DREAMS

 

Dreams are one of the most fascinating and mystifying aspects of sleep. Despite this advancing scientific knowledge, there is much that remains unknown about both sleep and dreams. Even the most fundamental question - why do we dream at all? - is still subject to significant debate. While everyone dreams, the content of those dreams and their effect on sleep can vary dramatically from person to person. Even though there is no simple explanation for the meaning and purpose of dreams, it is helpful to understand the basics of dreams, the potential impact of nightmares, and steps that you can take to sleep better with sweet dreams.

Dreams are images, thoughts or feelings that occur during sleep. Visual imagery is the most common but dreams can involve all the senses. Some people dream in colour while others dream in black and white, and people who are blind tend to have dream components related to sound, taste and smell.

Debate continues among sleep experts about why we dream. Different theories about the purpose of dreaming include:-

Building memory: Dreaming has been associated with consolidation of memory, which suggests that dreaming may serve an important cognitive function of strengthening memory and informational recall.

Processing emotion: The ability to engage with and rehearse feelings in different imagined contexts may be part of the brain’s method for managing emotions.

Mental housekeeping: Periods of dreaming could be the brain’s way of “straightening up,” clearing away partial, erroneous, or unnecessary information.

Instant replay: Dream content may be a form of distorted instant replay in which recent events are reviewed and analyzed.

Incidental brain activity: This view holds that dreaming is just a by-product of sleep that has no essential purpose or meaning.

How to interpret dreams, and whether they have meaning at all, are matters of considerable controversy. While some psychologists have argued that dreams provide insight into a person’s psyche or everyday life, others find their content to be too inconsistent or bewildering to reliably deliver meaning.

Virtually all experts acknowledge that dreams can involve content that ties back to waking experiences although the content may be changed or misrepresented. For example, in describing dreams, people often reference people who they recognize clearly even if their appearance is distorted in the dream.

The meaning of real-life details appearing in dreams, though, is far from settled. The “continuity hypothesis” in dream research holds that dreams and waking life are intertwined with one another and thus involve overlapping themes and content. The “discontinuity hypothesis,” on the other hand, sees thinking during dreams and wakefulness as structurally distinct.

While analysis of dreams may be a component of personal or psychological self-reflection, it is hard to state, based on the existing evidence, that there is a definitive method for interpreting and understanding the meaning of dreams in our life.

In most cases, dreams do not affect sleep. Dreaming is part of healthy sleep and is generally considered to be completely normal and without any negative effects on sleep. Nightmares are the exception. Because nightmares involve awakenings, they can become problematic if they occur frequently. Distressing dreams may cause a person to avoid sleep, leading to insufficient sleep.

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