A Lick off Your Dreamsicle....Yum. Dreaming about Dreams.

        Yeah, I've never heard of one of them, either. I mean, seriously...Dreamsicle? Anabel told me, though. Apparently, it's a vanilla ice cream cone, with an orange Popsicle outside layer. It's sorta hard to explain, if you didn't get that. Here:

        Oh, man, I forgot my manners again! What went wrong with my parents raising me? Oh, well. Hi. What's up? Today, I'm going to teach you about dreams. You remember when Martin Luther King told his I Have A Dream speech? If you didn't, then you probably don't live in the U.S., because...seriously...everyone knows MLK. He has his own day for crying out loud! anabel was here. GET OFF MY BLOG!

                                                

       And everyone who's seen or read Harry Potter knows about Harry's odd dreams. But why does he? Why does anyone? Have you ever had a nightmare where you're crying in the dream, and it seems so real, and then you wake up, and you're crying just as you were in the dream? Or have believed that the dream was real until you wake up? When I'm in a dream, I feel just as I do in life. I don't remember if I can taste or feel. In fact, I don't remember a lot of my dreams, especially the good ones. I really believe that some are real. Why? Why do you believe it's real? Why do you remember some dreams and not others? Why do you have nightmares? Why do we have dreams? Why do we daydream? 

                                           

        First, let's see what people thought way back then. There are a couple of myths that cover dreams. The Greeks and Romans though it was a god that caused it, a god named Morpheus. He was the the leader of the Oneiroi, the god or spirits of dreams, who were his brothers. Morpheus is the son of Hypnos, the god of sleep. The Greeks believed that Morpheus shaped or formed the dreams of all human beings, and that he could change his appearance and go into dreams. Morpheus's name literally means 'he who shapes', and the drug morphine is named after him. 

        His brothers, it is said, each had a job. Icelus concentrated on the dreams that reflected reality. Phobetor focused on the scary dreams, or nightmares, which is where the name phobia came from. Phantasus created tricky, unreal dreams. This is where the word fantasy came from. Morpheus was said to be responsible for the dreams of heroes and gods, which is why he is said to be the most important one of his brothers. Phobetor and Phantasus were said to make the dreams of animals and inanimate objects as well.

        Now, let's come back to modern times, though you have to admit myths are just plain awesome. Really, how did these people come up with them? Just plain awesome, yeah? It must have taken a lot of imagination. I don't think I could've done that.                   

      Okay, so scientists don't know for sure why we dream, how the brain makes dreams, what dreams are, or whether they have a purpose or meaning at all. The technology for studying the brain while it dreams has only been around for a couple decades. The technology really doesn't give us even close to the whole story, anyway. It was only in 1953 that REM (Rapid Eye Movement in sleep) was discovered. REM is a type of sleep that happens to us four to six times a night. During this, your eyes sort of jump around in your a lot. Each REM period can last for only ten minutes, or up to an hour. It's basically during the REM time that you have most of your dreams.

        Dreams are...strange. But you knew that. Dreams can combine images, people, story lines, and other stuff that usually don't make a bundle of sense. Dreams tend to bring out strong emotions in people, such as crying. As I said before, scientists don't know whether dreams have any purpose or meaning. But there are people who do think that dreams have meanings, and these people think that they know what dreams mean. These are called dream interpreters. I'll put links up so you can learn about them. For now, let's take another trip to the past.

        

        Way back then, people thought that the dream world was an actual place that our spirits traveled to when we slept, and, ultimately, dreamed. I know it doesn't sound all that realistic now, but this is what people truly believed. It was commonly believed that dreams were omens, coming to people about the future, and you may have experienced a sense of déjà vu, where you just know that yo've been in a scene before, and that you've had a dream about it. It wasn't until the twentieth century that scientific attention was given to the subject of dreams.  

Travelling into the spirit world

 It all started with the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. An Austrian psychiatrist by the name of Sigmund Freud wrote it. Smart man. Freud called dreams the "royal road to unconsciousness". He said that dreams are a form of wish-fulfillment, representing desires that we hide, even from ourselves, such as...world domination. This basically dominated the dream research for decades. A lot of great thinkers claim that they have gone to sleep with a problem and woken up with a solution. Apparently. Again, like the dude said, it could just be their subconscious speaking. Maybe they knew the solution, but it was in the subconscious.

        A lot of experts today agree that dreams have a 'psychological origin'. However, according to research which is still growing, our dreams may not have any meaning at all. One similar theory, called activation-synthesis theory, says that our dreams are caused  by random electrical signals pulsing through our brain. The theory also says that dreams have absolutely no plot, that instead, our minds create a storyline to make sense of the random images. Personally, I don't exactly think this is true. I just don't.



        Other researchers say that dreams may serve as an important physical function in the brain. Like, Francis Crick (the guy who discovered DNA's structure) thought that dreams are a way for the brain to rid itself, or clean out, unnecessary memories. And still others think that it's something in between all those: that dreams may be random, and they may be an important physical function of the brain as well. Either way, it's up to you to decide, after this blog is over, of course. 

        Now, let's talk about the five stages of sleep. 

• Stage one is a light sleep. Your muscles start to relax, and you have an occasional muscle twitch.
• Stage two is when your breathing pattern and your heart rate start to slow down, and you have a slight decrease in your body temperature. 
• Stage three is when the deep sleep begins. Your brain begins to generate slow delta waves.
• Stage four is a very deep sleep. You hvae a rythmic sleep, and you have limited muscle activity. Your brain produces delta waves.
• Stage five is the rapid eye movement sleep. Your brainwaves speed up, and the dreaming occurs. Your muscles relax, and your heart rate increases. Your breathing is rapid and shallow.

         Personally, I think this is really interesting. Who knew sleeping had stages? Not me, for one. Anyway, like I said before, you dream about four to six times a night. No one really remembers a lot of their dreams. Most just know if they had a good or bad one. The reason you don't remember you four to six dreams is because when you start a dream sleeping, and finish the dream still sleeping, chances are that you won't remember the dream at all. But if you start a dream sleeping and are interrupted before you have a chance to finish, odds are that you'll remember some, if not most, of that dream. Of course, sometimes, when you try to remember the dream, focus on it, it usually slips out of your memories faster than water running out of a cupped hand.

There's also been a lot of speculation on if you dream in black and white, or if you dream in color. Though scientific studies indicate that we dream in color, that doesn't mean it's not possible to dream in black and white. In fact, depending on the information and imagery the brain uses for the visual part of the dream, humans are capable of dreaming in any combination of colors. Certain drugs or medication may alter the sleeper's view on the colorization. On the other hand, researchers say that out of thousands of dream laboratory studies, there hasn't been one instance in which a sleeper has reported their dream to be in black and white. In fact, the sleeper ususally describes the color in a lot of detail. Of course, this could be because when you dream about, say, an apple, you know the apple is red. Maybe you do dream in black and white, but when you wake up, you say the apple is red, because you automatically know the apple is red. This is just my theory, mind you. I actually don't think we dream in black and white. I think we dream in color, though I don't dismiss the statement that some dream in black and white, and that we are capable of dreaming in black and white. 

  

        Now let's talk about nightmares. Ever wondered why you don't always have a good dream? Why you sometimes have bad dreams, more commonly known as nighmares? While a lot of people believe that it's caused because of something you heard or watched, most nighmares aren't caused by movies or stories. But it's also important to know the difference between night terrors and nighmares. Night terrors don't occur during REM sleep, and they usually cause screaming and thrashing. Night terrors are rarely remembered.

       Nightmares do occur during REM sleep, and they cause fear, but most of the time, they do not cause the screaming and other affects of night terrors. Nightmares can be remember just as well as any other dream, which, when you think of how many dreams you remember, isn't very much. Some people remember the sensations, but not the pictures. Nightmares are just nightmares, though that doesn't mean they shouldn't be taken seriously. During a nightmare, your pulse and body sweat may rise, which are the causes of real fear, and while some people think that only children have nightmares, then I'm sorry to crush their beliefs so badly, because adults do have nightmares, and some can have pretty bad ones. Children may have more nightmares, yes, but most adults do ave nightmares. The difference, however, between a child having a nightmare and an adult having one is that the adult seems to be better at forgetting the nighmare, or at pushing it out of their mind.

          But what causes nightmares? Oh, well, there's a lot of reasons. Nightmares don't have one single cause, so there's no single solution of stopping them. Sometimes physical factors are involved, like an illness or medication. Sometimes it's something to do with some sort of stress that you've been having. It could be trauma, too. Other times it could be some small worry that has been ignored for a long time. Nighmares don't usually cause any physical harm, other than interupting your sleep, and I don't know about you, but that's enough harm for me. I hate anything interrupting my sleep. But just because they don't cause phsical harm, doesn't mean that it can't have an impact on your life. Sometimes, after a nightmare, you go through the day irritable, moody, and/or depressed. Wow. Then I must have a lot of nightmares.....

        Well, that's it for this blog. Sorry it was so long, but I'm interested in this topic. Oops. Maybe I rambled....like I am now. I really hope you learned something here today. I know I learned a lot. Now, my classmates aren't doing the same thing as I am....SuperSara's doing the Loch Ness Monster, Logan's doing dolphins, and Katie is science and pseudoscience. Don't know what they are? Read the blogs! For now, sweet dreams!

Katie's Blog: Science or Pseudoscience?

SuperSara's Blog: It's Loch-ed up! Is Nessie Real?

Logan's Blog: Dolphins

An Online Guide to Dream Interpreations

Dream Meaning and Interpreation

Dreams and Nightmares