...Why are dreams so interesting? They combine fact and fantasy to form a story in our minds. This speech will cover the meanings of dreams, the stages of sleep, notable dreams and some scientific theories about dreams. But what is a dream? Well, even today, on this very day nobody knows what a dream actually is. However there have been some explanations over the years. In the era when the Greek and Roman empires were established, they considered dreams as a religious context and believed that dreams were a direct message from the gods or the dead and that from these dreams, you could predict the future. More modern explanations are said that dreams are simply reflections of your subconscious or that dreams are made up of things that have happened...
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...The Causes of Certain Dreams Dreams depend on what a person eats before bed and the position which they sleep. The science of sleep explains perfectly what goes on in a person’s unconscious stage throughout the night. Each sleep stage describes how a person’s brain works and the way the body interferes with sleep. Some societies believed that truths are told or revealed through dreams as others think sleep is nonproductive, though essential activity. Someone also might not think the position of which they sleep changes their thought process, but it has been proven several times that it does. Eating can also be the cause of certain dreams. No matter what foods are eaten, there will be a change in a person’s slumber. People might wonder what...
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...of us have once have dreams. Dreams are a combination of images, sounds, emotions and ideas blended together to form and interesting story. In order to dream we must pass through five stages of sleep. The first stage is light sleep in which you are able to wake up easily. Stage two our breathing and heart rate slow and in the third stage you are in a deep sleep. By stage four you are in the deepest possible sleep. After 90 minutes of falling asleep and after stage four you enter REM sleeping. REM or otherwise known as Rapid Eye Movement is where you spend 20-25 percent sleeping. By the time you’ve awaken you have experienced four to seven dreams. So what happens if you can control your dream, well you are having a lucid dream. The definition of lucid dream is “when you realize you are dreaming and you are able to then control what happens in your dream.” It is estimated that around 100,000 people who possess this skill. Stephen LaBerge of Stanford University and Lynne Levitan had developed a technique for inducing lucid dreams. Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams or MILD is a two step system in which you recognize when you're dreaming and reentering a dream until you go sleep. But since this requires lots of mental training they are working on using external stimuli to induce lucid dreams. From 1940 to 1985, Calvin S. Hall has collected more than 50,000 dream reports and has outlined a coding system to study 1000 college students. Basically dreams all have a common emotion...
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...History of Sleep Research.”) Everybody needs sleep adults, kids, doctors, lawyers. The older you get the less time you spend in the REM stage of sleep. How much sleep do you actually remember your dreams and how much time do you dream in REM sleep? You spend about 20% of your sleep dreaming.(Russo) I started getting interested in REM sleep because I always wondered why we couldn’t remember our dreams. I started checking out books about why we dream and what our dreams mean. I asked my mom questions which she couldn’t answer because she hadn’t researched REM sleep. This first had an impact in 1961 by Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky.(“A Brief History of Sleep Research.”)Studies have shown that what you eat and drink before you go to bed can affect how much you dream in the REM stage.(Nick)This first...
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...Abstract In this paper I will be exploring the topic that many people are mystified about, dreams. This paper will go into the most thought provoking theory on how we can control and manipulate our minds to envision what we want to see at night. I will also include a brief history lesson on how people envisioned their dreams to mean in ancient civilizations. In addition on exploring on how many scientists says we can control our dreams, I will talk about case studies in which humans are put to the test on proving theories actually controlling dreams. Can We Control Our Dreams? From human’s earliest civilizations, we have pondered on the idea of -what are dreams? From this article name “The History and Meaning of Dreams” It stated that early...
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...metal well being. There are four stages of the sleep cycle. The first stage is considered the eyes being closed and can be woken without difficulty. This stage may last from 5 to 10 minutes and may cause muscle contractions. The second stage is where the body prepares for deep sleep. The muscles relax, heart rate slows and the body temperature will decrease. During stage three, the brain releases waves known as delta waves. This stage is the transitional period between light and deep sleep (http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/sleep-101). Stage four is considered the deepest sleep stage where sleep walking and bed wetting can occur. In this stage, REM sleep occurs which is rapid eye movement and dreaming occurs due to increase of brain activity but voluntary muscles become paralyzed (http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/SleepStages.htm). The five common beliefs about dreaming are: people believe that external stimuli can become incorporated into their dreams, some believe that dreams last only an instant, some claim that they do not dream, penile erections are commonly assumed to be indicative of dreams with sexual content and most people believe that sleep walking and sleep talking only occur only during dreaming. There are two common theories of dreams, one made by Freud who believed that dreams are triggered by unacceptable repressed wishes, often of a sexual nature. He argued that because dreams we experience are merely disguised...
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...control their dreams so to make them by preference. For the sleeper these dreams look real, however the dreamer knows that this is not a reality which makes this a skill that provides hours of enjoyable experience (Susan Blackmore, Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep?) There are four sleep stages: Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stage one, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stage two, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) stage three and four, which are grouped together due to the many similarities, and lastly, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. In the first stage we begin to lose self-awareness and muscle tone. In stage two our body is completely relaxed so as not to react to the upcoming dreams. Stages three and four are marked by the loss of senses and reaction to the environment. Finally...
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...Sigmund Freud revolutionized the study of dreams with his work The Interpretation Of Dreams. Freud developed several themes on dream psychology. He proposed the structure of the Human Psyche – the id, ego, and superego. Sigmund Freud was a world renowned psychologist and writer who forever changed the world of psychoanalysis. The three structures of the Human Psyche Freud proposed are: Id - centered around original impulses, pleasures, desires, and wish fulfillment. Ego - worried with the conscious, the sensible, the ethical and the self-aware aspect of the mind. Superego - the censor for the id, which is also responsible for enforcing the moral codes of the ego. (http://www.dreaminterpretation-dictionary.com/sigmund-freud-theory.html) First Freud believed that the Id directed our basic drive instincts. He said that it was unorganized and would seek to obtain pleasure or avoid pain. He described Id as chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations, it is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only motivation to bring out the satisfaction of instinctual needs. (http://www.dreaminterpretation-dictionary.com/sigmund-freud-theory.html) Next Freud thought of the Ego as the mediator, the egos job is to mediate the intropsychic conflict between the id and superego. The ego is the part of your personality that is responsible for dealing with reality, the ego strives to please the Id’s drive. ...
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...Stage 1 This is the beginning of the sleep cycle and is a relatively light stage. This is more of a transition period between wakefulness and sleep. In Stage 1, the brain produces high amplitude theta waves, which are very slow brain waves. This period of sleep lasts only a brief time (around 5-10 minutes). Stage 2 This stage lasts for approximately 20 minutes. The brain will begin to produce bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity known as sleep spindles. Your body temperature starts to decrease and heart rate begins to slow. Stage 3 This is deep, slow brain waves known as delta waves begin to emerge during stage 3 sleep. Stage 3 is a transitional period between light sleep and a very deep sleep. Stage 4 At this stage, sometimes referred to as delta sleep because of the slow brain waves. This is a deep sleep that last for approximately 30 mins. Dreaming A majority of the dreaming occurs during the stage referred to as REM, or the rapid eye movement stage. This is characterized by eye movement, in which the eyes dart back and forth under the eye lids. Dreaming occurs during this stage because of increased brain activity, voluntary muscles become paralyzed. There are five common beliefs about dreaming. They are: External stimuli are incorporated in to our dreams. Dreams last only an instant. They do not dream. Penile erections indicate sexual content of dreams. Sleep talking/walking can occur. Two common theories that have been considered...
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...A lot of psychologists made theories about sleep, each theory elucidates sleep in a different way. Sleeping is fine but with limits; it varies depending on the age and creature. For example, adults who sleep over twelve hours a day may be suffering from long sleeping which is a kind of sleep disorder. On the other hand, adults who sleep less than six hours a day are also suffering from a sleep disorder since the sleep very little. Sleep can be subcategorized into three different topics which are stages of sleep, sleep disorders, and dream theories. There are five stages of sleep which help humans maintain a healthy sleep. The author of the article Good Sleep For Good Health, explains how sleep starts with stage 1 and ends with REM sleep. The author provides information on how REM sleep is considered the final stage which means that during this stage one’s eyes start to move rapidly. According to author one cycle kickoffs with stage 1 and ends with REM sleep; in addition, one cycle takes somewhere from 90 to 110 minutes. The author emphasizes that...
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...five stages. The first stage is the beginning of the sleep cycle. It is considered to be a light stage of sleep. It is a transition period between wakefulness and sleep. Stage one lasts only a brief time (around 5-10 minutes). The second stage is when the brain begins to produce bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity known as sleep spindles. This only lasts for about 20 minutes and your body tempiture begins to decrease and the heart rate begins to slow down. The third stage is a transition between light and deep sleep. Your brain develops slow deep brain waves known as delta waves. The fourth stage is a very deep sleep that lasts for about 30 minutes, this is where delta sleep occurs and bed wetting as well as sleep walking is most likely to occur. Stage five is where most of our dreaming occurs. This is where we have our REM sleep. Respiration increases and so does brain activity. REM sleep is also referred to as paradoxical sleep because while the brain and other body systems become more active, muscles become more relaxed. Dreaming occurs due because of increased brain activity, but voluntary muscles become paralyzed. Our text lists two common theories about dreams, Freud and Hobson. Our text explains “Freud believed that dreams are triggered by unacceptable repressed wishes, often of a sexual nature. He argued that because dreams represent unacceptable wishes, the dreams we experience (our manifest dreams) are merely disguised versions of our real dreams.” Hobson...
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...Thesis Statement: Understanding how dreams occur, how they affect our lives and what they mean help us grasp what dreams actually are. Intro: I. (Attention Getter) Have you ever dreamt that you were walking along the side of a road or along a cliff and suddenly you trip? You’re falling for what seems like forever, but before hitting the ground, you wake up? This is considered to be a falling dream, and ironically, falling dreams occur when you are falling asleep. They are usually accompanied by muscle spasms and twitches of the entire body. Although these dreams occur while we are falling asleep, they interpret a completely different meaning. Falling can mean you are insecure, you are losing grip, or you simply have fears that need to be faced. Patricia Garfield, the author of Creative Dreaming states: “there is some problem that is making you feel helpless like you have no support, so next time when you wake up startled from a falling dream, ask yourself what upcoming events do I fear I will fail?” II. (Introduce Topic) Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to understand the different functions of the human body, how we move, talk, and even act. Many of these physiological behaviors have been explained to some extent. However, one area of the human body that has baffled researchers, is that of the mind. Many things that go on inside the mind that don’t make sense, and serves no real explanation as to why or how things happen. One of the most fascinating...
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...as our own mental effors and other mental skills. The stage range from alertness to sleep and everything in between. Alertness is most people think about it when they think about being Conscious. When you are alert, you are awake, aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on your environment. You can focus your attention, encode information and memory engage in conversation all stuff you normally do. Daydreaming occurs naturally. Sometimes you can find...
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...dreaming. What are dreams? This question has fascinated the human race throughout history. From the Ancient Greeks and Romans, to Sigmund Freud in the late 1800’s, till now, people have queried what the mystical stories that play out in the sleeping mind are and why we have them. The Sumerians in Mesopotamia left evidence of dreams dating back to 3100 BC. According to these stories, gods and kings, like the 7th century BC scholar-king Assurbanipal, paid close attention to dreams. In his archive of clay tablets, some accounts of the story of the legendary king Gilgamesh were found (Seligman). The Mesopotamians believed that the soul, or some part of it, moves out from the body of the sleeping person and actually visits the places and people the dreamer sees in their sleep. Sometimes the god of dreams is said to carry the dreamer. Babylonians and Assyrians divided dreams into "good," which were sent by the gods, and "bad," sent by demons. They also believed that their dreams were omens and prophecies. In ancient Egypt, as far back as 2000 BC, the Egyptians wrote down their dreams on papyrus. People with vivid and significant dreams were thought blessed and were considered special. Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were like oracles, bringing messages from the gods. They thought that the best way to receive divine revelation was through dreaming and so they would induce dreams. Egyptians would go to sanctuaries and sleep on special "dream beds" in hope of receiving...
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...the stages of sleep and physiological correlates associated with each stage. The normal sleep cycle is in four stages. Alpha waves begin the sleep process, there are highs and lows from 8- to 12-Hz EEG waves considered low-voltage, high-frequency waves of “dozing off”, as we fall asleep, we move in to the stage 1 of sleep. The stage 1 sleep EEG is a type of low-voltage, high-frequency signal with a gradual increase in EEG voltage and a decrease in EEG frequency progressing from stage 1 through stage 4. Stage 1 sleep is where REM sleep takes place. The brain activity during this time increases in various parts of the brain primarily in the cerebrum, with an increase...
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