What is dream?

 

 

Dream is successions of images, ideas, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. During dreams, there are a lot of magical things happen; for example, an ugly monster is chasing you, you are falling down from a stairway, and you are thinking how to solve a difficult mathematic problem. In addition, some dreams may make you happy and excited, others may make you sad, depressed and angry. For instance, in my childhood, I always dream that I fell down from a stairway and chased by an ugly monster. Although, I do not know why I dream these two situations, I feel it is magical and excited. How about you? What kind of dream do you dream during sleep?

Reasons-Why Do We Dream?

In ancient period

In ancient period, explaining the hidden meaning of dreams was an indispensable job for royal advisors, priests, and even psychologist. Thus, people thought "Dreams were thought to be messages from the gods or the gods or the spirit world, giving warnings or revealing secrets." In addition, each person had different opinions about what is the meaning of dream. For instance, one ancient Egyptian dream book showed "If you dreamed of being naked, you'd end up an orphan." Also, in ancient Chinese dream guide showed "Dreaming of an orchard full of rope fruit predicted many children." In my opinion, this kind of reason is not scientific, because in ancient period, most of people thought dreams are miraculous and they cannot explain why they dream during sleep. In this situation, they thought dreams may from the god or the spiritual world, also, the meaning of dreams are related to the religion and belief.

 

 

Around 1900

Around 1900, an Austrian doctor named Sigmund Freud thought "Instead of being messages from the spirits, he thought dreams were messages from ourselves, revealing our secret wishes."  For example, Freud made am experiment to know the secret wishes. he knew a doctor who did not like to get up in the morning. When the doctor dreamed that he was a patient in the hospital. This dream from this doctor indicated he would found a way to go to work and stay in bed at the same time. In China, there is a famous phrase: "The thinking during the day would cause the dreaming during the night." This phrase also shows that dreams were messages from ourselves, granting ourselves wishes. In my opinion, Freud's explanation is people oriented and avoid the religion and belief. This is a large improvement in the research of dream, because researchers begin to study dreams from themselves.   

 

Around 1950s                                    

During the 1950s period, scientists began to find some problems with Freud's ideas, because some dreams are not about wishes. In this period, researchers discovered the sleep cycle which contains five different levels of sleep, completing a cycle about every ninety minutes. Stage one is characterizing by the complete lack of spindles and by low voltage non-periodic activity with occasional bursts of alpha; Stage two is characterizing by spindling against a low voltage background; Stage three and four by slowing high voltage activity and Stage five is called rapid eye movement sleep (REM), which long, vivid dreams are happened in this stage. In this stage, your eyes move quickly and your brain becomes quite active. Researchers found that "Dreaming was starting to look less like a secret message and more like a body function, such as breathing or a heartbeat."





Nightmare

There is a special kind of dream which everyone may occur in their dreams, nightmare, which is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong emotional response from the mind such as getting attacked by strangers, missing tests, and showing up naked in public and so on.

Even though a growing number of scientists who thought that dreams are not completely random, Revonsuo, a famous psychologist, thinks that "Nightmares may be the brain's way of rehearsing important survival skills, so they remain sharp, even when you do not use them in everyday life and when you are feeling especially anxious of fearful, your brain may give you more scary dreams to prepare you for the danger it thinks you sense."

Although, the danger situations which happened in our nightmares may not happened in our real life, our brain also exercise for us to prepare for overcoming these danger situations. In my opinion, nightmares shows the development of people, because during nightmares, our brain will automatically show what we should do when we meet different dangerous situations.

Functions of Dream

Help us to learn

Robert Stickgold, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, made an experiment to test how much dreams can help learning. He had some students play a shape-fitting game called Tetris for a few hours and then go to sleep . Then they were dreaming of falling Tetris shapes. The consequence is so interesting, because the worst Tetris player had the most Tetris dreams and improved their game the most. According to this experiment, the researcher found one function of dream which is "dreaming may help use learn by organizing memories and ideas." Also, when we dream, our brains done many important tasks for us such as sorting through the day's experiences and deciding what to keep and what to forget.

Help us to deal with emotions

Dreams do not helping us learn by organizing memories and ideas, but also, but also helping use to deal with emotions. Most of people found that their ability of memory is improving more during midnight, because around the midnight, our brains are the most activity. During this time, our brain help us learn and organize memories. "When our brain sorts and builds memories, it replays emotional experiences from the day, without the urgency of the real event. This smooth out the emotions attached to the memory, making them feel less pressing when you wake. Also, dream are also safe place for the brain to "play act" different solutions to conflict that you faced during the day."

Movie-Inception

Inception is a 2010 science fiction film written, co-produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. The film stars a large ensemble cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine. DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

This is Inception Movie Trailer. Enjoy!

Questionnaire Survey

1. Could you remember the content of dreams after sleeping?

2. What kind of dream do you mostly dream?

3. Have you ever had a nightmare?

4. What do you think about why do we dream?

5. What do you think about the function of dream?