Am I Dreaming: How Our Brains Really Work Essay

Why do we dream? I see dreaming as benefiting humans by helping our conscious and subconscious minds shake hands and come to an agreement, so to speak. Our brains operate on conscious, subconscious and unconscious levels, and I believe there is a strong link between our subconscious minds and our dreams. Perhaps the information we store in our subconscious minds during waking hours manifest into these hallucinatory pictures while we sleep. The part of our brain which operates on a conscious level is significantly diminished when we are asleep, which gives the subconscious part of our brain more energy to process what it’s learned or stored.

The PBS special "The Secret Life of the Brain" took us through all different aspects of the brain and its formation through life. These five movies taught us that the brain is plastic and is always changing, cutting unused neurons and filling with different ideas and thoughts that you learn from your environment. The five videos go through the five stages of life; baby, child, teenager, adult and finally the aging brain.

Why do we dream? What do our dreams mean? Dreams are a sequence of images, ideas, and feelings that involuntarily occur most commonly during the REM stage of sleep. They come in a wide variety of types, from the peculiar to the downright terrifying; the dreamer has no control over what they experience in their dreams. Though neurologists have been studying the human brain for decades, we still don’t fully know why we dream or what their significance is. Some psychologists theorize that dreams are closely linked to our subconscious mind, expressing our deepest fears or desires, allowing us to be what we cannot be. Others believe that dreams serve no function at all and are simply our imaginations running wild. In the words of Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, “The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.” (The Interpretation of Dreams)

How does memory work? Is it possible to improve your memory? In order to answer these questions, one must look at the different types of memory and how memory is stored in a person's brain.Memory is the mental process of retaining and recalling information or experiences. (1) It is the process of taking events, or facts and storing them in the brain for later use. There are three types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Dreams have been around as long as the first civilization came to be and have been a normal part of human existence. One third of your life is spent sleeping, and of that third, on average you will have spent a total of about six years of it dreaming. Most people dream on average two hours every night, but you can have anywhere from four to seven dreams in one night. According to research, the most common setting for a dream is in your own house. In our dreams we can do anything we want and be whoever we want to be. Our dreams are an escape from reality. While we dream we are unable to control our actions and choose our surroundings. We let our minds take over. Sometimes dreams can be understood in the context of repressed thoughts. Dreaming serves as an outlet for those thoughts and impulses we repress during the day. When we go to sleep at night and slip into our dream state, we feel liberated and behave in a manner that we do not allow ourselves to in our everyday life. Visions and ides can come from your dreams. Often, authors, screenwriters, and even poets turn to their dreams for inspiration. The think quest oracle library goes on to tell about the most well-known of the modern dream

All emotions stopped when I saw my best friend’s bright blue, with her favorite quotes on the cover of the journal that was packed up in boxes after she had died, was now laying on my bedroom floor. My heart has never raced this much before in my life. I open to the first page in her journal and it reads ‘Nettie it’s really me, I’m in need of your help, please meet me at our place at nine O’clock tonight’. After reading that note, I started to think back through things that has happened that didn’t seem like anything at the moment, but now seem like they were possible signs or something that came from Jess.

There are many thoughts or factors that go into how we judge and treat others that we may not be aware of. The book breaks them down into two categories unconscious and conscious thoughts. Our unconscious brain is gathering information from a very small age and continues to constantly work to help you understand what is going on in the world around you. Our unconscious brain is programed to stereotype from birth. An example of this is how infants at three months can distinguish faces of different races from their own. They tend to prefer the faces of their own race over others which was determined by how long the infant looks at the different faces (p128). This was not taught by a parent or others which brings to our attention that some stereotyping

As we lay ourselves down every night to put our bodies to rest, our brains begin doing something extraordinary. It begins piecing together images, creating scenarios, simulating sensory perception, and adding in emotions and fears. They can make us wake up with a smile on our face or in a cold sweat. Dreaming is such a strange and often inexplicable phenomenon, but something we all do just about every night. People have theorized the process and the utility of dreams for centuries. However, much of the accepted knowledge we have a bout dreams today is still only theory. In fact, hardly anything about the dreaming experience is concrete because it is an experience

Why do we dream? Dreams are stories and images that our mind creates while we lie down peaceful where we recharge for the next day. These dreams can be fun, romantic, disturbing, frightening, sometimes bizarre, and entertaining. The question of why we dream, leads to many things. Dreams represent unconscious desires and wishes, they are also a way to interpret random signals from the brain and body during sleep. To dream is being able to consolidate and process information gathered during the day. Dreams can be described as a universal human experience that can be in the form of consciousness characterized by cognitive, sensory, and emotional occurrences during sleep. As the dreamer, the control we have over the dream is very limited. Being a dream analyzer is an occupation I find intriguing, every image and

Often, I 'm baffled by the weird dreams I have. Thus the question - Why do we dream??

Growing up everyone has experienced dreams, but in this exploratory essay I am going to break down dreams on many different levels to form a better understanding of why it is we have them. Throughout my years of dreaming I have always wondered why do I have dreams, why do I dream about certain people, and why do I have dreams some nights while other nights I don’t have any along with many other questions. How is it that our brains can make these very realistic depictions of our real life, and transfer them into a memory as we wake up? Another very peculiar aspect of dreaming is seeing people or places that do not look familiar to us at all. Throughout my research I have discovered the answers to these questions, and many other aspects of dreams. While I was searching for answers to my questions I found that there is a lot more to learn than I originally thought. I developed even more questions to feed my research along the way.

Dreams, one of the many dimensions in our mind, gives a lot of different information then we are use to having in the day. The subconscious mind that takes control when we sleep, takes care of our passive memories and holds the key to our lives. Dreams are what lead us to this key which unlocks the door to another type of wisdom. The farther we get

With technology rapidly growing including the research on dreams rapidly growing within a few years there will much more information on why humans dream and have nightmares. There has to be a specific significant behind dreaming otherwise it would be completely pointless, God created dreaming for a reason, now we just have to figure out the

Please watch the video tutorial of the brain and some of it's functions. Next describe the parts of the brain from the medulla to the cortex.

Every night approximately seven billion people lay their heads down to sleep. Many people hoping for an escape from their chaotic lives, wishing to slip away into a fantasy world that is not based in their own reality. There is a great deal of research on the topic of dreams being fantasy versus a subconscious reality. Do we only dream what we know we could never do with our conscious mind or is it all just outlandish fantasies that will never come to life?