WHAT ARE DREAMS?

Dreams are stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. They can be entertaining, fun, romantic, disturbing, frightening, and sometimes bizarre. It is a fact that each dream lasts up to 5-20 minutes only. That is probably the reason why we often feel that dreams were short.

WHY DO WE DREAM?

There are many theories that state why we get dream, some of them are,

1)Building memory: Researchers suggest that dreams reflect a biological process of long-term memory consolidation, serving to strengthen the neural traces of recent events, to integrate these new traces with older memories and previously stored knowledge, and to maintain the stability of existing memory representations in the face of subsequent experience.

2)Processing emotion: The society seems to condition us to always appear calm and in full control of how we feel, no matter the circumstances which leads us in suppressing all our dark emotions. Researchers have discovered that there is a greater tendency for negative emotions experienced during waking hours to manifest within dreams. Especially sadness, fear, anger, and anxiety. Positive emotions did not significantly manifest in dreams.

3)Mental housekeeping: During sleep, the brain needs to process all the information from that day. This theory states that dreams are a result of the sorting, scanning and searching through memories. Very few people can actually remember their dreams during the day as they are more focused on working for the following day.

4)Instant replay: Human brains use dreams to replay recent events and help form memories — and experts have gotten the first glimpse of this process in action, a study has reported. When we sleep, our brains replay the firing patterns our neurons underwent.

5)Incidental brain activity: This view holds that dreaming is just a by-product of sleep that has no essential purpose or meaning. No worries and no place for superstitions.

TYPES OF DREAMS

1. VIVID DREAMS: Vivid dreams involve especially realistic or clear dream content.
2. RECURRING DREAM: Recurring dreams involve the same imagery repeating in multiple dreams over time.
3. BAD DREAMS: Bad dreams are composed of bothersome or distressing content.

WHY DO WE OFTEN FORGET OUR DREAMS?

• Part of this is biological, as neurotransmitters forming memory are less active during sleep,
  and dream forgetfulness also appears to be related to the level of electrical activity in the
  brain during dreams.
• Additionally, it could have something to do with the content of your dreams. Early
  psychoanalytic theory suggested that difficult or traumatic information in dreams is
  suppressed, and the dreamer is less likely to retrieve or analyse it.

FORGETTING DREAMS

Most people over the age of 10 years dream between 4 and 6 times each night, but some people rarely remember dreaming. It is often said that 5 minutes after a dream, people have forgotten 50 percent of its content, increasing to 90 percent another 5 minutes later.

HOW CAN YOU REMEMBER DREAMS?

Focusing on the dream as much as possible upon waking.

Writing down as much about the dream as possible upon waking.

Waking up naturally and not with an alarm.

Remind yourself that dream recall is a priority.

FACTS ABOUT DREAMING

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

2)Lucid dreaming is when the dreamer’s aware that they are dreaming. They may have
some control over their dream.

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

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

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

6)You can only dream about faces you’ve have already seen.

Happy Dreaming!!!

Article by : Haniah Mirza