Sleep and Dreams

The importance of sleep is much higher then most people think it is. Not only does sleep help to recharge the brain and repair neurons, but it also recognizes data to solve problems, process newly learned information, organize and archive memories, lower a person’s metabolic rate and energy consumption, gives the cardiovascular system a break, and allows you to grow. In other words, sleep is essential to living, especially if one wants to be healthy.

While we sleep the brain acts as if we were awake and also allows us to dream, multiple times throughout the night. Dreams have always been important in the world and society. Although dreams have occurred since the beginning of time, we still don’t understand them or their purpose. We have dreams during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and during non-REM. Our dreams tend to be a little different in each stage. During REM, the amygdule, which deals with the unpleasant emotions (fear, anger, etc), influences the dreams because it (the amygdule) is active. About 75% of dreams in this stage are negative. Differently, during non-REM the amygdule is not active and so dreams are more positive. During REM, our body is paralyzed, but some people have what is called ‘REM Sleep Disorder’, which enables their body from being paralyzed and so they act out their dreams, often hurting themselves or people near them.

It is thought that the Parietal Lobe is in charge of dreaming because rare people who have damaged their parietal Lobe don’t dream. The reasons for which we dream are thought to being: to keep us asleep, to keep us mentally healthy, dreams have meanings, and are important for our psychological wellbeing. Another theory to why we dream is that dreaming helps us face similar events that occur in the waking world. During the day, our consciousness is in control of our mind and we push away all the frightening thoughts we don’t want to face. So, during the night we unconsciously dream scary things such as someone close to us dying to prepare us for when it happens in the real world. All those ‘reasons’ are simply theories, which I believe in. The true reason to why we dream hasn’t been discovered, but as technology advances the hope of solving this mystery increases.

http://documentaryheaven.com/why-do-we-dream/