Are Dreams the Reason for Mythology?

There are various theories as to why we dream, one of them is activation-synthesis hypothesis, proposed by Alan Hobson and Robert McCarley in 1977. The idea is that the specific neuron activity that takes place during REM sleep is synthesized into a plot in the cerebral cortex, and dreams are the brain trying to make sense of the random neural activity that takes place during REM sleep. The oldest theory is of Freud’s psychoanalytic view, dreams are visual representations of suppressed thoughts or unacceptable desires, ideas, aspirations, or memories. The psychoanalytic view tells us each dream is crammed with symbolism and says a lot about the unconscious mind when you interpret them. The interpretations of the dreams are subjective, making

Every individual dreams; however, some people are affected more than others. Dreams are sequences of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Most occurring during rapid-eye movement or REM—when brain activity is high and resembles being awake. Many believe that dreams are a connection to an individual’s subconscious. Sigmund Freud, a scientist in the early 1900s performed extensive studies on dreams, including their interpretation, why they occur, and what they indicate. In addition, people have done studies to see the connection between dreams and certain sleep disorders.

Dream content reflects aspects of waking-life experiences. After memories are made, they are often fragmentally merged with other information to construct larger, holistic dreams. Autobiographical memories are predominantly represented in dreams in comparison to episodic and semantic memories. Among various characteristics from waking-life experiences such as places, people, and events, emotions are highly incorporated into dream content. There is also a decreasing relationship between the cognitive demand of an activity and the frequency in which that activity occurs in dreams. Dreams tend to include material from experiential memories and events from the preceding day as well as experiences from 5-7 days prior. The recurrence of memory content in dreams seems to support the hypothesis that dreaming helps with memory consolidation, or particularly the content which is reflected in dreams.

A series of thoughts, images, and sensations that occur during a person’s mind during the time that they sleep is known as a dream. Dreams go way back until the beginning of mankind, even to the BC era during the time that Egyptians and Greeks were the leading force! The Egyptians examined the meanings behind the dreams we have and analyzed the symbols. There are a numerous amount of reasons behind our dreams. People must ask all the time, what is the reasoning behind dreaming? Why do we dream? What is the meaning behind the dream I had? In an average lifetime, approximately six years is spent dreaming. Every single person on this planet dreams and just because one might not remember doing so, it was still done. One might have several dreams occur throughout a normal night of sleep that lasts from about seven to eight hours. Everyone has dreams and each experience is distinctive and personal. Some can contain vivid pictures or memorable illustrations of reality and others can be unreal or abstract. In a way, they all have certain meanings to them and there can be messages hidden that are trying to tell someone something. An abundant amount of people are always curious as to why they dreamed what they did and spend time looking for those answers.

Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis, once said that “most dreams are a sort of way for the unconscious mind to express its desire” (Freud). Sigmund Freud thought as dreams to be an idea that people strive for in life or the answer to a problem. He also concluded that dreams are “the fulfilment of a wish” (Freud). Freud thought as a dream to be something that people desire in life, or want to conquer in life. To him, dreams were something that could fulfill one’s life. However, Freud also noticed “punishment dreams and anxiety dreams” (Freud). Instead of these dreams doing something good for a person, they could be doing the opposite. Overall, one belief is that dreams can complete peoples lives, or deteriorate lives.

The article “In the Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why We Dream at All”, written by Natalie Angier, introduces various types of insight on nightmares and the reasons behind why they occur. Nightmares are dreams, able to jolt you awake. Although few suffer from nightmares so terrifying that help is sought, dreams are a universal human experience. A majority of our dreamlike states are spent negatively. As a result, numerous people have studied dreams and discovered that there may be reasons behind the existence of nightmares and dreams overall.

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.

The Dreaming are stories of great spiritual value used to define the creation of the world from their ancestor

     An individual’s unconscious mind combines bits and pieces of information and places them together. Dreams are almost always visual. “Forty to fifty percent of dreams have some form of communication present in them and a very small percentage of dreams give the dreamer the ability to use his or her five senses”(Encarta). Dreams allow one to take a closer look into their mind in a quest for self-discovery. In ancient Greece dreams were believed to be messages from the gods. Hippocrates and Aristotle believed that dreams contained physiological information that may be cause of future illnesses. Dreams can be used to solve a number of different types of problems. In The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud he states “As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred by it to the sleeping

Noticing a dream can come in different ways. REM sleep is when the eye twitches back and forth to start the dream. When this happens, peoples heartbeat moves rapidly, and their body temperature goes low. Some people do not realize that they are dreaming because they are in a deep sleep. When REM is really active during the night, someone’s dream gets more intense.

One example he provided was when the dreamer experienced a traumatic event – such as a rape, an attack, or an escape – it is probable that person will dream with something that will picture the emotion felt in that moment. Overall, the main idea of Hartmann´s theory states that dreams occur through a series of connections that are contextualized by emotion, and thus the dream’s imagery depends on what the person’s emotions were that day before going to sleep.

REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, a stage of sleep where the more vivid dreams occur (Coville and Holt). Subjects awaken during REM sleep describe how they were just dreaming and are able to recall it with much more detail than in the other stages of sleep (Coville and Holt). When awakened during non-REM sleep subject often have a more positive regard for their self where those awakened during REM sleep have a more negative emotion(Coville and Holt). This negative emotion is due to a part of the brain called the amygdala(Coville and Holt). The amygdala is present in both have of the brain and it influences the more negative emotions that people have, such as fear and regret. During REM sleep a person's eyes move around while they are still asleep, and a part of their brain paralyzes most of their muscles to prevent movement(Coville and Holt). Their brain does this to prevent them from moving around and often acted out the dream while they are still asleep. There is a rare REM sleep disorder where the the body does not become immobilized and is often the cause for sleepwalking (Coville and Holt). As a person sleeps the go through these five stages in a loop, it take around 90 to 110 minutes to complete a cycle (Coville and

I have always been interested in learning and interpreting dreams every since I was in high school. Out of everything I learned about dreams over the years, the one that really resonated with me the most was that dreaming is our way of dealing with problems from our waking state. For that reason, I chose an article called Relation of Dreams To Waking Concerns by Rosalind Cartwright, Mehmet Y. Agargun, Jennifer Kirkby, and Julie Kabat Friedman. It captured my interest because it goes into depth about how your waking concerns effects your dreaming state. It also goes into detail about Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) and Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and what they have to do with dreaming.

Normally, dreams occur in the REM stage of sleep, but they can occur in the fourth stage of sleep. Although little is truly known about dreams, because we can only rely on the dreamer, there are three main theories that try to explain dreams. These theories are Freud’s psycho dynamic theory, the cognitive theory, and the activation-stimulation theory.

Dreams are very unique and many people have theorized about what a dream 's meaning or purpose is, and what affects them. In most present day studies, more vivid dreams have been linked to the stage of sleep called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. REM dreams are emotional, bizarre, and sometimes so vivid we may confuse them with reality. Most commonly, a dream’s story line incorporates traces of previous day’s experiences and preoccupations. Unless a person is awakened during REM stage of sleep or the dream is exceedingly vivid or intense, most people don’t remember anything about their dreams during REM sleep. This is likely due to the fact that during REM sleep, our brain essentially turns off the ability to encode,or create, new memories.