why dreams

[BeJoyous]

My son asked me a very thought provoking question (actually he has asked it a few times).

Why do we have dreams? More importantly to him is why do we have bad dreams.

This really got me to thinking.

Why do we have dreams? Sleep studies show that everyone has dreams wheither or not you remember them.

Some dreams are like a good movie and you wish you could share them with others in a similar manner (retelling the story often doesn't do the dream justice)

Why are some dreams so vivid? The colors and smells seem exaggerated in dreams. As if your senses are on overload. Like upon waking from a nightmare your pulse and breathing is often escalated.

Why are we able to do things in dreams that we are not humanly capable of doing? Like fly, or go back or forward in time, or swim in the deep ocean.

Sometimes you wake up from a dream and it affects your attitude for the entire day? (anyone been mad at your spouse because of something stupid they did in your dream?)

[Alicia]

Science tells us that the mind never shuts off, ergo we dream in our sleep. Nevertheless, scientists do not know where our brains end and our minds begin. Therefore, I don’t think we should blindly accept science’s cause-effect relationship. I think we should further ask why does the active sleeping mind manifest itself in dreams.

I believe our mind is linked to our soul; thus we may be spiritually impacted while we dream. I am not saying that all dreams are a spiritual experience, but I believe that some of them may be. For instance, the Bible contains examples of God using sleep and dreams as a means to touch both the believer and non-believer. In addition, the religion Eckankar (which I do not know too much about), contains a main element called Soul Travel wherein the adherents enter into a dreamlike, perhaps trancelike, state and endeavor to control the events that seem to transpire in their mind. As I understand, a major draw back to soul traveling is that a soul not your own may enter your body. Finally, on a personal, subjective note, I have had dreams a few dreams that have come true. I felt that these dreams were sent by God/Jesus to prepare me for the inevitable.

[mentored1]

Good question and good replies...

I'll try to avoid the metaphysical or spiritual implications and interpretation of dreams - I think there is enough mystical ideas afloat. :wink:

My understanding (limited, mind you) is that our brain takes a "snapshot" of sensory experiences. What you sense (taste, smell, see, hear, feel, et al) is associated actively with emotions (instincts, impulses, desires, et al) in a diagram in your brain. It is stored - the whole experience or references to other experiences - and in this sense different "diagrams" can be linked together and overlapped to create more vivid experiences and interpretations. When you recall something the diagram is "activated" and the senses that were stimulated at the time of the event are replicated.

In your waking hours you have some conscious control over where your attention is being focused and what diagrams are active and being interpreted in your "mind". Even when you are awake some things happen (day dreams, panic, sorrow, etc) that appear to be outside of your conscious control. Folks with strong "willpower" can focus their attention elsewhere and try to dilute the potency of what is being experienced.

I guess we can try to imagine what happens when the conscious controls are removed in sleep. The diagrams and imprints of experiences in the brain can overlap and link and catalog on whatever autopilot the brain uses...

That's a guess of sorts

take care

[Timothy Leary]

imo, they just bring out your inner emotions.

[Arthur]

Pretty good answer, Mentored1. If I may put a little more flesh on the bones you have provided:

All the time we are awake our senses take in vastly more information than we can consciously deal with (at least 5,000 times more as measured in "bits" of information - that's as in units of information, not "bits and pieces").

Some of this information may get as far as short-term (in the hippocampus) memory and then be lost because we turn our attention to something else before it has time to get transferred to long-term memory (in the crebral cortex). But most of it does get as far as long-term memory - in an unprocessed state. That means we have lots of information floating about "unfiled", so to speak, when we go to sleep each night. And the brain doesn't like unfiled information. It likes the loose ends neatly tied so that the information all fits together.

So guess what's going on when we are in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - much as Mentored1 said, our brain is sorting and piecing together all that information. That is to say, brain scanning shows evidence of activity in both directions between the cortex and the hippocampus during REM sleep. Which is taken to mean that information is literally being shuffled back and forth to form coherent patterns.

Why are some dreams more vivid than others?
Probably because we are recalling some sorting that went on shortly before we woke up. The complete REM sleep cycle takes about 90 minutes but actual dreaming only occurs during part of the cycle. If you wake up during the non-REM section of the cycle there is a lot less chance that you will recall any part of your dreams, and the further (in time) from the last REM sleep, the less vivid the dream, if you do remember it.

If you wake up during REM sleep your dream may be so vivid that it takes time to come back to reality even though you are technically already awake.

Why are some dreams "bad dreams"?
Because we take in large amounts of information, some of which may be unpleasant in a general sense and/or for us as individuals. This also has to be sorted and filed during our sleeping time, along with the rest. In some cases it may be so unpleasant in itself (seeing people or animals being ill-treated, killed, etc.) or in relation to our other memories (something that recalls a previous unhappy memory, etc.) that we remember it as a "bad dream" - or even wake up in order to avoid processing that information and those particular memories.

One last point - the "sorting and filing" process does not have to produce what we would consciously think of as rational or realistic images, as long as we make some kind of sense of the information. Which is why we sometimes remember quite outlandish things happening in our dreams.

Imagine if you had never heard/read/seen anything about Christianity and you walked into a church and saw a wooden cross with a life-size, life-like model of a man with a crown of thorns clearly nailed to it. And then you went home and went to sleep without anyone explaining to you what the meaning and purpose was of that crucifix. What kind of weird and bizarre meanings could your brain literally "dream up" to explain what you had seen?

Hope this is of use

Best wishes

Arthur

[Arthur]

Just three other points:

If we have so much extra information waiting to be sorted, how can we cope with that in just a few hours of sleep?

We don't know for sure. But the most likely answer is that we only need to sort information that is out of the ordinary. Stuff that we're familiar with can be "filed" with very little processing.
That's possibly one reason why kids need lots of sleep, and why the older (and more experiences) we get, the less sleep we need.

Why do kids tend to have more bad dreams than adults?

For much the same reason, probably. There is far more that kids don't know about, and therefore events which they can misunderstand, than there is for adults.

Lastly, none of these explanations excludes the possibility that God can use our dreams to inform us, guide us, motivate us or comfort us.

Best wishes

Arthur

[mentored1]

Just three other points:

If we have so much extra information waiting to be sorted, how can we cope with that in just a few hours of sleep?

We don't know for sure. But the most likely answer is that we only need to sort information that is out of the ordinary. Stuff that we're familiar with can be "filed" with very little processing.
That's possibly one reason why kids need lots of sleep, and why the older (and more experiences) we get, the less sleep we need.

Why do kids tend to have more bad dreams than adults?

For much the same reason, probably. There is far more that kids don't know about, and therefore events which they can misunderstand, than there is for adults.

Lastly, none of these explanations excludes the possibility that God can use our dreams to inform us, guide us, motivate us or comfort us.

Best wishes

Arthur

Well met Arthur; I appreciate the info and the comments - I must say I learned a few things :wink:

Another telling question is why do dreams and indeed anything we remember mean anything at all? Perhaps animals associate some rudimentary 'meaning' with things but I hope we can safely agree that the complexity of meanings and striving to understand is unsurpassed on this planet in humanity.

Even if animals dream - which I would suppose they do - do they mean anything to them? It seems a function of our particular level of consciousness that drives us to try and understand what we've seen in our sleep and in our waking hours. Why? Why do we strive to associate meaning and establish content for this information in our brain? What stops humanity from just accepting the fleeting moments and going about our business?

Take care

[Arthur]

Hi Mentored1

The short answer is that human beings seem to have a deep-seated need to find patterns in their experiences, and to achieve "closure".

Just why this should be is very much open to question.

Best wishes

Arthur

[kendal]

I have had to many dreams that have come true not to take them seriously,but
there are dreams that we have when something has been on our minds alot that we will dream about,and stress we feel will often show up in dreams we have.
Some dreams should be paid attention too,and it can be hard to know which ones?