Dreams

A series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep

The Theories Behind Dreams

• Early Civilizations- Medium between our earthly world and that of the Gods
• Greeks and Romans- Messages given to us by the Gods which had prophetic powers

THE THEORIES BEHIND DREAMS

• Sigmund Freud-Desires that we aren't able to express in social settings
• Carl Jung- Reflections of ourselves which help us solve problems or think through issues.
• Allan Hobson & Robert McCarley- Results of random electrical brain impulses (Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis)

Brain Waves

• Each represents a different speed of oscillating electric voltages to the brain
• Delta: 0 to 4 cycles per second
• Theta: 4 to 7 cycles per second
• Alpha: 8 to 13 cycles per second
• Beta: 13- 40 cycles per second

The Brain

• Inferior Lingual Gyrus
• Amygdala
• Hippocampus

Sleeping Stages

• Light sleep which is easy to wake up from
• Slightly deeper sleep
• Deepest Sleep
• REM: Rapid Eye Movement

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Dream Recall

Controlling Dreams

• Lucid Dreaming-learned skill that gives you the ability to realize that you are dreaming; you are able to then control what happens in your dream while asleep
• Dream Incubation- The ability to come up with what you are going to dream

Dream Interpretation

• Symbolic messages that may not be clear to us on the surface.
• Nonsense that the brain creates from fragments of images and memory

Premonitions of Dreams

• Ability to gain information about an upcoming event prior to the event happening
• Has not been scientifically disproved or scientifically proven either

Recurring Dreams and Nightmares

• Recurring dreams - There's something in your life you've not acknowledged that is causing stress of some sort;dream repeats because you have not corrected the problem.
• Nightmares- Caused by some medications and/or events that deal with a lot of emotion (stress, anxiety, sadness, anger.)

Food and Dreams

• No conclusive proof that eating X food will result in Y dream
• Our genome plays a role in how we process food and, consequently, how that is translated in our dreaming brains.
• Overconsumption of foods can modify how the DNA in the brain cell’s feeding center behaves in the long-term, and short-term effects

Food and Dreams

• During REM sleep delta waves starts releasing hormones, which not only help metabolize food you’ve just eaten
• Alcohol- Prevents us from having REM sleep
• Foods in high calorie energy- isruption in sleep cycle due to digestion
• Chocolate and Spices-May influence brain function due to the complex variety of chemicals contained → strange dreams