Vivid Dreams Research Paper

Dreaming is an involuntary action in which a person experiments successions of visions, thoughts, sounds, emotions or sensations while is asleep. It mostly occurs during the rapid eye movement (REM) phase when limb muscles are temporarily paralyzed. Dreams throughout REM tend to be more bizarre and vivid than those happening during other stages of sleep. Although dreaming has been widely investigated, we still cannot answer exactly what its purpose is. It exists a wide variety of theories from different fields that tries to explain why we dream.

There are several neurobiological theories about why we dream. The continual activation theory suggest that dreaming is used to process and store information into long-term memory, that is to say dreams are memories retrieved by the brain to keep working memory
Sanctuaries to invoke dreams were built in hope of receiving divine revelations, and the possibility of having vivid dreams was considered as a blessing. In many cultures, dreams are used to predict the future, which could be revealed literally or symbolically. In the Muslin society a decision like choosing a future spouse could be taken through a particular dream. In other societies, dreams are symptoms of illness. Especially in indigenous tribes, shamans use dreams to detect and cure spiritual diseases caused by evils. Different cultures and religions propose that we dream because of a spiritual reason.

After reviewing some of the many theories, which go from the spiritual and ethereal origin of dreams, passing through their possible physiological causes to the psychological reasons, we still cannot find an accurate answer to respond, “why do we dream?”. The main problem is that even with today’s technology, we cannot prove or disapprove any of them. It is possible that the real reason is a mixture of different theories. The brain is still a mystery for human