A dream is the only “area” of human civilization, which cannot be mapped. People have spent a single millennium to understand why our brains are capable of creating strange and otherworldly landscapes and situations during sleep.
Today, scientists have explained what happens to our body when we fall asleep, and why do we even need a dream. As it turned out, there are a few strange relationships between reality and surrealistic images of the world of dreams.
Dreams of lonely people are brighter and richer
All people have dreams, but in completely different ways. It is discovered in 2001, neurologist Patrick McNamara, exploring the relationship between social relationships and dreams.
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His team of scientists invited 300 for research students who were divided into groups according to their attachment abilities. First they answered the questions how comfortable they feel, being in relationship with someone, or maybe they prefer avoid relationships at all? Thus state attachment was rated as “reliable,” or “unreliable.”
Students who were uncomfortable in a relationship and therefore sought to avoid them altogether, reported that they saw more dreaming every night than a group whose state of affection was “reliable.” Moreover, a group with “unreliable” affections saw more nightmares, and their dreams were brighter than the other groups.
Since the area of our brain called the anterior temporal share is important for a sense of attachment and for the stage of rapid sleep, enhanced dreams, apparently replace feeling affection.
Video games evoke lucid dreams
What are lucid dreams?
Lucid Dreams – The ability to realize that you are in a dream. As soon as you manage to realize that it’s a dream, you start to control what is happening around and do whatever you want. No wonder he wants it each of us, going to bed, but far from always we can fall into lucid dreams.
Thousands of books have been written that teach to evoke conscious dreams if desired. However, as it turned out, in the simplest way to learn to see such dreams is to periodically play computer games.
Jayne Gackenbach of the University Grant McEwan believes that the ability to control actions in game in virtual reality coincides with the ability to control what happens in a dream. Thus, it is easier for gamers learn to see lucid dreams.
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Jane also discovered that gamers are much less likely to see nightmares because when in a dream they feel threatened they are here they take actions to turn her away from herself, as in games, and do not seek to flee.
Animals dream and even remember them
To the old question, why do we see dreams, it seems already received answer .. thanks to the rats. Researcher Matthew Wilson (Matthew Wilson) from Massachusetts Technology The institute found that when rats were taught to run around the ring path, their brain activity began to manifest itself special way. This was recorded using a scanner.
Wilson later scanned the brain of rats during sleep and found that almost half of the animals showed the same model brain activity when they were in the REM stage, which coincided with the model while moving in the wheel. It means, that the rats continued to run in their sleep.
Scientists have suggested that rat brain stores information losing it again in a dream, and at the same speed as in reality. Wilson is convinced that one of the main functions of dreams is a fond of memories. That’s why we better remember information that we receive directly before bedtime.
Amnesic People Have Strangest Dreams
If dreams help keep memories, what if you amnesia? It turns out that people who have lost memory have very bizarre dreams. There are several types of memory, and those with amnesia cannot remember certain events special facts or dates. Interesting that in a dream some things can return to them, for example, some skills, but in real they don’t remember these things at all.
During the experiments, people with amnesia were told about the game “Tetris”, but they completely did not remember what it for the game. In the middle of the night they were awakened and asked to tell that they seen in a dream. Three out of five subjects responded that they saw “falling, flipping blocks.”
An ordinary person in a dream, even with the strangest dreams in mainly sees in a dream objects familiar to him. Man with amnesia can see objects that are very strange to him, but he cannot remember where he saw them in reality.
Strange dreams are just a sorting job of memories
Amnesia research allowed Dr. Robert Stickgold (Dr. Robert Stickgold) put forward another hypothesis regarding dreams. He tried to answer the question why we see strange dreams. Stickgold exposed that suffering amnesia preserves the image of the event in the subconscious, even if they cannot consciously pull him out of the depths of memory. For some For reasons the brain reproduces this image during sleep.
Why do we have strange dreams?
According to his theory, strange dreams are an attempt at the brain Sort different signals in search of connections. For example, you dreams that you are in a restaurant with your football coach from the 5th grade, the chairs on which you sit are made of jelly, and your dog is your waiter.
Your brain takes out a dog memory file and compares it. with what you remember about your school coach to understand how do these two memories relate. That is, according to Dr. Stickgold, your brain is “looking for cross-links.” Sometimes these connections coincide with reality, sometimes not.
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Other studies have shown that the strangest dreams associated with increased activity in the right tonsil, an area also related to the formation of memories. These studies support the idea that the stranger the dreams, the more difficult it is for the brain to find the connection between different memories.
Are prophetic dreams just a coincidence?
See the future in a dream
In the 1960s, Maimonides Medical Center in New York conducted a series of unusual experiments. One of the experiments was associated with the ability to predict the future. Participants were divided into two groups: one group was awake and concentrated focus on a specific image. Second group at this time sleeping.
Scientists woke up sleeping participants at a time when they were in a stage of REM sleep, and asked them to tell that they saw in a dream. The strangest thing is that most of the participants the second group described the images that the first saw Group.
Another example is also from the 1960s. After heavy rain in the collapse of the coal mine affected the school building in the village Aberfan, South Wales, UK. Over a hundred people most of which children died. Psychiatrist John Barker went to Aberfan and asked its inhabitants if anyone saw in a dream this event before it happened. 30 inhabitants of the village They said that they had a disaster. Such examples millions, probably, and you saw the future in a dream.
What are prophetic dreams?
Some scholars argue that such predictions are nothing more than coincidence. Various factors combine together, and there is a chance that someone has these factors in a dream coincide with what will happen in reality.
This is one of those things that cannot be proved, therefore most of us will still believe in something supernatural, than a banal coincidence. Who knows, maybe someday we learn to predict the future through dreams?
We only remember vivid dreams
It turns out we can dream not only during the stage REM sleep, and in any of the five stages, although during REM sleep sleep dreams are more vivid. Every night we can see several dozen dreams, but most of them we do not remember.
We don’t remember dreams mainly because they are enough boring. A person is more likely to remember bright and strange a dream than something routine. Most dreams are related to daily activities that you did the day before, for example, You can often dream about how you stroke or check mail.
As is the case with the memories of rats that repeated their actions in a dream, our brain is trying to repeat what was happening with us, in order to consolidate the memories and learn to something.
But the craziest and most terrible dreams are remembered in the same way as well as strange and terrible events in life. For example, in a crowd of people see a naked man – this oddity that you will remember for a long time. You will not remember hundreds of people around, but the face is naked certainly remember a person for a long time.
How to remember dreams?
Some people claim that they do not dream, although in fact in fact, they simply don’t remember them. Sometimes you dream about something very interesting that I would like to remember and tell my relatives, however, very quickly after awakening, the dream disappears.
To remember their dreams, psychologists advise immediately after awakenings try not to open my eyes and not move time, mentally scrolling in your head what you dreamed of night. Need to train every day.
To see vivid and positive dreams, also advised set the right daily routine, okay get enough sleep, do not remember all the problems of the day before going to bed, but leave their decision in the morning.
You can change dreams with the help of smells
It is well known that external stimuli, such as light, smells or the sound of an alarm may invade sleep, but some factors affect sleep quality in general, turning have a good nightmare and vice versa. Smells, for example, can have a strong influence on what exactly your dream will be about.
Smells in a dream
In the course of research, scientists allowed participants to fall asleep, and then various odor chemicals were delivered through the nasal tube rotten eggs, roses or no smell at all. Then they they woke up the participants and asked what exactly they saw in a dream.
Those who smelled rotten eggs reported that in a dream felt a sharp decline in strength and mood, although no they don’t remember the smells. For example, one person told him that a beautiful Chinese woman dreamed, but suddenly she suddenly seemed to him very unpleasant, although he did not notice any special reasons for this. The sensations in a dream changed dramatically from pleasant to unpleasant.
Nightmares adversely affect your mood
Anxiety? Depression? Nervousness? You may have dreamed mosquitoes. At least this conclusion was made by a group of scientists who asked 147 students to fill out a questionnaire every morning for 2 weeks to track how often they have nightmares. After 2 weeks, researchers conducted specific tests to evaluate psychological state of people.
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Scientists have discovered a strong connection between the number of nightmares in person and his mood during the day. More people there were nightmares, the worse their mental state was assessed. It’s hard to say whether depression was causing nightmares, or after nightmares the person was in a bad mood, but one thing is clear that the real mental state and nature of dreams have a strong interconnection.
Dreams and schizophrenia
Some people think that dreams are very reminiscent of delusions conditions that schizophrenics experience – both associated with a specific area of the brain. In other words, the brain schizophrenics just don’t switch from sleep to reality in during the day. That is, every night when we go into sleep, we are immersed in a state of schizophrenia. They even came up with a special term to describe this condition – “our night madness”.
Almost everyone can see illusory dreams, but the schizophrenic will see such “dreams” in reality, being in awake state. His brain contains a mixture inconsistent memories that does not arise only in a dream, but also in reality.
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