The Science Behind Dreaming

1007 Words3 Pages

Dreams are an interesting topic of research primarily because they are so mysterious. To truly understand dreams we need to know why we dream, what dreams are, and what dreams mean. Dreams consist of emotions, images, feelings, and memories from our past, present and possibly even our future. Some scientists believe that dreams are the result of strong feelings or stress. However, dreams can also be caused by thinking about certain topics or people, thus causing the person to dream about that topic or person. In some instances, foods have been the cause of strange dreams. In fact, spicy foods have been known to produce nightmares. Humans are not alone; dogs, primates, and almost all mammals also dream. Many theories have been produced, but …show more content…

In early times it was thought that there was a link between our world and the Gods through dreaming. Romans and Greeks believed that dreams also had prophetic powers. In the late 19th century, Sigmund Freud had his own dream theory which was based on repressed longing. Freud felt that the idea of dreaming enables us to deal with out unresolved and repressed desires. Carl Jung, who studied under Freud and then later worked independently on his own theories, believed that dreams had psychological importance, but he did not completely agree with Freud. Over the years, advances in technology have led to new theories. According to the article “The Science Behind Dreaming” (2011), activation-synthesis hypothesis is a neurobiological theory which states that dreams don’t actually mean anything; they are merely electrical brain impulses that pull random thoughts and imagery from our memories. In addition, this theory states that humans make up their dreams after they wake so that the memories they wake with make sense. Another theory from the article “The Science Behind Dreaming” (2011), the “threat simulation theory” suggests that dreaming should be seen as an ancient biological defense mechanism that provided an evolutionary advantage because of its capacity to repeatedly simulate potential threatening …show more content…

This study showed that students were able to remember dreams more easily when they had low frequency theta waves. These findings of increased frontal theta activity looks just like successful encoding and retrieval of autobiographical memories seen while we are awake. Essentially, these results indicate that the neurophysical mechanisms that we employ while dreaming, and recalling dreams, are the same as when we construct and retrieve memories while we are awake. These results mean that we use the same mechanisms when we dream and when we create and retrieve memories while we are

Open Document