Monday, October 28, 2019
Typical Dreams Essay Example for Free
Typical Dreams Essay Introduction            One way to study dreams is to study their content. This can be done by laboratory studies in which sleepers are awakened during REM sleep and their reports are tape recorded. Subjects can also keep a dream diary in which they write all they can remember about their dreams. These different methods have revealed some interesting facts about the nature of dream content.            What causes you to dream the things you dream? That question cannot be answered as yet (see Rados Cartwright, 1999). Research can point to individual cases where the dream content is obviously related to immediate events in a person’s life, but the reason why a lot of dreams occur is something of a mystery. One explanation of dream content proposes that during REM sleep specific brain neurons are activated, such as those involved in running or laughing or hearing. In an attempt to make sense of this specific neural activation, the brain produces a dream based on a synthesis of the stimulation present. Called the activation-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming, this view does not account for the seemingly random dream content that often occurs, and it is consistent with the neurological changes known to accompany REM sleep (Hobson McCarley, 2001). However, it does not explain the coherence, detail, and purposefulness common to many dreams. Studies of dream content must now recognize that dreamers may alter their content while they are actually dreaming.            For most people, the content of their dreams is beyond their control. How often have you gone to bed wishing you could dream about a particular someone, or afraid you might dream about an especially distressing subject? Sometimes in dreaming we think ourselves that â€Å"this is a dream.†Yet in the morning if we remember the dream and recall thinking that we knew it was a dream at the time, we find that we still accepted the content as plausible, even if events in the dream would be unlikely or impossible in real life. Some people are able to carry this awareness during dreaming a step further: they claim the ability to know when they dreaming and to actually control some or all of the content of their dreams. This is called lucid dreaming. In the past such claims have attracted little interest from dream researchers because there seemed no way to test these assertions. However, working with the sleep research lab at Stanford University, Stephen LaBerge, a lucid dreamer, was able to demonstrate his special ability. LaBerge told the researchers that during the dreams he would suddenly become aware that he was dreaming and that he could signal the researchers of this awareness by a prearranged pattern of eye movements. They agreed on a mixture of horizontal and vertical eye movements that he would use when he knew he was dreaming. The probability that the particular eye movement pattern would appear by chance was infinitesimally small. During the night the researchers watched the EEG records, and in one of the REM sleep periods, to their excitement and delight, they saw the coded eye movement pattern (La Berge et al., 2001). Other lucid dreamers have since been identified and are being studied.            It is known how many people have the ability for lucid dreaming. Surveys based in self-report provide estimates of between 15 and 28%. Laboratory studies of lucid dreaming usually design by asking people if they frequently are aware of their dreams while dreaming. Those who say that they have that ability are tested in the sleep laboratory, and most are able to demonstrate their lucid dreaming ability using some prearranged signal (typically an eye movement code, sometimes a respiration pattern). These studies have found that lucid dreamers are not lucid in all of their dreams; in fact, the majority of their dreams are nonlucid. Many subjects can become aware of their dreaming, but few can manipulate their dream content. Still, some studies have been successful in giving instructions about specific dream content to lucid dreamers and having them dream about those subjects. When lucid dreams occur, they are more likely to be in the longer REM sleep periods toward morning. Researchers hope to discover how lucid dreaming is possible because phenomenon has something interesting implications for our understanding of consciousness. For in essence, the lucid dreamer is partly in one state of consciousness, the dream, and partly in a totally different state of consciousness, the awareness of the dream. A practical application of this research might be an understanding of the process so that many dreamers could learn how to control their dream content (Galvin, 2002). Discussion Why people dream?            Although most dreams do not have overt sexual imagery, Freud nevertheless believed that most adult dreams can be â€Å"traced back by analysis to erotic wishes.†In Freud’s view, a gun, for example, might be a disguised representation of a penis.            Although Freud considered dreams the key to understanding our inner conflicts, his critics say that dream interpretation leads down a blind alley. Some contend that even if dreams are symbolic, they can be interpreted almost any way one wishes. Others maintain there is nothing hidden in dreams. A dream about a gun, they say, is a dream about a gun. Even Freud, who loved to smoke cigars, acknowledges that â€Å"sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.†           Freud’s theory of dreams is giving way to newer theories. One of these sees dreams as information processing: Dreams may help store and remind our day’s experiences. Preceded by stressful experiences, REM sleep rises (Palumbo, 2001). What is more, there is â€Å"consistent and compelling evidence†that REM sleep facilitates memory for unusual or anxiety-arousing material (McGrath Cohen, 1999). In one experiment, people heard unusual phrases before bedtime and then were given a memory test the next morning. If awakened every time they began REM sleep, they remembered less than if awakened during other sleep stages (Empson Clarke, 2000). A night of solid sleep (and dreaming) does, it seems, have a justifiable place in a student’s life.            Another reason why we dream is because of physiological function. Perhaps dreams give the dead to the world brain with periodic stimulation. Stimulating experiences and develops and preserves the brain’s neural pathways. This theory makes sense from a developmental point of view. Infants, whose neural networks are just developing, spend a great deal of time in REM sleep.            Still other physiological theories propose that dreams occur from neural activity that scatters upward from the brainstem. According to one version, this neural activity is random, (Hobson, 2002). Psychologists Martin Seligman and Amy Yellen (1999) note that the seconds-long bursts of rapid eye movements during REM sleep coincide with bursts of brain activity, people report vivid experiences, usually dramatic hallucinations.            Given these visual scenes, our cognitive machinery weaves a story line. Mix in the emotional tone provided by the limbic system (which becomes active during REM sleep) andâ€â€voila!â€â€we dream. This helps explain many of our dream experiences, such as the sudden and bizarre changes in scene (triggered by a new visual burst). Dream reports by Seligman’s University of Pennsylvania students confirm that the most vivid dream images are the surprising, discontinuous aspects of the dream; other less vivid images we presumably conjure up to string the visual bursts together.            The function of dreams provokes vigorous debate, but the disputants all agree that we need REM sleep. Deprived of it by repeated awakenings, people return more and more quickly to the REM stage after falling back to sleep. When finally allowed to sleep undisturbed, the literally sleep like babies, with increased REM sleepâ€â€a phenomenon called REM rebound. The withdrawal of REM-suppressing sleeping medications also increases REM sleep, but with accompanying nightmares. Most other mammals also experiences REM sleep and REM rebound. Animals’ need for REM sleep suggests that its causes and functions are deeply biological. That REM sleep occurs in mammals (and not in animals such as fish, whose behavior is less influenced by learning) also fits the information-processing theory of dreams. All of which serves to remind us once again of a basic lesson: Biological and psychological explanations of behavior are partners, not competitors. III. Conclusion            The interpretation or analysis of dreams remains one of the most controversial topics in psychology. A number of disparate views on this subject exist, ranging from the notion that all dreams are interpretable in a psychoanalytic framework to the idea that dream content is essentially randomly generated from the memory stores of the brain and thus meaningless. We adopt a position somewhere in the middle of this controversy, we believe that dreams have meanings and somebody can interpret it. _________________________________________________________________ References: Rados, R., Cartwright, R.D. (1999). Where do dreams come from? A comparison of presleep and REM sleep thematic content. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 91, 433-436. Hobson, J.A. McCarley, R.W. (2001). The brain as a dream state generator: An activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process. American Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 1335-1348. La Berge, S. et al., (2001). Lucid dreaming: Physiological correlates of consciousness during REM sleep. Journal of Mind Behavior, 7, 251-258. Galvin, R. M. (2002). Control of Dreams may be possible for a resolute few. Smithsonian, pp. 110-117. Palumbo, S.R.  (2001). Dreaming and memory: A new information-processing model. New York: Basic Books. (p. 157). McGrath, M.J., Cohen, D.G. (1999). REM sleep facilitation of adaptive waking behavior: A review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 24-57. (157). Empson, J.A.C., Clarke, P.R.F. (2000). Rapid eye movements and remembering. Nature, 227, 287-288. (p. 157). Hobson, J.A. (2002). The dreaming brain. New York: Basic Books. (p.158).
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