English: Sleep and Dream

The Science of Dreams

You have dreams basically every night, right? Well sometimes we wonder why we would have such a good or bad dream. I have always wondered that, so I gathered enough information to write an eight page essay about dreams. The science of dreams, mostly every night we have a dream. The science term for a dream is oneirology. The word dream comes from the Middle English phrase “drem.” Sometimes dreams feel as if they last all night, but most of them don’t. A human body can make the dream seem as if it is truly happening. Some dreams are so terrible that people have to get counseling for them. Where other dreams are so good that people think it will actually happen. Dreams can change a person’s life. Dreams can scar us for life especially kids. As a responsible parent you should not let your child hang around “bad business” or watch over rated movies. This is America’s number one issue among psycho people. If the rating on a movie is PG-13, R, or UNRATED you should not let a child under the recommended age watch it because they aren’t ready to see that type of action. A child might not be mature enough to watch the movie and it will stick with them all through life. A movie can give a child or even a mature adult a night mare. It is a proven fact that children who watch those movies are more than likely going to attempt it at some point in their life. The human brain can make you think up some crazy dreams too. When your mind sees things it packs it into your brain. Even though you might not think you remember these things, it doesn’t mean that they are gone. Pretend that 1 year ago you watched a horror film,
No big deal right? Well last night you had a dream that suddenly reminds you of that movie. Crazy! Your brain stored away enough information from that movie to make you dream about a year later. Now let’s say that 6 years ago your best friend died, last night you had a dream they never died. You wake up the next morning excited to call them and their parent’s answered the phone and told you they died 6 years ago in a car accident. It makes you feel ignorant when you do the things you dream but sometimes you can’t control it. That is why this dream is called a reality dream. The reason why you have reality dreams is because you were more than likely thinking about that person or thing recently. A similar type of dream is a False Awakening dream. This is a vivid dream where you “awake” from your sleep in your dream, but in reality you are still sound asleep. When you wake up in your dream you might do your regular morning routine such as, eating breakfast, washing dishes, or brushing your teeth. Now when you wake up for real you might believe you have done all of these things just to go into your kitchen on an empty stomach, to find dirty dishes, and have a dirty mouth. This dream is sometimes called a dream inside of a dream. Dreams that repeat themselves are called a Recurring Dreams. They often have very little variation in the story, plot, and/or theme. Recurring dreams are very seldom positive but can be. They are most normally negative night mares. What causes a dream to recur can be that the conflict in the dream has yet to be solved. Usually when you solve the problem the dream will cease to exist. When you dream about something and you can’t seem to make it go away it is classified as an epic dream. You just can’t seem to ignore these dreams. You remember it so well that it seems as if you dreamt it last night. They are usually about inner or outer beauty of yourself or earth. A Mutual dream is when two people dream about the same thing. You certainly must have some relation to the person whether they are your best friend, teacher, relative (near or far), or even your neighbor. Let’s say you talked to you cousin last weekend and you saw her today in tutoring, the two of you had to write an essay on your dream you had last night. You had to read them aloud to the teacher and they said the same thing! Your teacher thought you copied off each other and gave you both zeros. Later that day you discuss it with each other and found out that you had a mutual dream. It happens to more people than you think. Dreaming in color, this is a type of dreaming that happens to some people but others aren’t as lucky. Almost 12% of America dreams in black and white. The others dream in color. The 12% is mostly people over the age of 10. It can happen to teenagers but most likely to happen to the older generations. The average human has 4 dreams a night. That is 1460 dreams per year! A common question about dreams is do blind people dream? People who have been blind since birth are more than likely to have musical dreams because they have never been able to see. They also have dreams about tasting, touching, and smelling certain things! Though, people who go blind can see a dream just like we do. Blind people aren’t as stupid as normal people think they are. Some of them are more normal than us. People who play video games are more than likely to have dreams related to video games. When you sit in front of a television screen all day, it becomes your life. Your life makes your dreams. Therefore you might have crazy dreams. Do all dreams have a hidden meaning? This question remains unanswered to this day! Some people say yes but others say no. More than likely dreams are gathered from our thoughts and real life events. Normal dreams are just “brain doodles.” Can animals dream? This is another question that may never be answered. The only thing Humans can measure from that is REM (rapid eye movement). This is just sleep that is more or less associated with dreams. Every animal/mammal has REM sleep, along with humans but we don’t always dream during REM. Another good question would be do drugs increase crazy dreams? Oh yes! They make dreams more scary and vivid. People who take L-dopa from suffering Parkinson’s disease are the ones this puts the most effect on. There is really no proof of how strong this issue is and there is no proof that any other drug can make you have crazier dreams than normal but L-dopa does the job. Why are dreams so forgettable? An average person will forget 95-99% of their dreams! That seems like an awful lot, but really it isn’t as much as you think. The reason why this happens is because we sleep right on through them and we don’t care to remember them. Why doesn’t a young child recall having a dream? There is proof that children under the age 9 don’t dream that much. Some people claim that there child has a dream every time they go to sleep but this is probably just sleep talking. We all have short awaking during our regular night that only last a few seconds but we never remember them the next morning! This might be where the mix-up about dreams occurs. When we have a dream about dying will we really die? No. this has also been proven, we are more than likely to die in our sleep than in real life. If you die in your dream it is defiantly false. Some sleep disorders will make you have some out of this word dreams too. Insomnia for example is the inability to fall asleep or to get a significant lack of sleep, this is often triggered by dreams is normal sleep. Sleep apnea actually makes you stop breathing in your sleep mainly during REM. My dad has both Insomnia and Sleep apnea so I know a lot about them.