...REM sleep The story of my search Sleep has been going on for lifetimes on end, but it wasn’t truly discovered until 1920.(“A Brief 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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...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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...Nelson Most dreams contain messages that serve to teach us something about ourselves. Unfortunately, many a times we forget what we dream about. We go about our daily lives and routines without thinking about a dream we may have had that night. With recurring dreams, the message may be so important and /or powerful that it just will not go away. The frequent repetition of such dreams forces you to pay attention and confront the dream. The dream is trying to tell you something. Such dreams are often nightmarish or frightening in their content, which also helps you to take note and pay attention to them. Recurring dreams are quite common and are often triggered by a certain life experience or situation or a problem that keeps coming back again and again. These dreams may recur daily, once a week, or once a month, but whatever the frequency, there is little variation to the dream. It usually points to a personal weakness, fear, or your inability to cope with something in your life – past or present. The repetitive patterns in your dreams can reveal some of the most valuable information on yourself. It may point to a conflict, situation or matter at work or at home, a situation in your waking life that remains unresolved or unsettled. Some urgent underlying message in your unconscious is demanding to be understood. Dreams are strongly associated with sleep. They may occur in all stages of sleep including the REM sleep and NREM sleep. It is implied that dreams are prevalent...
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...Disease and REM Sleep Behavior Disorder Sukhwinder Randhawa Introduction: “Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease” (7). When the cells that produce dopamine die then Parkinson’s disease arises. Dopamine is a “chemical that carries signals between the nerves in the brain” (7) to control movement. Since movement is no longer monitored and controlled certain body parts start to shake uncontrollably. Although Parkinson’s disease has no cure it can be somewhat controlled through medication. However Parkinson’s disease would be easier to control if it could be diagnosed earlier. By the time Parkinson’s disease is diagnosed, a person has already lost 80% of their dopamine neurons. In order to diagnose Parkinson’s disease earlier on doctors and patients need to see the sign and symptoms beforehand. Researchers have come upon the fact that an earlier way of diagnosing Parkinson’s disease might be through watching the patients sleeping patterns. Researchers are saying that REM sleep behavior disorder might share a common cause with Parkinson’s disease. REM sleep behavior disorder is a disorder in which there is rapid eye movement while a person is sleeping. It is a type of parasomnia in which vivid dreams are associated with the enactment of dreams. This disorder is a “dysfunction in REM sleep and the motor control circuitry in the pontomedullary structures” (2) which causes the loss of control over movement, especially of the eyes. Within this new discovery the REM sleep behavior...
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...Research suggests that the majority of of dreams occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a recurring cycle of high activity in Stage III and Stage IV sleep. Every thirty minutes at the onset of Stage III sleep, a 90 minute period of REM sleep begins, a phenomenon known as REM rebound. [1] REM is a period of sleep in which the nervous system matures rapidly[2]; infants spend half their sleep in the REM state. [3] During REM sleep, the eyes move at rapid speeds beneath the eyelids, and the body is paralyzed, while in non-REM (nREM), it is not. It has been studied that dreams, while rare, can also occur in nREM sleep; they are often short and involve thought from everyday life when compared to REM dreams using a bizarreness scale. While there is much evidence supporting that dreams happen during REM sleep, there is no definite conclusion yet that REM correlates with dreaming....
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...How do dreams differ in people with schizophrenia to from those without the disorder? Kristin Staub Brookfield High School Dreaming is a vital part in sleeping, yet in some individuals it interferes in their waking state. For example, schizophrenics have hallucinatory images while they’re not sleeping causing some psychologists to speculate why this happens. People without the disorder and other people with other disorders have been found to dream while they’re in REM sleep which is a major mental process that allows people to dream. The following articles, “Sleep Fantasy in Normal and Schizophrenic Persons,” “An Extension of Freud and Jung’s Theory of Relation of Dream States to Schizophrenia,” “The Neurochemistry of Waking and Sleeping Mental Activity: The Disinhibition-Dopamine Hypothesis,” “Dream Content of Schizophrenics, Nonschizophrenic Mentally Ill, and community Control Adolescents,” “Sleep Disturbance in Schizophrenia” “Rorschach Responses Subsequent to REM Deprivation in Schizophrenic and Nonschizophrenic Patients,” attempt to explain the problem statement: How do dreams differ in people with schizophrenia to those without the disorder, through REM sleep in normal individuals and schizophrenics. Dream content will also be investigated to answer the problem statement and certain sleep habits. In addition Jung’s and Freud’s theory attempt to explain how dreaming is connected with schizophrenia in their conscious state rather than in their sleeping state through...
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...Nadira Farha Extra Credit Paper Dr.Adviye Tolunay 11/25/14 “Sleep” Do you ever wonder why you don’t dream when you sleep? The truth is, if you are getting proper amounts of sleep in proper time periods, and not taking medications or using alcohol or illegal substances, you are dreaming. You just don’t remember them unless they wake you. Sleep has been determined like a state optimizes the consolidation of newly acquired information in memory. It depends on the specific conditions of learning and the timing of sleep. Sleep is divided into two states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement (NREM), which involves slow wave sleep (SWS, stage 3 and 4) and the others is lighter sleep which occurs on stage 1 and 2. First, stage 1 When we are preparing to drift off, we go though Alpha and Theta, and have periods of dreaminess, almost like daydreaming, except we are beginning to fall asleep. These are interesting states, in that we experience them throughout the day and some people may have more of these waves than others. Those who practice meditation, or deep prayerfulness, often kind of “hang out” in Alpha. It’s a restful place. During this stage, it’s not unusual to experience strange and extremely vivid sensations or a feeling of falling followed by sudden muscle contractions. These are known as hypnogogic hallucinations. You may even feel like you are hearing someone call your...
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...INTRODUCTION Dalai Lama once said “ Sleep is the best meditation”. Sleep is just like a medicine; it can perform wonders, only if it’s given an adequate amount of time. Science has proved that sleep deprivation can cause sleepiness, malaise and a depression of the immune system. The quality and quantity of sleep often go hand in hand. Through this paper I will be evaluating the role of adenosine and melatonin on sleep and will discuss the human sleep stages, in particular, the REM phase, using the sleep log. ROLE OF ADENOSINE Adenosine is an inhibitory neurotransmitter believed to play a role in promoting sleep and suppressing arousal, with levels increasing with each hour when an organism is awake. Adenosine makes a person drowsy after a day’s accumulation and recovery after a night’s depletion. On evaluating my sleep log, I realized the effect of adenosine on human sleep. On the 21st of September I had a cup of coffee an hour before I took a power nap at 4:30pm. I was suffering from a slight headache and had a coffee, not realizing it would act against me. The caffeine increased my heart rate and made me feel more energetic. I thought I’d take a power nap so that I could concentrate on my work again. I tried very hard to take a good nap, but I didn’t succeed. I kept tossing from side to side. On doing my research I realized what was happening to me. Caffeine related drinks mask the effect of adenosine, which can prevent a person from feeling drowsy as the day proceeds. A...
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...Holzinger (2009), suggests that dreams have been a major importance to cultures throughout the ages. Native Americans viewed dreams as portals to the spirit world, paths to prophecy and quests. A common phenomenon states, there is an experience in which one is aware that one is dreaming and is able to control what happens in the dream. This experience is known as lucid dreaming. Aristotle may have been the first to write about lucid dreaming, although he did not have a term for it (Holzinger B. , 2009). And some Tibetan Buddhists have been practicing something like lucid dreaming for a long time. In Tibetan Buddhism, it was practiced as a form of yoga, called dream yoga, from the eighth century. The goal of dream yoga is to examine your consciousness and bring you to a constant state of awareness. A big part of the belief system of Buddhism is recognizing the world for what it is, free from deception. A lucid dreamer recognizes the dream world for what it is, a dream (Holzinger B. , 2009). A Dutch psychiatrist named Frederik van Eeden came up with the term for lucid dreams in 1913. He claimed that there are nine well-defined types of dreams in all, including ordinary, symbolic and vivid dreams. He recorded several of his own lucid dreams, and his thoughts during them and upon awakening. He remarked that they often involved flying (Holzinger B. , 2009). Lucid dreaming is normally a rare experience. Though most people report having had a lucid dream at least once in their lives...
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...Stages of sleep Until sleep was accidentally measured researchers had no idea that sleep had different stages, before all they could do was time how long people slept and record their movement to try to interpret whether they are dreaming, etc. There was very limited research in this area until it was discovered that using an electroencephalograph (EEG) which records the average electrical potentials of cells and fibers to record the rise and falls when cells fire in synchrony during sleep. This has shown that there are many different stages that occur during sleep. Loomis, Harvey and Hobart discovered in 1937 that when using EEG at the beginning and also throughout sleep showed clear stages in the change of electrical activity in the brain. This allowed sleep to be measured now as a perpetual process and also showed that sleep appears to be made-up of ‘a complex mosaic of stages or conditions’, (H.W.Agnew,Jr & Webb.B.W, 1973). Humans need approx. eight hours sleep a night, this is different to other animals, however it has been shown that non-human animals also go through similar stages of sleep. During humans’ eight hours of sleep brain activity and eye movement change can be split into different stages. These stages are compared to a state of relaxed wakefulness. Alpha waves are recorded at a frequency of 8 to 12 per second. Alpha waves are present when a human is in a state of relaxed wakefulness. This is known as stage 0, when the human is not quite asleep...
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...During REM sleep dreams can be characterized as being nonsensical, bizarre, and the individual is left unaware that they are dreaming. Certain neural patterns describe this state, such as, the deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Contrastly, lucid dreaming describes a state of sleep where the individual is aware that they are dreaming. Lucid dreaming can also be characterized by increase of 40-Hz wave activity and coherence in the frontal region of the brain. It is interesting to note that lucid dreamers are able to communicate their state by eye movements that can be tracked by an electrooculogram. Apart from the awesome idea of being aware that one is dream, lucid dreaming also have some benefits, such as, treating nightmares. In order to understand the neural changes in lucid dreaming and examine its neural correlates EEG and fMRI techniques were used in this study to compare lucid vs non-lucid REM sleep....
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...Why do we Dream? --http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/p/dream-theories.htm Many different theories have emerged to help explain the mystery of why we 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 you’ve often found yourself puzzling over the mysterious content of a dream, or perhaps you’ve wondered why you dream at all. First, let’s 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. Ads Do You Have Sleep Apnea? sleepapnea.com It's a very common sleep disorder. Are you at risk? Answer 9 questions "Shocking" 2014 Horoscope astrologyanswers.com/Zodiac Enter Your Zodiac Sign to Find Out Your Future. So accurate it’s Scary! Silva Mind Control www.silvalifesystem.com Learn How To Control Your Mind Get The Famous Silva Guide... Free * Psychology Psychotherapy * Sleep Disorders * Sleep Apnea Sleep Study * Sleep Center * Study Psychology So why do we dream? What purpose do dreams serve? While many theories have been proposed, no single consensus has emerged. Considering the...
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...Being able to control everything around you is only possible by lucid dreaming which is an unusual experience in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep where you are conscious that you are dreaming. In this way, people can 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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...to light on the retina, triggering alterations in the level of sleep-inducing melatonin. | What are the sleep stages? | Another biological rhythm is the sleep stages. | What are the five steps of the sleep stages? | we descend into transitional Stage 1 sleep, often with the sensation of falling or floating. Stage 2 sleep (in which we spend the most time) follows about 20 minutes later, with its characteristic sleep spindles. Then follow Stages 3 and 4, together lasting about 30 minutes, with large, slow delta waves. All these stages are referred to as NREM sleep. Reversing course, we retrace our path, but with one difference: About an hour after falling asleep,we begin periods of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. | Where does dreaming most prominently occur? | Most dreaming occurs in this fifth stage (also known as paradoxical sleep) of internal arousal but outward paralysis. | Which stage shortens REM sleep length? | During a normal night’s sleep, periods of Stages 3 and 4 sleep shorten and REM sleep lengthens. | What are the harmful effects of sleep deprivation? | Sleep deprivation causes fatigue and impairs concentration, creativity, and communication. | What are the additional effects of sleep loss? | It also can lead to obesity, hypertension, a suppressed immune system, irritability, and slowed performance (with greater vulnerability to accidents). | What are the benefits of sleep? | Sleep may have played a protective role in human evolution by keeping...
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...while it occurs. Sleep is truly a wondrous process. During sleep, our brain takes our bodies through five different stages: rapid eye movement and non-rapid eye movement, otherwise known as NREM, which represent four of the five stages. Each stage corresponds differently in length and produces different brain waves as well as dreams. The first stage of sleep is very brief and the sleeper experiences hypnogogic sensations. Stage two is a deep, twenty-minute cycle, and the third is short in length, much like the first. However, it is also the transitional period into stage four, which lasts thirty minutes long. REM sleep ends the course of the sleep cycle, lasting a total of ten minutes or more. Sleep begins in stage one and progresses into stages two, three, and four. After stage four, stage three and then stage two are repeated before entering REM sleep. The total time it takes for a person’s body to go through all five stages is about 90 minutes. Stage one is a very light sleep. The person is not technically asleep yet, for he/she is easily awakened. During this stage, many people may experience hallucinations that are mistaken for dreams and/or falling/floating sensations. David Meyers defines hallucinations as, “[f]alse sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.” (p.94) Many people will recall being pinned to their bed or floating, when in reality it was the normal occurrences of the first stage of sleep. During this stage...
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