content or emotions are negative, which leads to our next topic.
A nightmare is a terrifying or deeply upsetting dream of intensity causing strong feelings of fear, horror and distress. Nightmares are related either to physiological causes, such as a high fever, or to psychological ones, such as unusual trauma or stress in the dreamer's life. Nightmares can reflect the frightening elements from our imagination or stimulated by watching movies or television, reading books or even playing computer games.
A daydream is a visionary fantasy experienced whilst awake, the result of the brain mulling over important, but not immediately relevant, issues when their circumstances do not pose interesting and engaging problems.
A lucid dream, also known as a conscious dream, is where the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while the dream is in progress. As a lucid dream continues the waking mind gains control.
Prophetic dreams, also referred to as precognitive dreams, are dreams of events or incidents before they happen. A study showed that 42% of people felt they had had a dream about something that later came true.
The study of dreams, which for centuries was more of an exercise in imaginative explanation than anything approaching science, started properly in 1953, when Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleiman at the University of Chicago hooked volunteers up to EEGs machine's and woke them up during different sleep stages. They discovered REM sleep and its association with dreaming.
Recent experiments have shown that we dream throughout our sleep, and not just in REM sleep, but we forget most of them. Dreams that occur in deep sleep tend to be unemotional, non-vivid, concerned with simple things, and hard to remember. In short, they are boring. REM sleep is where the classic dreams occur, those with bizarre juxtapositions, physically impossible feats, disturbing, moving and puzzling experiences. If we cut short REM sleep, we lose these experiences. Incidentally, many people have wondered if in REM sleep our eyes are moving to “look” at dream images. Some evidence suggests that this is indeed the case. There have also been some studies on reoccurring dreams. Recurring dreams usually mean there is something in your life you have not acknowledged that is causing stress of some sort. The dream repeats because you have not corrected the problem. Another theory is that people who experience recurring dreams have some sort of trauma in their past they are trying to deal with.
In all, it is important to be willing and open to our dreams. We may discover a deeper understanding of ourselves from our own subconscious minds.
Image Credit: Bruce Christianson
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