Dreams

Dreams
What are dreams? Why do we have dreams?

14 November 2014 - 12am PST
Dreams are stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. They can be entertaining, fun,
romantic, disturbing, frightening and sometimes bizarre.
Why do dreams occur? Can we control them? What do they mean? Medical News Today investigates the
current research on dreams and looks at possible explanations and theories as to why our minds invent
these nightly musings.
Contents of this article:
1. What are dreams?
2. Dream content - what do dreams mean?
3. Why do we dream?
4. How do we dream?
5. What are bad dreams and nightmares?
6. What are night terrors/sleep terrors?
7. What are recurring dreams?
8. What are lucid dreams?
9. What are wet dreams?
10. Medication/drugs
11. Conditions
12. Why are dreams difficult to remember? How do we remember dreams?
You will also see introductions at the end of some sections to any recent developments that have been
covered by MNT's news stories. Also look out for links to information about related conditions.
Fast facts on dreams
Here are some key points about dreams. More detail and supporting information is in the main article.
Though a few people may not remember dreaming, it is thought that everyone dreams between 3
to 6 times per night.
It is thought that each dream lasts between 5 to 20 minutes.
Around 95% of dreams are forgotten by the time a person gets out of bed.
Dreaming can help you learn and develop long-term memories.
Women dream more about family, children and indoor settings when compared with men.
Recalling something from last week that has appeared in your dream is called the "dream-lag
effect."
There is a difference in the quality and quantity of dreams experienced in rapid eye movement and
non-rapid eye movement sleep.
48% of people that feature in a dream are recognized by the person dreaming.
Blind people dream more with other sensory components compared with sighted people.
Both sleep and dream quality are affected by alcohol.
What are dreams?

Dreams are a universal human experience that can be described as a state of consciousness characterized
by sensory, cognitive and emotional occurrences during sleep.27 The dreamer has reduced control over the
content, visual images and activation of the memory.42
There is no cognitive state that has been as extensively studied and yet as misunderstood as much as
dreaming.40,42
Dreams are full of experiences that have lifelike
connections but with vivid and bizarre twists.
There are significant differences between the
neuroscientific and psychoanalytic approaches to
dream analysis. A neuroscientist is interested in the
structures involved in dream production and dream
organization and narratability. However,
psychoanalysis concentrates on the meaning of
dreams and on placing them in the context of
relationships in the history of the dreamer.96
Reports of dreams tend to be full of emotional and
vivid experiences that contain themes, concerns,
dream figures, objects, etc. that correspond closely to waking life.27,28 These elements create a novel
"reality" out of seemingly nothing, producing an experience with a lifelike timeframe and lifelike
connections.28
Neuroscience offers explanations linked to the rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep as a pinpoint for
where dreaming occurs.28
Phases of sleep
There are five phases of sleep in a sleep cycle:
1. Stage 1 - light sleep, eyes move slowly, and muscle activity slows. This stage forms 4-5% of total
sleep
2. Stage 2 - eye movement stops and brain waves (fluctuations of electrical activity that can be
measured by electrodes) become slower, with occasional bursts of rapid waves called sleep
spindles. This stage forms 45-55% of total sleep
3. Stage 3 - extremely slow brain waves called delta waves begin to appear, interspersed with smaller,
faster waves. 4-6% of total sleep
4. Stage 4 - the brain produces delta waves almost exclusively. It is very difficult to wake someone
during stages 3 and 4, which together are called "deep sleep." There is no eye movement or muscle
activity. People awakened while in deep sleep do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and
disoriented for several minutes after they wake up. This forms 12-15% of total sleep
5. Stage 5 - REM - breathing becomes more rapider, irregular and shallow, eyes jerk rapidly in various
directions, and limb muscles become temporarily paralyzed. Heart rate increases, blood pressure
rises, and males develop penile erections. When people awaken during REM sleep, they often
describe bizarre and illogical tales - dreams. Forms 20-25% of total sleep time.
Slow-wave sleep refers to stages 3 and 4 of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.
Dream content - what do dreams mean?

What goes through our minds just before we fall asleep could affect the content of our dreams. For
example, during exam time, students may dream about course content; those in relationships may dream
of their partner; web developers may see programming code. These circumstantial observations suggest
that during the transition from wakefulness to sleep, elements from the everyday re-emerge in dream-like
imagery.58
Characters
Studies have examined the "characters" that appear in dream reports and how they are identified by the
dreamer.
Most characters that appear in a person's dream are known and can be named by the dreamer.
A study of 320 adult dream reports found:1
48% of characters represented a named person known to the dreamer

35% of characters were identified by their social role (e.g., policeman) or relationship to dreamer
(e.g., a friend)
16% were not recognized.
Among named characters:
32% were identified by appearance
21% identified by behavior

45% by face
44% by "just knowing."
Elements of bizarreness were reported in 14% of named and generic characters.

Another study investigated the relationship between dream emotion and dream character identification.
Affection and joy were commonly associated with known characters and were used to identify them even
when these emotional attributes were inconsistent with those of the waking state.
The findings suggest that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, associated with short-term memory, is less
active in the dreaming brain compared to the awake brain, while the paleocortical and subcortical limbic
areas are more active. Also proposed was that limbic areas have minimal input from the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex in the dreaming brain.25
Memories
The concept of 'repression' dates back to Freud, whereby undesirable memories can become suppressed in
the mind. Dreams ease repression by permitting these memories to be reinstated.
A study showed that sleep does not benefit the forgetting of unwanted memories. Instead, REM sleep
might even counteract the voluntary suppression of memories, making them more accessible for
retrieval.15
Two types of temporal effects characterize the incorporation of memories into dreams:
The day-residue effect, involving immediate incorporations of events from the preceding day
The dream-lag effect, involving incorporations delayed by about a week.
The findings of one study are consistent with the possibility that processing memories into dream
incorporation takes a cycle of around 7 days, and that these processes help to further the functions of
socio-emotional adaptation and memory consolidation.5
A recent study aiming to explore autobiographical memories (long-lasting memories about the self) and
episodic memories (memories about discrete episodes or events) within dream content amongst 32
participants found that:
One dream (0.5%) contained an episodic memory

The majority (80%) was found to contain low to moderate incorporations of autobiographical
memory features.
Researchers suggest that memories for personal experiences are experienced fragmentarily and selectively
during dreaming, perhaps in order to integrate these memories into the long-lasting autobiographical
memory.22
A hypothesis stating that dreams reflect waking-life experiences is supported by studies investigating the
dreams of psychiatric patients and patients with sleep disorders, i.e., their daytime symptoms and
problems are reflected in their dreams.53
In 1900, Freud described a category of dreams - "biographical dreams" - that reflect historical infantile
experience without the typical defensive function. Many authors agree that some traumatic dreams
perform a function of recovery.
One paper hypothesizes that the predominant aspect of such traumatic dreams is the communication of an
experience that the dreamer has in the dream, but does not understand.60
Themes
The themes of dreams can be linked to the suppression of unwanted thoughts and, as a result, an
increased occurrence of the suppressed thought in dreams.
Fifteen good sleepers were asked to suppress an unwanted thought 5 minutes prior to sleep. The results
demonstrated increased dreams about the unwanted thought and a tendency to have more distressing
dreams. Moreover, the data imply that thought suppression may lead to significantly increased mental
disorder symptoms.9
Research has indicated that external stimuli presented during sleep can affect the emotional content of
dreams. For example, the positively-toned stimulus of roses in one study yielded more positively themed
dreams, whereas the negative stimulus of rotten eggs was followed by more negatively themed dreams.10
Typical dreams are defined as dreams with similar contents reported by a high percentage of dreamers. Up
to now, the frequencies of typical dream themes have been studied with questionnaires and these have
indicated that a rank order of 55 typical dream themes has been stable over different sample
populations.82 The 55 dreams themes are:
Flying or soaring through the air is included in the top 10 themes most dreamt about.
1. School, teachers, studying

2. Being chased or pursued
3. Sexual experiences
4. Falling
5. Arriving too late
6. A person now alive being dead
7. Flying or soaring through the air
8. Failing an examination
9. Being on the verge of falling
10. Being frozen with fright
11. A person now dead being alive
12. Being physically attacked
13. Being nude
14. Eating delicious food
15. Swimming
16. Being locked up
17. Insects or spiders
18. Being killed
19. Your teeth falling out/losing your teeth
20. Being tied, unable to move
21. Being inappropriately dressed
22. Being a child again
23. Trying again and again to do something
24. Being unable to find, or embarrassed about using a toilet
25. Discovering a new room at home
26. Having superior knowledge or mental ability
27. Losing control of a vehicle
28. Fire
29. Wild, violent beasts
30. Seeing a face very close to you
31. Snakes
32. Having magical powers
33. Vividly sensing, but not necessarily seeing or hearing, a presence in the room
34. Finding money
35. Floods or tidal waves
36. Killing someone
37. Seeing yourself as dead
38. Being half awake and paralyzed in bed
39. Lunatics or insane people
40. Seeing yourself in a mirror
41. Being a member of the opposite sex
42. Being smothered, unable to breathe
43. Encountering god in some form
44. Seeing a flying object crash
45. Earthquakes
46. Seeing an angel
47. Creatures: part animal, part human
48. Tornadoes or strong winds
49. Being at a movie
50. Seeing extra-terrestrials
51. Traveling to another planet
52. Being an animal
53. Seeing a UFO

54. Someone having an abortion
55. Being an object.
Authors have hypothesized that one cluster of typical dreams (object endangered, falling, being chased or
pursued) is related to interpersonal conflicts; another cluster (flying, sexual experiences, finding money,
eating delicious food) is associated with libidinal motivations; and a third group (being nude, failing an
examination, arriving too late, losing teeth, being inappropriately dressed) is associated with superego
concerns.
Senses
Dreams were evaluated in people suffering different types of headache. Results showed people with
migraine had increased frequency of taste and smell dreams.
Musical dreams frequency is related to the age of beginning to learn music and not to how much music is
listened to throughout the day.
This may suggest that the role of some cerebral structures, such as amygdala and hypothalamus, are
involved in migraine mechanisms as well as in the biology of sleep and dreaming.19
Music in dreams is rarely reported in scientific literature. However, in a study of 35 professional musicians
and 30 non-musicians, the musicians experienced twice as many dreams featuring music compared with
non-musicians. Musical dream frequency was related to the age of commencement of musical instruction
but not to the daily load of musical activity. Nearly half of the recalled music was non-standard, suggesting
that original music can be created in dreams.77
Pain
Although it has been shown that realistic, localized painful sensations can be experienced in dreams either through direct incorporation or from memories of pain - the frequency of pain dreams in healthy
subjects is low.
Twenty-eight non-ventilated burn victims were interviewed for five consecutive mornings during their first
week of hospitalization. Results found:
39% of patients reported pain dreams.

Of those experiencing pain dreams, 30% of their total dreams were pain related.
Patients with pain dreams showed evidence of worse sleep, more nightmares, higher intake of
anxiolytic medication, and higher scores on the Impact of Event Scale.
Patients with pain dreams also had a tendency to report more intense pain during therapeutic
procedures.
More than half of the sample did not report pain dreams, but these results could suggest that pain dreams
occur at a greater frequency in suffering populations than in normal volunteers.87
Self-awareness
Recent findings link frontotemporal gamma EEG activity to conscious awareness in dreams. The study
found that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences ongoing brain
activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams. Researchers concluded that higher order
consciousness is related to synchronous oscillations around 25 and 40 Hz.20
Relationships
Recent research has demonstrated parallels between romantic attachment styles and general dream
content.
Assessment results from 61 student participants in committed dating relationships of six months duration
or longer revealed a significant association between relationship-specific attachment security and the
degree to which dreams about romantic partners followed. The findings illuminate our understanding of
mental representations with regards to specific attachment figures.41
Flying
There has been an increase in the percentage of people who report flying in dreams from 1956 to 2000;
investigators have proposed this increase may reflect the increasing amount of air travel.68
Death
The dream content of psychiatric inpatients who had been admitted because of suicidal attempts was
compared with three inpatient control groups who had been admitted for:
Depression and suicidal ideation without attempt

Depression with no suicidal ideation
Commission of a violent act without suicide.
Results confirmed that both suicidal and violent patients have more death content and destructive
violence in their dreams, but also that this was a function of the severity of depression and certain
character traits such as impulsivity, rather than being specific to the behavior itself.100
Children
A study investigating anxiety dreams in 103 children aged 9-11 years observed:86
Girls dream more often than boys about the loss of another person, of falling, of socially disturbing
situations and small animals.
Girls reported a higher frequency of anxiety dreams than boys, although they could not remember
their dreams more often.
Girls dreamt more often than boys about the loss of another person, of falling, of socially disturbing
situations and small animals, of animals as aggressors, of family members (mainly siblings) and
other female persons of known identity.
A study of older children and adolescents aged 10-17 years, comparing those with neurotic disorders with
healthy subjects, found in left-handers:
Subjects expressed less novelty factor and frequent appearance of rare phenomena, such as "dj
vu in wakefulness," reality, "mixed" (overlapped) dreams, prolonged dreams in repeat sleep,
frequent changes of personages and scenes of action.
Dream peculiarities detected only in neurotic patients but not in healthy subjects emerged as lucid
phenomena deficit, "dream in dreams" and "dream reminiscence in dream" syndrome, only found
in left-handers.
Right and left hemispheres seem to contribute in different ways to a dream formation. Authors from the
study believe that the left hemisphere seems to provide dream origin while the right hemisphere provides
dream vividness, figurativeness and affective activation level.88
Pregnancy
During studies comparing the dreams of pregnant and non-pregnant women:34,92
Baby and child representations were less specific in the late third trimester than in the early third
trimester and than in non-pregnant women.
Pregnant groups also had more pregnancy, childbirth and fetus themes.
Childbirth content was higher in late than in early third trimester.
Pregnant groups had more morbid elements than the non-pregnant group.
Caregivers
Those that give care to family or patients often have dreams related to the person or care given. A study
following the dreams of adults that worked for at least a year with patients at US hospice centers noted:36
Patients were generally manifestly present in participants' dreams, and dreams were typically
realistic.
In the dream, the dreamer typically interacted with the patient as a caretaker but was also typically
frustrated by the inability to help as fully as desired.
Bereavement
It is widely believed that oppressive dreams are frequent in bereavement. A study analyzing dream quality,
as well as the linking of oppressive dreams in bereavement, discovered:38
Oppressive dreams occurred at a significantly higher frequency in the first year of bereavement
Oppressive dreams were significantly associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms.
In another study of 278 bereaved persons:37
58% of respondents reported dreams of their deceased loved ones, with varying levels of frequency
Most participants reported that their dreams were either pleasant or both pleasant and disturbing,
and few reported purely disturbing dreams
Prevalent dream themes included pleasant past memories or experiences, the deceased free of
illness, memories of the deceased's illness or time of death, the deceased in the afterlife appearing
comfortable and at peace, and the deceased communicating a message
60% of participants felt that their dreams impacted upon their bereavement process.
Does everyone dream in color?

Researchers discovered in a study that about 80% of participants younger than 30 years old dreamed in
color. At 60 years old, 20% said they dreamed in color. The number of people aged in their 20s, 30s and 40s
dreaming in color increased through 1993 to 2009. Researchers speculated that color television might play
a role in the generational difference.114
Another study using both questionnaires and dream diaries found older adults also had more black and
white dreams than the younger participants. Older people reported that both their color dreams and black
and white dreams were equally as vivid. However, younger participants said that their black and white
dreams were of poorer quality.115
Mistakes/Misidentification
During neuroimaging studies looking at brain activity in REM sleep, scientists found that the distribution of
brain activity during REM sleep might also be linked to specific dream features. Several bizarre features of
normal dreams have similarities with well-known neuropsychological syndromes after brain damage, such
as delusional misidentifications for faces and places.26
Drug abusers
A study following the dream content of crack cocaine abusers in Trinidad and Tobago during abstinence
detailed:89
41 patients reported drug dreams during the first month, mainly of using the drug (89.1%).
28 had drug dreams at six months follow-up, mainly of using or refusing the drug (60.9%).
What do blind people dream about?

Studies have shown that blind participants have fewer visual dream impressions compared with sighted
participants. Congenitally blind participants reported more auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory dream
components compared with sighted participants. Blind and sighted participants did not differ with respect
to emotional and thematic dream content.21
Paraplegic and those unable to hear or speak

One study explored the dream diaries of 14 people with impairments; four were born with paraplegia and
10 were born deaf and unable to speak. When compared with 36 able-bodied individuals, findings showed
that around 80% of the dream reports of the deaf participants gave no indication of their impairment.
Many spoke in their dreams, while others could hear and understand spoken language. The dream reports
of the people born paralyzed revealed something similar; they often walked, ran or swam, none of which
they had ever done in their waking lives. 112
There was no difference between the number of bodily movements in the dream reports of the people
with paraplegia and those of the deaf and able-bodied subjects.
A second study found similar results. Researchers looked at the dream reports of 15 people who were
either born with paraplegia or had it later in life due to a spinal-cord injury. Their reports revealed that 14
of the participants with paraplegia had dreams in which they were physically active, and they dreamed
about walking just as often as the 15 able-bodied control participants.113
Recent dream studies suggest that our brain has the genetically determined ability to generate experiences
that mimic life, including fully functioning limbs and senses, and that people who are born deaf or
paralyzed are likely tapping into these parts of the brain when they dream about things they cannot do
while awake.
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Recent developments on dream content from MNT news

Link between acting out dreams and development of dementia
The strongest predictor of whether a man is developing dementia with Lewy bodies - the second most
common form of dementia in the elderly - is whether he acts out his dreams while sleeping, Mayo Clinic
researchers have discovered. Patients are five times more likely to have dementia with Lewy bodies if they
experience a condition known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder than if they have one
of the risk factors now used to make a diagnosis, such as fluctuating cognition or hallucinations, the study
found.
Why do we dream?
There are several hypotheses and concepts as to why we dream. Are dreams merely part of the sleep cycle
or do they serve some other purpose?
Possible explanations for why we dream include:
To represent unconscious desires and wishes

To interpret random signals from the brain and body during sleep
To consolidate and process information gathered during the day
To work as a form of psychotherapy.
From converging evidence and new research methodologies, researchers have speculated that dreaming:
Is offline memory reprocessing - consolidates learning and memory tasks.79,90,91

Is a subsystem of the waking default network, which is active during mind wandering and
daydreaming. Dreaming could be seen as cognitive simulation of real life experiences.24
Participates in the development of cognitive capabilities.17
Is psychoanalytic; dreams are highly meaningful reflections of unconscious mental functioning.79
Is a unique state of consciousness that incorporates three temporal dimensions: experience of the
present, processing of the past, and preparation for the future.56
Provides a psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory, or highly complex notions can
be brought together by the dreaming ego that would be unsettling while awake. This process serves
the need for psychological balance and equilibrium.67
Who dreams?
Evidence from laboratory studies indicates that everyone dreams. Although a small percentage may not
remember dreaming at all or claim that they do not, it is thought that most people dream between 3 to 6
times a night, with each dream lasting between 5 to 20 minutes.
There are factors that can potentially influence who can remember their dreams, how much of the dream
remains intact and how vivid it is.
Age
Ageing is often associated with changes in sleep timing, structure and electroencephalographic (EEG)
activity.
Scientific literature agrees that dream recall progressively decreases from the beginning of adulthood - not
in old age - and that dream reports become less intense. This evolution occurs faster in men than women,
with gender differences in the content of dreams.55
According to a small number of research papers, patients suffering degenerative dementia dream less than
healthy older people. In Alzheimer's disease, this could be linked to the decrease of REM sleep and wasting
of associative sensory areas of the brain's outer layer.
Gender
A study of 108 male and 110 female dreams found no differences between the amount of aggression,
friendliness, sexuality, male characters, weapons, or clothes that feature in the dream's content. However,
women's dreams featured a higher number of family members, babies, children, and indoor settings than
men.98,99
In another study, men reported more instances of dreaming about aggression than women. Women had
marginally longer dreams with more characters than men. The men in the study dreamt about other men
twice as often as they did about women while women dreamt about both sexes equally.
Sleep disorders
Dream recall is heightened in patients with insomnia and their dreams reflect the stress associated with
their condition. The stressor of breathing-related dreams in sleep apnea patients is rare, whereas those
with narcolepsy have more bizarre and negatively toned dreams.62
Well-being
One study tested the hypothesis that dream recall and dream content would imitate the dreamer's social
relationship status. College student volunteers were assessed on measures of attachment, dream recall,
dream content and other psychological measures. Participants who were classified as "high" on an
"insecure attachment" scale were significantly more likely (when compared with participants who scored
low on the insecure attachment scale) to:
Report a dream
Dream "frequently"
Have more intense images that contextualize strong emotions in their dreams.
Older volunteers whose attachment style was classed as "preoccupied," were significantly more likely
(when compared with participants classified as "securely" attached, as "avoidant" or as "dismissing") to:
Report a dream
Report dreams with a higher mean number of words per dream.
Dream recall was lowest for the "avoidant" subjects and highest for the "preoccupied" subjects.2
Dream-lag
Have you ever noticed that often the images, experiences or people that emerge in dreams are images,
experiences or people you have seen recently?
People you have seen or experiences you have had a day or a week ago can crop up in dreams. This
recalling of a memory within a dream is referred to as dream-lag.
Frequently, details from a dream have been seen before, perhaps the previous day or a week prior to the
dream. Recalling something from a week ago is known as the "dream-lag effect." The idea is that certain
types of experiences take a week to be encoded into long-term memory, and some of the images from the
consolidation process will appear in a dream.
Memory theorists suggest that the hippocampus (an area deep in the forebrain that helps regulate
emotion, learning, and memory) takes events from the previous day, selects some to be consolidated into
long-term memory and then begins to transfer these over to the neocortex (the top layer of the brain that
is divided into four major lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital) for permanent storage. The
transfer process takes about a week. Dreaming may participate in the relocation of memory storage from
hippocampus to neocortex over time.
Events experienced while we are awake are said to feature in 1-2% of dream reports, although 65% of
dream reports reflect aspects of recent waking life experiences.
Authors of one study found a significantly higher rate of correspondence between waking life experiences
and dream reports when the experiences occurred 1-2, or 5-7 days before the dream, in comparison with
when the experiences occurred 3-4 days before the dream.44,55
The dream-lag effect has been reported in REM but not NREM stage 2 dreams (sleep stages are explained
in the next section). These results may provide evidence for a 7-day sleep-dependent memory
consolidation process that is specific to REM sleep, and would highlight the importance of REM sleep for
emotional memory consolidation.44,84
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How do we dream?
Until REM sleep is completed, the body is essentially paralyzed. This paralysis is caused by the release of
glycine - an amino acid - from the brain stem onto the motor neurons (neurons that conduct impulses
outward from the brain or spinal cord). REM sleep is the sleep stage at which most dreaming occurs and
this paralysis could be nature's way of making sure we do not act out our dreams.
Paralysis during the REM stage of sleep could ensure we do not act out our dreams.
Each complete sleep cycle takes about 90-110 minutes. The first REM sleep period usually occurs around
70 to 90 minutes after we fall asleep. The first sleep cycles each night contain relatively short REM periods
and long periods of deep sleep. As the night progresses, REM sleep periods increase in length while deep
sleep decreases. By morning, people spend nearly all their sleep time in stages 1, 2, and REM.107
The relationship between dreaming and strictly REM sleep has been one of controversy amongst
researchers with varying hypotheses. Does REM-sleep physiology explain the dream experience, or is REM
sleep neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for dreaming to occur?14
One study hypothesized that different physiological processes underlie dreaming during REM and non-REM
(NREM) sleep. Researchers concluded that although "dreaming" may occur during both REM and NREM
periods, as previous researchers have suggested, the dreams obtained from these periods differ
significantly in both quality and quantity and are likely to be produced by different processes.8
Visual imagery, in a separate study, was reported more often after awakenings from REM compared with
stage 2 sleep. These results are consistent with previous researchers who have described REM sleep as a
state of high visual hallucinatory quantity, and quality compared with NREM sleep. 83% of REM
awakenings compared with only 34% stage 2 awakenings resulted in imagery reports.11
A study proposed that the hormone cortisol plays an important role in controlling the state of memory
systems during sleep. High levels of cortisol, as are observed late at night and in the context of REM sleep,
disrupt normal hippocampal to neocortical communication, which interferes with the form of memory
consolidation that is dependent upon this communication. At the same time, the content of dreams is also
affected.83
In slow-wave sleep, dream content reflects the normal interaction between hippocampal and neocortical
circuits, allowing typical episodic memories to emerge. Normal episodic memories are only retrieved
during slow-wave sleep when hippocampal to neocortical communication is functional.
In REM sleep, however, dream content reflects only neocortical activation, which we assume accounts for
the fragmented, often bizarre, nature of these dreams.
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Recent developments on how we dream from MNT news
Computer can "see" our dreams
fMRI scans can reveal the visual images we have in our brains while we are dreaming, researchers from
Japan reported in the journal Science. Put simply, they have found a way of seeing our dreams.
What are bad dreams and nightmares?

A nightmare is a distressing dream that usually forces at least partial awakening. The dreamer may feel any
number of disturbing emotions in a nightmare, such as anger, guilt, sadness or depression, but the most
common feelings are fear and anxiety.
Nightmares can cause distressing emotions and can be especially disturbing for children.
Bad dreams, or nightmares are common in both adults and children. They can be caused by:
Stress
Fear
Trauma
Emotional issues
Medication or drug use
Illness.
How do you decide if a dream is considered to be a "bad dream" or a "nightmare"? The content of 9,796
dream reports was collected, which exposed:32,75
253 nightmares - frequently contained physical aggression, situations that were more bizarre and
more emotionally intense, containing more failures and unfortunate endings. 35% of nightmares
contained primary emotions other than fear.
431 bad dreams - frequently contained interpersonal conflicts. 55% of bad dreams contained
primary emotions other than fear.
In a study of 840 German athletes from various sports, discussing distressing dreams on the nights before
an important competition or game:46
About 15% of the athletes stated that they experienced at least one distressing dream before an
important competition or game during the preceding 12 months
An almost equal number of athletes reported at least one distressing dream in their sports career
In about 3% of the events, a distressing dream occurred
Reported dream content referred mainly to athletic failure.
A survey examining the dreams, nightmares, and sleep patterns of 30 women who were dealing with
relationship violence found:69
50% of the sample experienced nightmares on a weekly basis

Some of the dream images included drowning, being chased, being killed or killing others
56% experienced a recurring dream
Most women had trouble falling asleep and, on average, slept for 6.1 hours per night.
The threat simulation theory of dreaming (TST) states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient
biological defense mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening
events.
Children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly
threatened should then have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas
children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly
activated system.
Results of a study with dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and
ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children showed that severely traumatized children reported a
significantly greater number of dreams, with their dreams including a higher number of threatening dream
events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less
traumatized or non-traumatized children.80
A study of 190 normal school children aged 4 to 12 years reported the following forms of anxiety
symptoms:
Fears - 75.8%
Worries - 67.4%
Scary dreams - 80.5%.
Fears of scary dreams were common among children aged 4-6 years old, becoming even more prominent
in 7- to 9-year-olds and then decreasing in frequency for 10- to 12-year-olds.
Types of fears, worries, and dreams were found to change across age groups, with fears and scary dreams
relating to imaginary creatures decreasing with age. In contrast, worries about test performance increased
with age.95
Findings from dream reports of 610 boys and girls recalling disturbing and normal dreams at both 13 and
16 years of age highlights how a prevalence of disturbing dreams is especially marked for adolescent girls.
Frequent recall of disturbing dreams is associated with pathological symptoms of trait anxiety, even in girls
as young as 13 years of age.93
Conditions
Certain conditions appear to increase the frequency of nightmares in individuals such as:
Migraine: recurrent dreams featuring complex visual imagery, often terrifying nightmares, can
occur as migraine aura symptoms.94 The brain of migraineurs seems to dream with some peculiar
features, all with a negative connotation, as fear and anguish.18
Sleep apnea: patients with sleep apnea have more emotionally negative dreams than sleepy
snorers.50
Depression: frequent nightmares are associated with suicidal tendency in patients with major
depression.98
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What are night terrors/sleep terrors?

Night terrors are very different from nightmares. The behavior of a child experiencing night terrors may
feature:
Screaming
Shouting
Thrashing around
Panic
Jumping out of bed
Inability to recognize parents trying to comfort them.
Night terrors occur on waking abruptly from deep NREM sleep, whereas nightmares are thought to occur
during REM sleep.
It is estimated that approximately 1-6% of children in the US experience sleep terror at some point in their
childhood. It is common in children aged between 3-12 years. Children are not fully awake in these
episodes, even if their eyes are open, and usually have no memory of the event the next day.
The episodes usually occur in the early part of the night and can continue for several minutes (up to 15
minutes).
Night terrors are more common in children with a family history of night terrors or sleepwalking behavior.
A night terror attack may be triggered by anything that:
Increases how much deep sleep the child has, such as tiredness, fever or certain types of
medication.
Makes the child more likely to wake from deep sleep, such as excitement, anxiety or sudden noise.
Most children will eventually grow out of night terrors.

Studies of twin cohorts and families with sleep terror and sleepwalking suggest genetic involvement of
parasomnias (a category of sleep disorders that involve abnormal movements, behaviors, emotions,
perceptions, and dreams that occur while falling asleep, sleeping, between sleep stages, or during arousal
from sleep).
Restless leg syndrome and sleep-disordered breathing have been shown to have familial recurrence.
Restless leg syndrome has been shown to have genetic involvement.117
Night terrors have also been linked to enlarged tonsils and adenoids.
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What are recurring dreams?

A recurring dream is a type of dream that occurs on a regular basis when we sleep.
A study of 212 recurrent dreams that were scored using a slightly expanded version of the Dream Threat
rating scale showed:74
66% of the recurrent dream reports contained one or more threats. The threats tended to be
dangerous and aimed at the dreamer. When facing a threat, the dreamer tended to take defensive
or evasive actions that were possible and reasonable.
Less than 15% of the recurrent dreams depicted realistic and probable situations that were critical
for physical survival or reproductive success. During these dreams, the dreamer rarely succeeded in
fleeing the threat despite important and appropriate efforts.
These findings provide mixed support for the threat simulation theory.74
Research indicates that recurrent dreams in adults are associated with poor psychological well-being.
Authors of a study hypothesized that children reporting recurrent dreams would also show poorer
psychosocial adjustment than children without recurrent dreams.
In an examination of dream reports and measures of psychosocial adjustment in 168 children aged 11:61
35% of children reported having experienced a recurrent dream during the past year.
Boys reporting recurrent dreams reported significantly higher scores for reactive aggression than
those who did not.
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What are lucid dreams?

Lucid dreaming is a rare state of sleep in which the dreamer gains insight into their state of mind during
dreaming; a dream in which the dreamer knows they are dreaming is deemed to be a lucid dream.
Lucid dreams usually occur while a person is in the middle of a regular dream and suddenly realizes that
they are dreaming.
Research has shown that lucid dreaming is accompanied by an increased activation of parts of the brain
that are normally suppressed during sleep.
A German study revealed significantly increased brain activity during lucid dreams. An EEG machine
recorded frequencies in the 40 Hz (or GAMMA) range in lucid dreamers. This is far higher than the normal
dream state (THETA range, or 4-7 Hz).
The researchers also saw heightened activity in the frontal and frontolateral areas of the brain - the seat of
linguistic thought as well as other higher mental functions linked to self-awareness. This supports the
theory that lucid dreaming is a unique state of consciousness separate from any other mental state.111
Recent EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data found that cortical areas activated
during lucid dreaming show striking overlap with brain regions that are impaired in psychotic patients
lacking insight into their pathological state.103
Results of a study focusing on the distribution of lucid dreams in school children and young adults found:6
Lucid dreaming is quite pronounced in young children

Incidence rate of lucid dreaming drops at about age 16 years
Increased lucidity was found in those attending higher level compared with lower level schools.
The study authors proposed a link between the natural occurrence of lucid dreaming and brain maturation.
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What are wet dreams?

A wet dream is ejaculation during sleep. Usually, a wet dream happens while a person is having a sexual
dream. The person may not even remember the dream.
A person does not have to masturbate to have a wet dream; they ejaculate without touching their penis.
Wet dreams are usually experienced throughout puberty when the body begins production of the male
hormone testosterone. Once the body can produce testosterone, it can release sperm.
Wet dreams are a normal part of growing up and cannot be prevented. Some people may experience wet
dreams a few times a week; others may only have the experience a couple of times ever.
Not every teenage boy has wet dreams. If boys do not experience wet dreams, there is nothing wrong with
them. Although girls cannot ejaculate, they can have an orgasm during a dream. This is less common than
with boys.116
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Medication/drugs
Antidepressants/SSRIs
Clinical knowledge and a small number of published studies have reported that selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) intensify dreaming.
A total of 21 clinical studies and 25 case reports were reviewed on the effect of antidepressants on
dreaming. Findings of the review include:104
In both depressed patients and healthy volunteers, there was a decrease of dream recall frequency
with antidepressant use.
Tricyclic antidepressants induced more positive dream emotions.
Withdrawal from tricyclic antidepressants and monoamine oxidase inhibitors phenelzine and
tranylcypromine caused nightmares.
Intake and even more withdrawal of SSRIs/SNRIs seem to intensify dreaming.
Anesthetic
Dreams and hallucinations under sedation or anesthesia have been a well-known phenomena since the
introduction of anesthesia. Sexual hallucinations may lead to allegations of sexual molestation or assault by
medical doctors or professional nursing staff.43
Since the introduction of anesthesia, hallucinations and dreams that are blurred with reality have been
frequently reported.
Propofol
There have been cases of propofol-induced hallucinations and dreams in patients described as pleasant,
with a frequent "sexual connotation," uninhibited behavior or a verbal expression of patient's intimate
thoughts.65
Ketamine
Thirty healthy volunteers completed questionnaires about retrospective home dream recall and were then
given either ketamine or placebo. The study found:63
Ketamine resulted in significantly more dream unpleasantness relative to placebo.

The number of dreams reported over the three nights did not differ between the groups.
Alcohol
A study aiming to investigate sleep quality and the subjective dream experience in alcohol-dependent
patients during withdrawal and abstinence compared with healthy controls found:
Sleep quality was impaired in alcohol-dependent patients during detoxification, and the subjective
dream experience was more negatively toned compared with healthy controls.
Both sleep quality and dream experience improved slightly after four weeks of abstinence.
Patients with alcohol dependency during withdrawal and abstinence dreamt significantly more
often about alcohol.
Subjective sleep and dream quality is strongly impaired in patients with alcohol dependency.51
Marijuana
Smoked marijuana and oral tetrahydrocannabinol (THC):105
Reduce REM sleep

Increase stage 4 sleep
Cause strange dreams among acute and subacute cannabis withdrawal
Increase sleep onset latency, reduce slow-wave sleep, and a REM rebound can be observed.
Conditions
Psychotic major depression
Cognitive bizarreness has been shown to be equally elevated in the dream and waking mentation of
acutely symptomatic inpatients diagnosed with affective and non-affective psychoses. A study of patients
hospitalized for psychotic major depression (PMD) had similar levels of cognitive bizarreness in their dream
and waking mentation.30
Narcolepsy
Narcolepsy with cataplexy (NC) is a neurological disorder characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness
and an altered architecture of sleep.
Dream reports were analyzed in NC patients and control participants. While dream recall (about 85%) was
comparable in NC patients and controls, first-REM dream reports were longer in NC patients.
Statistical analyses on the NC patients and their matched controls who reported dreams after both REM
periods showed that dream experiences occurring in first-REM reports of NC patients were longer and had
a more complex organization than those of controls.
These findings suggest that the cognitive processes underlying dream generation reach their optimal
functioning earlier in the night in NC patients than in normal subjects.64
Parkinson's
The relationship between testosterone levels, violent dreams, and REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) in 31
men with Parkinson's disease (PD) was examined; 12 with clinical RBD and 19 without.71
All PD patients with clinical RBD experienced violent dreams, but none of the 19 non-RBD patients
reported violent dreams.
While dream content appears to be more aggressive in PD patients with clinical RBD, the presence
of violent dreams or clinical RBD is not associated with testosterone levels in men with PD.
Another study examined the dream characteristics of PD patients to determine whether dream content
differed between patients with RBD and without RBD, men and women with RBD, and men and women
with PD.72
RBD patients had a higher percentage of violent dreams compared to non-RBD patients.
There were no significant sex differences in the dream content of RBD patients.
Men with PD had more aggressive dreams compared to females with PD.
Aggressive dream content was characteristic of RBD patients and sex differences exist in the dream
content of the PD population.
Post-traumatic stress disorder

Disturbed sleep patterns, nightmares, and anxiety-filled dreams form a cluster of symptoms belonging to
the DSM- IV diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.73
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Recent developments on dream conditions from MNT news
Rapid-eye-movement sleep behaviour disorder linked to brain disease
Researchers at the University of Toronto say a sleep disorder that causes people to act out their dreams is
the best current predictor of brain diseases like Parkinson's and many other forms of dementia.
Why are dreams difficult to remember? How do we remember

dreams?
It is thought that five minutes after the end of a dream, we have forgotten 50% of its content, and 10
minutes later, we have forgotten 90%. Dream researchers estimate that approximately 95% of all dreams
are forgotten entirely upon awakening.
There is something about the phenomenon of sleep that makes it difficult to remember what has occurred.
Most dreams are forgotten unless they are written down.
Some people have no difficulty in remembering several dreams nightly, whereas others recall dreams only
occasionally or not at all.
Some aspect of the phenomenon of sleep makes it difficult for dreamers to remember what has occurred,
and most dreams are forgotten unless they are written down.
Sometimes a dream is suddenly remembered later in the day or on another day, suggesting that the
memory is not totally lost but for some reason is very hard to retrieve.109
Brain lesion and neuroimaging studies converge in indicating that the temporo-parieto-occipital junction
and ventromesial prefrontal cortex play crucial roles in dream recall.
Surface EEG studies showed that sleep cortical oscillations associated with successful dream recall are the
same as those involved in encoding and recall of episodic memories during wakefulness.45
Cortical brain oscillations of human sleep are predictive of successful dream recall. After waking up from
REM sleep in the morning, higher frontal 5-7 Hz (theta) activity was associated with successful dream
recall. This finding mirrors the increase in frontal theta activity during successful encoding of episodic
memories in wakefulness.
A different predictive relationship was found after awakening from stage 2 NREM sleep. Specifically, a
lower 8-12 Hz (alpha) oscillatory activity of the right temporal area was associated with a successful dream
recall.
These findings provide the first evidence of univocal cortical electroencephalographic correlates of dream
recall, suggesting that the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the encoding and recall of episodic
memories may remain the same across different states of consciousness.48
In French research, investigators conducted brain scans on 41 people while they were awake and while
they slept. Of the participants, 21 remembered dreams about five mornings per week and were labeled
"high dream recallers," while the other 20 remembered dreams only two mornings per month. These
participants were labeled as "low dream recallers."
When asleep and awake, the high dream recallers showed higher levels of activity in the brain's medial
prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction - an information-processing hub.
An Italian research team used technology to measure participants' brain waves during various sleep-stages.
While previous studies have already indicated that people are more likely to remember their dreams
when woken directly after REM sleep, this current study explains why. Participants exhibiting more lowfrequency theta waves in the frontal lobes were also more likely to remember their dreams.
Increased frontal theta activity is like the successful encoding and retrieval of autobiographical memories
seen while we are awake - the same electrical oscillations in the frontal cortex that make the recollection
of episodic memories (e.g., things that happened to you) possible. These findings suggest that the
neurophysiological mechanisms that we employ while dreaming (and recalling dreams) are the same as
when we construct and retrieve memories while we are awake.
In another recent study conducted by the same research team, the authors used the latest MRI techniques
to investigate the relation between dreaming and the role of deep-brain structures.
The researchers found that vivid, bizarre and emotionally intense dreams (the dreams that people usually
remember) are linked to parts of the amygdala and hippocampus. While the amygdala plays a primary role
in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the hippocampus has been implicated in important
memory functions, such as the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory.
Scientists have also identified where dreaming is likely to occur in the brain. A very rare clinical condition
known as "Charcot-Wilbrand Syndrome," has been known to cause (among other neurological symptoms),
loss of the ability to dream. However, recently a patient reported having lost the ability to dream while
having virtually no other permanent neurological symptoms.
The patient suffered a lesion in a part of the brain known as the right inferior lingual gyrus (located in the
visual cortex), which could suggest that dreams are generated in, or transmitted through, this particular
area of the brain, associated with visual processing, emotion and visual memories.
There is a huge amount concerning the brain and how it operates while awake or asleep that remains a
mystery. Scientists may never pinpoint the exact nature of dreams and why humans need them, but that
does not discourage continued research and studies at research facilities looking for an answer.
Recent developments on dream recall from MNT news
Neuroscientists find clue to how we remember dreams
Why we dream is still a mystery to science. But differences in brain activity may give a clue as to why some
people frequently remember their dreams while others rarely do, according to neuroscientists in France.
Those who often recall their dreams respond more strongly to their name
Dreaming remains one of the great mysteries of human cognition. It is still not fully known when dreams
occur and which mechanisms in the brain produce them.
Written by Hannah Nichols
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission.
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Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.
Additional information
online 16 May 2006.
29 May 2012.
2008.
2014.
May 2014.
July 2012.
2015.
2011.
2010.
psychology, 2010.
psychiatrie, 2010.

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APA
Nichols, H. (2014, November 14). "What are dreams? Why do we have dreams?." Medical News
Today. Retrieved from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284378.php.
Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.
Citations
online 16 May 2006.
29 May 2012.
2008.
2014.
May 2014.
July 2012.

2015.
2011.
2010.
psychology, 2010.
psychiatrie, 2010.
January 2007.
2006.
November 2004.
2004.
January 2004.
November 2002.
S Korsakova, 2001.
2001.
November 2001.
April 2000.
February 1998.
1991.
1992.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
2012.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
2014.
110.
111.
112.
September 2011.
113.
114.
115.
116.
2014.
117.
MLA

Why Do We Dream? - Top Dream Theories

Experts Weigh In With Theories About Why People Dream
"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters." - Henry David Thoreau
Dreams have fascinated philosophers for thousands of years, but only recently have dreams been
subjected to empirical research and concentrated scientific study. Chances are that youve often found
yourself puzzling over the mysterious content of a dream, or perhaps youve wondered why you dream at
all.
First, lets start by answering a basic question What is a dream? A dream can include any of the images,
thoughts and emotions that are experienced during sleep. Dreams can be extraordinarily vivid or very
vague; filled with joyful emotions or frightening imagery; focused and understandable or unclear and
confusing.
Question: So why do we dream? What purpose do dreams serve?
Answer: While many theories have been proposed, no single consensus has emerged. Considering the
enormous amount of time we spend in a dreaming state, the fact that researchers do not yet understand
the purpose of dreams may seem baffling. However, it is important to consider that science is still
unraveling the exact purpose and function of sleep itself.
Some researchers suggest that dreams serve no real purpose, while others believe that dreaming is
essential to mental, emotional and physical well-being. Ernest Hoffman, director of the Sleep Disorders
Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Boston, Mass., suggests that "...a possible (though certainly not
proven) function of a dream to be weaving new material into the memory system in a way that both
reduces emotional arousal and is adaptive in helping us cope with further trauma or stressful events."
Next, lets learn more about some of the most prominent dream theories.
Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams

Consistent with the psychoanalytic perspective, Sigmund Freuds theory of dreams suggested that dreams
were a representation of unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. According to Freuds
psychoanalytic view of personality, people are driven by aggressive and sexual instincts that are repressed
from conscious awareness. While these thoughts are not consciously expressed, Freud suggested that they
find their way into our awareness via dreams.
In his famous book The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wrote that dreams are "...disguised fulfillments of
repressed wishes." He also described two different components of dreams: manifest content and latent
content. Manifest content is made up of the actual images, thoughts and content contained within the
dream, while the latent content represents the hidden psychological meaning of the dream.
Freuds theory contributed to the popularity of dream interpretation, which remains popular today.
However, research has failed to demonstrate that the manifest content disguises the real psychological
significance of a dream.
Activation- Synthesis Model of Dreaming

The activation-synthesis model of dreaming was first proposed by J. Allan Hobson and Robert McClarley in
1977. According to this theory, circuits in the brain become activated during REM sleep, which causes areas
of the limbic system involved in emotions, sensations and memories, including the amygdala and
hippocampus, to become active. The brain synthesizes and interprets this internal activity and attempts to
find meaning in these signals, which results in dreaming. This model suggests that dreams are a subjective
interpretation of signals generated by the brain during sleep.
While this theory suggests that dreams are the result of internally generated signals, Hobson does not
believe that dreams are meaningless. Instead, he suggests that dreaming is "our most creative conscious
state, one in which the chaotic, spontaneous recombination of cognitive elements produces novel
configurations of information: new ideas. While many or even most of these ideas may be nonsensical, if
even a few of its fanciful products are truly useful, our dream time will not have been wasted."
Information-Processing Theories
One of the major theories to explain why we sleep is that sleep allows us to consolidate and process all of
the information that we have collected during the previous day. Some dream experts suggest that
dreaming is simply a by-product or even an active part of this information-processing. As we deal with the
multitude of information and memories from the daytime, our sleeping minds create images, impressions,
and narratives to manage all of the activity going on inside our heads as we slumber.
Other Theories of Dreams

Many other theories have been suggested to account for the occurrence and meaning of dreams. The
following are just of few of the proposed ideas:
One theory suggests that dreams are the result of our brains trying to interpret external stimuli
during sleep. For example, the sound of the radio may be incorporated into the content of a dream
Another theory uses a computer metaphor to account for dreams. According to this theory, dreams
serve to 'clean up' clutter from the mind, much like clean-up operations in a computer, refreshing
the mind to prepare for the next day.
Yet another model proposes that dreams function as a form of psychotherapy. In this theory, the
dreamer is able to make connections between different thoughts and emotions in a safe
environment .
A contemporary model of dreaming combines some elements of various theories. The activation of
the brain creates loose connections between thoughts and ideas, which are then guided by the
emotions of the dreamer .
Why Do We Dream? Modern Theories of Dreaming

By Rebecca Turner
Why do we dream? Ancient civilizations saw dreams as portals for receiving wisdom from the gods. In
modern psychology, Sigmund Freud famously theorized that dreams were the "royal road to the
unconscious". Modern theories suggest it's not as complicated as that. Are we getting closer to
understanding dreams?
"I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long"~
Joseph Heller
Freud - aka the father of dream research - gave psychoanalysis as one explanation for why we dream. But
Freud had little understanding of the REM and NREM sleep cycles - and modern day dream research has
pointed us to a number of other theories of dreaming. But first, let's start with the original theory of
dreaming.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind. The controversial
psychoanalyst said that our brain protects us from disturbing thoughts and memories by repressing them.
Freud also believed that we are almost entirely driven by unconscious sexual desire.
If you asked Sigmund Freud "why do we dream?" he would say our dreams are a secret outlet for these
repressed desires. Freud used dream analysis to interpret the underlying language of dreams - which is
very different from normal conscious thinking. I discuss this idea more in dream interpretation.
To support his dream research, Sigmund Freud split the human psyche into three parts: the Id, Ego and
Super-Ego.
ID - Newborn babies are born with only an Id. The Id is a

sense of mind that causes us to act on impulse: to
follow our primary instincts and ignore the
consequences. The Id runs on the "pleasure principle" it doesn't care about anything but its own satisfaction.
EGO - As they grow up, toddlers develop an Ego. This is

the part of the psyche that allows us to understand that
other people have needs, and that acting impulsively
can hurt us. This "reality principle" makes sure we meet
the needs of the Id without conflicting with the laws of
the Ego.
SUPER-EGO - By the age of five, we develop the Superego. This is our moral brain, that tells us the difference
between right and wrong. However it doesn't make
special allowances - it is up to the Ego to decide.
This concept can be demonstrated with The Iceberg Metaphor...

Just like an iceberg, the conscious mind is only the tip. It is a small part of who we are. There is much more
under the surface.
Way down below, we have little or no conscious awareness of the Id, which influences all our decisions.
The Ego is free floating in all three levels - both conscious and unconscious - monitoring our behaviors by
day.
Every night when we sleep, we disconnect from our conscious tip of the iceberg. The lights go off and we
are protected from external stimuli (like noise, temperature and pain) as well as internal stimuli (like
emotions and fears). We do this by creating our own internal worlds - our dreams.
Freud said dreams are a way to express the unconscious emotions arising from the Id - otherwise we would
be constantly disturbed by them in our sleep and soon wake up. So why do we dream? Freud said it was to
protect our sleep.
J Allan Hobson
John Allan Hobson emphasizes the role of neurochemicals in the brain and random electrical impulses
originating in the brainstem. He does not say that dreams are the random firing of neurons - but rather the
brain's cobbled attempt at making sense of them.
He later acknowledged the increased activity of the limbic system (a primeval part of the brain which
produces emotions) during REM sleep. This served to give the meaning of dreams an emotional basis,
rather than a random neurochemical one.
So, does this provide us with any psychological basis for dream interpretation? Was Sigmund Freud right to
suggest that dreams symbolize our repressed fears and desires? Do our dreams contain our darkest secrets
just waiting to be unlocked?
Actually, Hobson believes Freud had it wrong. He may even have impeded our scientific understanding of
the nature of dreams by propagating such ominous theories. Hobson is all for a psychological meaning to
dreams, but just that it needn't be locked away under layers of secretive unconscious meaning.
Instead, Hobson takes a Jungian approach: dreams reveal far more than they hide - and can actually be
highly transparent. However, it's difficult to link this conclusion to Hobson's biological explanation for
dreaming.
But the theory does make sense. Next time you dream of being chased, isn't it likely that you are metaphorically - running away from something in real life that's causing you anxiety? And if you dream of
being pregnant - for a woman at least - is this a natural expression of your desire to have babies?
With simple interpretive analysis, dreams may not be so mysterious after all.
Dream Research
There are many theories of dreaming - some overlap with others and some are just plain bizarre. Dream
research has given us these core theories:
Why Do We Dream? ...Because of Random Impulses

In 1977, Hobson & McCarley put forward some dream research that would seriously challenge Freud's
dream understanding. They said that dreaming is the result of random impulses coming from the brain
stem.
Using an EEG machine, the researchers were able to track the regular REM states of people during sleep.
They used this data to form a predictable mathematical model and conclude that dreaming is a freak
physiological (bodily) occurrence - rather than a psychological function.
According to them, the fact that we see images and hear sounds in our dreams is simply the brain's way of
understanding noisy electrical signals. They said that dreams are random and meaningless.
However, many scientists point out that dreams often do make sense. In fact, they can follow very intricate
plots, however illogical. This suggests that our higher brain is playing a role. Hobson's theory (above)
attempts to reconcile this by having a neurochemcial and an emotional basis for dreaming.
Why Do We Dream? ...To Organize The Brain

We may dream to de-clutter our brains. Every day we are bombarded with new information, both
consciously (eg learning) and unconsciously (eg advertising).
This modern dream theory suggests dreaming is a way to file away key information and discard
meaningless data. It helps keep our brains organized and optimizes our learning. This theory hasn't been
proven by dream research. If it were 100% correct, our entire day would be replayed to us during our REM
sleep!
Critics of this theory also point out that our brains are not the same as computers, and to draw a
comparison to filing, processing and storage space is likely to be inaccurate. They also point out that
although some of our dreams relate back to the waking day (Freud called this day residue), the majority of
our dreams are not about real events.
Why Do We Dream? ...To Help Solve Problems

A number of researchers think that dreams are for problem solving.
One scientist in particular, named Fiss, claimed that our dreams help us to register very subtle hints that go
unnoticed during the day. This explains why "sleeping on it" can provide a solution to a problem.
Unfortunately, there are also arguments against this theory of dreaming. For a start, most people only
remember a very small number of their dreams. So if our dreams contain important answers - why don't
we remember them better?
Why Do We Dream? ...To Cope With Trauma

Dreams may be a way of coping with trauma. Based on the intensity of our emotions, we will generate
dreams to cope with certain situations.
For instance, if you escape from a house fire and the experience shakes you up, chances are you will dream
about it that night. The more traumatic the event, the more emotions are felt, and the more important it is
to get over it. Dreaming about the fire will help you come to terms with what happened and prepare you
for it ever happening again.
Of course, this doesn't explain why we dream of fantastic or mundane things - only that nightmares can be
a kind of rehearsal for trauma.
Dream Analysis
Here are some more examples of how humans interpret dreams in different cultures around the world:
Shamans use dreams to diagnose illness. It is thought that the unconscious brain has an awareness
of malfunctions in the body long before the conscious brain. In this sense, shamans are
psychoanalysts, much like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
The ancient Egyptians used dreams to make predictions about the future. They thought dreams
were messages from the gods, which contained vital wisdom and prophecies.
Similarly, people in the Western world in the 1900s used dreams to find game, predict the weather,
and tell the future.
So Why Do We Dream?
Dream research offers many theories - but still no definitive answer to the question: why do we dream?
Scientists generally seem to agree that dreaming is a form of thinking during sleep, even that is the knockon result of random electrical impulses.
Dreams contain at least some psychological meaning, but this doesn't necessarily prove a purpose, such as
problem solving. Overall, our understanding of dreams is still quite vague.
In a way, Freud gave dreams an unfortunate legacy. He taught us to associate them with psychological
problems and anxieties. But in reality, most of our dreams are healthy and engaging - aren't they?
Dreams are a mixed bag. The truth is, science still doesn't have a definitive answer to the question: why do
we dream? Most dream research shows that it is worthwhile to remember your dreams - at least, until we
figure out what they are for! And if you plan to have lucid dreams, your dream recall is vital...
Why do we dream?
The human brain is a mysterious little ball of gray matter. After all these years, researchers are still baffled
by many aspects of how and why it operates like it does. Scientists have been performing sleep and dream
studies for decades now, and we still aren't 100 percent sure about the function of sleep, or exactly how
and why we dream. We do know that our dream cycle is typically most abundant and best remembered
during the REM stage of sleep. It's also pretty commonly accepted among the scientific community that we
all dream, though the frequency in which dreams are remembered varies from person to person.
The question of whether dreams actually have a physiological, biological or psychological function has yet
to be answered. But that hasn't stopped scientists from researching and speculating. There are several
theories as to why we dream. One is that dreams work hand in hand with sleep to help the brain sort
through everything it collects during the waking hours. Your brain is met with hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of inputs each day. Some are minor sensory details like the color of a passing car, while others
are far more complex, like the big presentation you're putting together for your job. During sleep, the brain
works to plow through all of this information to decide what to hang on to and what to forget. Some
researchers feel like dreams play a role in this process.
It's not just a stab in the dark though -- there is some research to back up the ideas that dreams are tied to
how we form memories. Studies indicate that as we're learning new things in our waking hours, dreams
increase while we sleep. Participants in a dream study who were taking a language course showed more
dream activity than those who were not. In light of such studies, the idea that we use our dreams to sort
through and convert short-term memories into long-term memories has gained some momentum in recent
years.
Another theory is that dreams typically reflect our emotions. During the day, our brains are working hard
to make connections to achieve certain functions. When posed with a tough math problem, your brain is
incredibly focused on that one thing. And the brain doesn't only serve mental functions. If you're building a
bench, your brain is focused on making the right connections to allow your hands to work in concert with a
saw and some wood to make an exact cut. The same goes for simple tasks like hitting a nail with a
hammer. Have you ever lost focus and smashed your finger because your mind was elsewhere?
Some have proposed that at night everything slows down. We aren't required to focus on anything during
sleep, so our brains make very loose connections. It's during sleep that the emotions of the day battle it
out in our dream cycle. If something is weighing heavily on your mind during the day, chances are you
might dream about it either specifically, or through obvious imagery. For instance, if you're worried about
losing your job to company downsizing, you may dream you're a shrunken person living in a world of
giants, or you're wandering aimlessly through a great desert abyss.
There's also a theory, definitely the least intriguing of the bunch, that dreams don't really serve any
function at all, that they're just a pointless byproduct of the brain firing while we slumber. We know that
the rear portion of our brain gets pretty active during REM sleep, when most dreaming occurs. Some think
that it's just the brain winding down for the night and that dreams are random and meaningless firings of
the brain that we don't have when we're awake. The truth is, as long as the brain remains such a mystery,
we probably won't be able to pinpoint with absolute certainty exactly why we dream.
10 theories that explain why we dream

The study of dreaming is called oneirology, and it's a field of inquiry that spans neuroscience, psychology,
and even literature. Still, the plain fact is that the reasons why we dream are still mysterious. But that
hasn't stopped scientists from coming up with some pretty fascinating hypotheses. Here are ten of them.
1. Wish fulfillment
One of the first sustained efforts to study dreams scientifically was spearheaded by the psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud, in the early twentieth century. After analyzing the dreams of hundreds of his patients, he
came up with a theory that still resonates with a lot of researchers today: dreams are wish-fulfillments.
Any dream, no matter how terrifying, can be looked at as a way of getting something that you want, either
literally or symbolically. For example, say you have a terrifying and sad dream about your mother dying.
Why would that be a wish-fulfillment? Maybe, Freud would say, you are having a conflict with your mother
that would be easily resolved if she were out of the picture. So you don't want your mother to die, but you
do want to deal with that conflict. By thinking of dreams in this light, Freud was able to help many of his
patients unbury hidden emotions that they hadn't dealt with.
2. An accidental side-effect of random neural impulses
If you buy into Freud's idea about dreams, their subject matter is deeply meaningful. They can reveal
wishes or emotions you didn't realize you had. But another popular school of thought holds that dreams
are actually just a kind of brain fart, an accidental side-effect of activated circuits in the brain stem and
stimulation of the limbic system that's involved with emotions, sensations and memories. J. Allan Hobson,
the psychiatrist who popularized this idea, calls it the "activation-synthesis theory." In a nutshell, the brain
tries to interpret these random signals, resulting in dreams.
What's particularly interesting about this theory is that it could also help to explain why humans use
storytelling as a way to make sense of an often random, chaotic universe. If dreams are the meanings our
brains supply to random neural firing in our limbic system, then stories are like waking dreams, meanings
we use to paper over the fundamentally disorganized signals we receive from the world around us.
3. Encoding short-term memories into long-term storage

Maybe dreams are just randomly-generated stories caused by neural impulses, but perhaps there's also a
reason for them, too. To explore this idea, psychiatrist Jie Zhang, proposed the continual-activation theory
of dreaming, which refers to the idea that our brains are always storing memories regardless of whether
we're awake or asleep. But dreams are a kind of "temporary storage" area of consciousness, a spot where
we hold memories before we move them from short-term to long-term storage. They flash through our
minds as dreams before we secret them away in the files of our memory.
4. Garbage collection
Dubbed the "reverse learning" theory, this idea suggests that we dream to get rid of undesirable
connections and associations that build up in our brains throughout the day. Basically, dreams are garbage
collection mechanisms, clearing our minds of useless thoughts and making way for better ones. Essentially,
we dream in order to forget. Dreams help us eliminate the information overload of daily life and retain
only the most important data.
5. Consolidating what we've learned
This theory flies in the face of the reverse learning theory, by suggesting that we actually dream to
remember rather than forget. It's based on a number of studies that show people remember what they've
learned better if they dream after learning it. Like Zhang's theory about long-term memory storage, this
theory suggests that dreams help us retain what we've learned.
The theory is bolstered by recent studies on trauma, which suggest that when people go to sleep right
after a traumatic experience that they are more likely to remember and be haunted by the trauma. So one
form of triage for traumatized people is to keep them awake and talking for several hours, even if they are
exhausted, to prevent this traumatic memory consolidation from happening.
6. An evolutionary outgrowth of the "playing dead" defense mechanism

Based on studies that revealed strong similarities between animals who are playing dead and people who
are dreaming, this theory suggests that dreaming could be related to an ancient defense mechanism: tonic
immobility, or playing dead. When you dream, your brain behaves much the way it does when you're
awake, with a crucial difference: chemicals like dopamine associated with movement and body activation
are completely shut down. This is similar to what happens to animals who undergo temporary paralysis to
fool their enemies into thinking they've died. So it's possible that dreams began as a defense mechanism
which our bodies retained in a different form as we evolved into creatures who no longer
experienced tonic immobility.
7. Threat simulation
The "playing dead" theory of dreams actually fits in nicely with another evolutionary theory of dreams,
developed by philosopher-neuroscientist Antti Revonusuo in Finland. He suggests that "the biological
function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events, and to rehearse threat perception and threat
avoidance." People who have these kinds of dreams will be better able to face threats in their waking
hours, because they've already run through these nighttime simulations. As a result, people who dream in
this way will survive more often, to pass on their genes. Unfortunately, this theory doesn't explain my
recurring dream of eating brownie sundaes.
8. Problem solving
Building on ideas like Revonusuo, Harvard medical researcher Deirdre Barrett suggests dreams are a kind
of theater in which we're able to solve problems more effectively than when we are awake partly
because the dreaming mind makes connections more quickly than the waking mind does. This idea is based
in part on experiments she did where people were asked to solve problems while "sleeping on them." The
problem-solving outcomes were better for the subjects who dreamed.
9. Oneiric Darwinism
Maybe the idea of solving problems in our sleep is itself a kind of Darwinian process. Psychologist Mark
Blechner says the reason we dream is:
[To] create new ideas, through partial random generation, which can then be retained if judged useful
Dreams introduce random variations into psychic life and internal narratives. They produce thought
mutations. Our minds can then select among these mutations and variations to produce new kinds of
thought, imagination, self-awareness, and other psychic functions.
Basically, dreams are natural selection for ideas. This can extend to the level of emotions, too. One group
of researchers suggest that dreams are places where we run through situations and try to select the most
useful emotional reactions to them. Psychologist Richart Coutts suggests that this is one way we figure out
the best way to react to situations emotionally, and why we often feel better about painful issues the
morning after a night of dreams.
10. Processing painful emotions with symbolic associations

While a Darwinian model of dreaming suggests we are aggressively mutating our ideas, or weeding out
maladaptive emotions, a new model of dreaming suggests that the process is more like therapy than
evolution. We aren't aggressively selecting for the most adaptive idea or emotion we are just running
through those ideas and emotions and placing them in a broader psychological context. Often, the brain
does this by associating an emotion with a symbol.
Psychiatrist and sleep disorder expert Ernest Hartmann calls this simply the Contemporary Theory of
Dreaming. He writes:
When one clear-cut emotion is present, dreams are often very simple. Thus people who experience
traumasuch as an escape from a burning building, an attack or a rapeoften have a dream something
like, "I was on the beach and was swept away by a tidal wave." This case is paradigmatic. It is obvious that
the dreamer is not dreaming about the actual traumatic event, but is instead picturing the emotion, "I am
terrified. I am overwhelmed." When the emotional state is less clear, or when there are several emotions
or concerns at once, the dream becomes more complicated. We have statistics showing that such intense
dreams are indeed more frequent and more intense after trauma. In fact, the intensity of the central
dream imagery, which can be rated reliably, appears to be a measure of the emotional arousal of the
dreamer. Therefore, overall the contemporary theory considers dreaming to be a broad making of
connections guided by emotion.
He speculates that this kind of association between emotion and symbol helps to "tie down" the emotions
and weave them into our personal history. Possibly, this kind of symbolic association was an evolutionary
adaptation that helped our ancestors cope with trauma in a world where they would have dealt with far
more life-threatening events on a daily basis than most of us do today.
Ultimately, this hypothesis brings us back to the storytelling component of dreams. We seem to use these
bizarre images and ideas to make sense of the day's events, to turn random neural firing into something
coherent, and even to figure out how we should feel about what's happened to us. There is no doubt that
dreams play a major role in our thought processes. The question remains, however: Are they an
evolutionary adaptation, or just an uncanny accident?
All images taken from The Fountain. Sources linked in the text.

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What are dreams? Why do we have dreams?

What are dreams?

Dream content - what do dreams mean?

48% of characters represented a named person known to the dreamer

Among named characters:

32% were identified by appearance

21% identified by behavior

Elements of bizarreness were reported in 14% of named and generic characters.

One dream (0.5%) contained an episodic memory

1. School, teachers, studying

53. Seeing a UFO

39% of patients reported pain dreams.

Depression and suicidal ideation without attempt

Commission of a violent act without suicide.

In another study of 278 bereaved persons:37

Does everyone dream in color?

What do blind people dream about?

Paraplegic and those unable to hear or speak

Recent developments on dream content from MNT news

To represent unconscious desires and wishes

Is offline memory reprocessing - consolidates learning and memory tasks.79,90,91

What are bad dreams and nightmares?

50% of the sample experienced nightmares on a weekly basis

What are night terrors/sleep terrors?

Most children will eventually grow out of night terrors.

What are recurring dreams?

What are lucid dreams?

Lucid dreaming is quite pronounced in young children

What are wet dreams?

Ketamine resulted in significantly more dream unpleasantness relative to placebo.

Reduce REM sleep

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Why are dreams difficult to remember? How do we remember

34. Maternal representations in the dreams of pregnant women: a prospective comparative

89. Progression of dreams of crack cocaine abusers as a predictor of treatment outcome: a

64. Story-like organization of REM-dreams in patients with narcolepsy-cataplexy, Cipolli C, et al.,

41. Script-like attachment representations in dreams containing current romantic partners,

MediLexicon, Intl., 14 Nov. 2014. Web.

Why Do We Dream? - Top Dream Theories

Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams

Activation- Synthesis Model of Dreaming

Other Theories of Dreams

Why Do We Dream? Modern Theories of Dreaming

ID - Newborn babies are born with only an Id. The Id is a

EGO - As they grow up, toddlers develop an Ego. This is

This concept can be demonstrated with The Iceberg Metaphor...

Why Do We Dream? ...Because of Random Impulses

Why Do We Dream? ...To Organize The Brain

Why Do We Dream? ...To Help Solve Problems

Why Do We Dream? ...To Cope With Trauma

10 theories that explain why we dream

3. Encoding short-term memories into long-term storage

6. An evolutionary outgrowth of the "playing dead" defense mechanism

10. Processing painful emotions with symbolic associations

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