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Dream

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For other uses, see Dream (disambiguation).
Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes: The Dream, 1883

A dream is the experience of images, sounds/voices, words, thoughts or sensations during sleep, with the dreamer usually not being able to influence the experience. The scientific discipline of dream research is oneirology. Dreaming has been associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a lighter form of sleep that occurs during the latter portion of the sleep cycle, characterized by rapid horizontal eye movements, stimulation of the pons, increased respiratory and heart rate, and temporary paralysis of the body; however, this association has been questioned, as it may only be that dream recall is easiest after REM sleep.

Dreaming does occur in other phases of sleep, though dream recall is more difficult. Hypnogogia, which occurs spontaneously during the approach to sleep, is thought to be related to dreaming. Dreams are also associated with male erection about as frequently as with REM sleep.

Dreams are full of imagery. This imagery ranges from the banal to the surreal; in fact, dreams often provoke artistic and other forms of inspiration. Forms of dreams include the frightening or upsetting nightmare, and erotic dreams with sexual images and nocturnal emission.

Most scientists believe that dreams occur in all humans with about equal frequency per amount of sleep. Therefore, if individuals feel that they did not dream or that they only had one dream in any given night, it is because their memory of the dream has faded. This "memory erasure" aspect of the dream state is mostly found when a person naturally awakes via a smooth transition from REM sleep through delta sleep to the awake state.

If an individual proceeds through the delta state after REM sleep, forgetting the dream that accompanied REM sleep is more likely. On the other hand, if a person is awoken directly from REM sleep (e.g. by an alarm clock), they are much more likely to remember the dream from that REM cycle. Still, it is most likely that not all dreams will be remembered because they occur in REM cycles, which are interrupted by periods of delta sleep which in turn have a tendency to cause the memory of previous dreams to fade.

For a long time true dreaming had only been positively confirmed in humans, but recently there have been research reports supporting a view that dreaming occurs in other animals as well. Animals certainly undergo REM sleep, but their subjective experience is difficult to determine. The animal with the longest average periods of REM sleep is the armadillo. It would appear that mammals and birds are the only, or at least most frequent, dreamers in nature, which is perhaps related to their sleep patterns. Many animals such as frogs probably do not sleep at all (except when in hibernaculum, which is a different kind of state). Some researchers have managed to deter the function of brain mechanism that locks body and limb movements during dreams. With this method it has been discovered that a cat seems to dream mostly about chasing prey and playing with it. On a more basic level, many dog owners have also noted that their pets sometimes move their legs as if running or even make weak barking noises while asleep, or that their pets suddenly wake up and appear to think that a character from a nightmare is actually real.

Neurology of dreams

There are many competing theories as to the neurological cause of the dreaming experience. The state of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep is commonly associated with dreams, though it is not known whether dreams actually occur more frequently during this light sleep stage or are simply recalled more easily. REM sleep is known to be produced by a brain region known as the pons.

The activation synthesis theory developed by Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley state that the brain tries to interpret random impulses from the pons as sensory input. Memory, attention and the other features lacking in a dream state depend on the lack of norepinephrine and serotonin, producing a psychotic state, as well as a lack of orientation to time, place and person.

Research by Mark Solms seems to suggest that dreams are generated in the forebrain, and that REM sleep and dreaming are two different brain systems.

Tarnow suggests that dreams are ever present excitations of the long term memory system (even during waking life - McCarley also observes that when asked to recall the last thought, people often report thoughts that are somewhat hallucinatory). The strangeness of dreams is then due to long term memories being stored in dream format (reminiscent of the Penfield & Rasmussen’s findings that electrical excitations of cortex give rise to experiences similar to dreams). During waking life an executive function interprets long term memory consistent with reality checking.

The debate between these and other theories is ongoing.

Supernatural interpretation of dreams

Oneiromancy is the art of divination by interpreting dreams. In the Bible and the Qur'an, people such as Joseph and Daniel are given the ability to interpret dreams by Yahweh. Others such as Jacob and Saint Joseph the husband of Mary are given divinely inspired dreams. Many people to this day experience dreams they believe are sent by God. Often this can be a factor in conversion to another religion.

Certain people and cultural traditions (see Dreamtime) hold the world perceived via the senses to be an illusion, and the world directly experienced during dreams to be reality. Historically, western philosophers of a skeptical bent (e.g. René Descartes) have pointed out the fact that, since dream experiences are indistinguishable from "real" events from the viewpoint of the dreamer, no objective basis exists for determining whether one is dreaming or awake at any given instant; one must, therefore, accept the reality of the waking world on the basis of faith. [1]

Psychodynamic interpretation of dreams

More detail: Dream interpretation

Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung identify dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious. They also assert together that unconscious is the dominant force of the dream, and in dreams it conveys its own mental activity to the perceptive faculty.

Freud, however, felt that there was an active censorship against the unconscious even during sleep; in his seminal work The Interpretation of Dreams, he explains and argues for his theory in detail.

Experiographic conceptualization of dreams

In his dream theory, social psychologist and Jungian scholar Wyatt Ehrenfels proposes that dreams are experiences designed to alter the cognitive structures at the root of waking awareness itself, redistributing value and energy across the criteria for judgment and perception (i.e. influencing the way we perceive, interpret, and value the world). As experiences, dreams can alter us in ways that do not require that we interpret or even remember them. Ehrenfels also discusses the role of dreams within the individual's "global system," likening the science of the individual person to a primitive Meteorology , and arguing that phenomenological dream research is needed to identify parameters comparable to those (i.e. humidity, temperature, wind) used to understand and predict weather. Wyatt Ehrenfels deployed his philosophy of science for dreams in a study of dreams in cancer patients.

Lucid dreaming

Main article: Lucid dreaming

Researchers often define lucid dreaming as simply "being aware in a dream that one is dreaming". Many others define a lucid dream as a dream in which the dreamer has full awareness that the situation is a mental construct — and thus can analyse the situation logically and react accordingly. Such full awareness adds numerous extra abilities to the dreamer, particularly control of the direction of the dream. This control is particularly helpful during nightmares, when the "dream self" can face the "attacker" or other source of anxiety to confront or destroy it. When lucid, the dreamer usually has direct control of the dream environment, and hence can do things impossible in real life, such as making new objects appear, changing form, or flying. Lucid dreams can occur spontaneously, especially during youth, but frequent lucid dreaming requires dedication and practice.

Lucid dreams can be categorized into Dream-Initiated Lucid Dreams (DILDs) and Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDs). DILDs start as non-lucid dreams, but at some point in the dream the dreamer realizes they are dreaming. In a WILD, conscious logic and reasoning is preserved while the dreamer transitions from waking to dreaming, and the dreamer is lucid from the beginning of the dream. These uses of "WILD" and "DILD" have mostly fallen into disuse (or rather they mostly never came into use), though "WILD" is often used to refer to any technique in general that happens to induce a wake-initiated lucid dream, by moving directly from conscious wakefulness to conscious dreaming.

Lucid dreamers are those who practice lucid dreaming frequently for personal or spiritual gain. They usually induce lucid dreams through the use of one of many induction techniques. A common technique, known as MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) was developed by Stephen LaBerge; it consists of using mnemonic reminders to recognize the dream-state.

Dreams and reoccurrence of feelings

According to that point of view, feelings experienced in dreams (comfortable or uncomfortable feelings, worries, enthusiasm…) repeat similar feelings – although they are preconscious – which appeared the day before the dream. This “identity of feelings” brings a very profitable equation: the dreamt-image (which is known) in relation with the dreamt-feeling (which is known) = the day before real-life feeling (which is known as it is the same as the dreamt-feeling) in relation with the real-life-event that produced the feeling.

Books on Dreams

References

  • Crick, F. & Mitchinson, G. (1983) The function of dream sleep. Nature 304, 111-114.
  • Tarnow, E. (2003) How Dreams And Memory May Be Related. Neuro-Psychoanalysis 5(2), 177-182 and also http://cogprints.org/2068/

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Dream.
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