The Meaning of Dreams
Friday, October 26th, 2007Everybody dreams. It is a matter of remembering our dreams. The question “Why do we dream?” still eludes science. Approximately every 90 minutes during the night we enter a period of light sleep. This may be for 20 minutes or just a few seconds. This part of the sleep-cycle is when we dream.
Serious sleep research began in the United States in the 1950s, and soon spread to specially designed sleep laboratories all over the world. By attaching electrodes to volunteers’ faces and scalps, scientists were able to measure brain-wave activity and other physical cycles through the night. One of the discoveries is that eyes (even of the blind) move about rapidly beneath closed lids during a dream. This was established by waking subjects at intervals. If volunteers are woken during rapid eye movement (REM) then they report dreams.
More recent experiments have established that dreams are essential to mental and physical well-being. When people have been deliberately denied dream-sleep they become quite disturbed, experiencing hallucinations and a range of psychotic symptoms.