What is dreaming?
Dreaming is defined as perceived experiences of sensory images and sounds when sleep. Dream occurs when rapid eye movement (REM) stage in sleeping. It may take about 2 hour in total but 5-20 minutes for dreaming.
REM sleep occurs when pons in brain “switch off” the signal to the spinal cord, dream will begin. The thalamus directs the pons sends signal to cerebral cortex. When REM happens, cerebral cortex will “switch on” for memory and learning.
Activation theory
There are two types of theory, which are Freud’s theory and activation theory. However here only discuss about activation theory. This theory states that the hindbrain transmits chaotic patterns of signals to the cerebal cortex, and then higher-level cognitive processes in the cerebral cortex try to integrate these signals into a dream plot (Hobson and Stickgold, 1995).
According to physiological process, Dreaming may be our most creative conscious state, one in which the chaotic, spontaneous recombination of cognitive elements produces novel configurations of information: new ideas. While many or even most of these ideas may be nonsensical, if even a few of its fanciful products are truly useful, our dream time will not have been wasted (Hobson and Stickgold, 1995).
This theory also explains how brain activity leads to dreaming. Further explanation are circuit in brain stem are “switch on” during REM. Then, amygdala and hippocampus in limbic system also “sitch on”. Limbic system takes part of emotion, sensations and also memory. This is why some people will feel fear when nightmare occurs in dreaming. Lastly, brain synthesizes and interprets this internal activity and try to know the meaning, tis result in dreaming.
Facts about dreams
1) Everyone can dream.
- Men, women and also babies can do it. People spend average six years for dreaming among whole life.
2) But you forget most of your dream
- About 95% of all dreams are quickly forgotten shortly after waking. Why this can happen? This
is because brain does not support information processing and storage for formation of memory
during sleeping.
3) Not all dreams are in colour
- About 80% of dream are in colour and minor is black and white. Mostly in soft pastel colors.
4) Men and women dream differently
- Men dream about aggressive than women. While, women have longer dream and more
characters. Men often dream about women but women is both sexes.
5) Animals may have dream
- Animals also go through REM and NREM cycle of sleep. Animals such as elephants sleep
standing up during non-REM sleep but lie down for REM sleep.
6) You can control dream
- In lucid dream, you can control the content of the dream. Lucid dream is the dream
which you aware you are dreaming although when sleeping.
7) Mostly is negative emotion
- Negative emotion such as anxiety and angry more than positive emotion such as joy and
happiness.
8) Blind people dream
- They usually do not have visual dream. The blind people dreams normally are information from other senses such as sound and taste.
References
Hobson, J.A. and Stickgold, R. (1995). The conscious state paradigm: A neurocognitive approach to waking, sleeping, and dreaming. In M.S. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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