In Dreams Research Paper

In Dreams Everyone has experienced some sort of dream, whether they remember them or not. For example, ever had the “falling from a freakishly tall cliff” dream? Or dreamt that you’re biting into an apple and all your teeth fall out? It isn’t uncommon to wake up trying to remember the strange dream from the night before. The brain is still firing after bedtime, but why? Every brain function has an objective, even dreams. Dreams serve some a purpose evolutionarily, can be used as therapy, and are able to improve brain performance throughout the day. First of all, what are dreams? While the body sleeps, the brain is hard at work. There are two prominent parts of the brain that play a role in the brain’s nighttime activities - the hippocampus

Doctor Jonathan Winson has traced the purpose of dreams back to the beginning. “Dreams may reflect a memory-processing mechanism inherited from lower species, in which information important for survival is reprocessed during REM sleep. This information may constitute the core of the unconscious,” (Winson, 2002). Dreams are a sort of preparation method. During the day the brain is a problem-solving center, it deciphers math, works through awkward situations, and imposes the fight-or-flight reaction. At night, there are no problems to solve, and most of the time someone’s life isn’t in danger. This is the quiet time where the brain creates scenarios and issues to solve without distraction. These scenarios are drawn from the processed memories and information, and molded into stories, (Carro, 2018). On occasion, these stories are terrifying and would more likely be classified as nightmares. Tore Nielsen, director of Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, considers nightmares to be “...a disturbance in one of the normal functions of dreaming… threat simulation. The excessive fear and emotion in a nightmare wakes you before the dream can do its job,” (Carr, 2017). This is also why nightmares tend to be recalled more often than regular dreams. There are four periods of Rapid Eye-Movement sleep (REM), which is the time that dreams occur. The final stage of REM sleep is the shortest, and the last