And why do we remember some and not others?
What Do Dreams Mean, Really?
We’ve all had those crazy, vivid dreams that trigger a Google search the second we wake up. But what do dreams mean, if anything, about our waking lives? We spoke with medical experts who study all the weird ways our mind functions to better understand just what goes on in our head after we doze off. Read on to learn what dreams actually are and why we have them.
What are dreams?
Before we dive into what lies beneath those hyperrealistic dreams you spend way too much time overanalyzing in the a.m.—you know, the ones about loosing all your teeth or finding yourself unexpectedly giving birth—it’s important to understand what dreams are. A sign from the universe? Your anxiety making its debut as an subconscious movie director?
“Dreams represent sleep mentation”—a.k.a. imagery and thinking during sleep—“and there are many dimensions to that,” says David Neubauer, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. In other words, dreams are a series of fragmented visions and thoughts that come to us while we’re unconscious.
Dreams occur mostly during REM sleep, also known as paradoxical sleep—a sleep stage in which “your brain is moderately active and thinking about things and processing information,” says Philip Gehrman, Ph.D., associate professor of clinical psychology in psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “But there’s this disconnect between what is going on in our brain and reality.” (If you’re curious about where REM, or rapid eye movement, sleep got its name, Gehrman says that while our eyes remain very still throughout most of the sleep cycle, it’s during this stage that our eyes start to move around, even corresponding to the dreams we’re having at that moment. “If we dream that we see a bird flying through the air, our eyes will actually look up as if we’re looking at the bird,” Gehrman says.)
Most of our dreams take place during REM sleep, but we can have dreams throughout other stages of the sleep cycle. “We now understand that you can dream in other stages of sleep as well; however, non-REM dreams are the ones that are bland, boring, and usually not too interesting,” says Gehrman. So if you find yourself dreaming of waking up and heading to the bathroom to brush your teeth—a normal morning routine—chances are you’re out of the REM stage.
Why do we dream?
Do dreams serve a purpose besides making us wonder what the universe could possibly be signaling? Scientists believe they do, but there’s still a lot of research to be done before we get close to a definite answer. “There are two types of theories,” says Gehrman. “Some are about the function of dreaming, and other theories are about the function of REM sleep, where the idea is that there is something happening in the brain during REM sleep that’s really important."
So what exactly are our minds trying to achieve in middle of the night? Gehrman explains that it’s during the REM stage when all the new information we learned during the day gets incorporated into our memory network. “The information in your brain doesn't exist in independent memories; the information is connected to each other—and those connections form during REM sleep,” he says.
In a pivotal dream study published in the journal Science, a group of participants played Tetris on and off for a period of several days. On game days, researchers would wake the participants every few minutes in the first hour of when they fell asleep—they discovered that most recalled dreaming of floating objects that moved just as they did in the game. Gehrman says that takeaways like these provide evidence that our dreams are one of the ways our brains work through the events of the day.
Advertisement“One thing that we do know is that the emotional content reflects our waking emotions—if we’re experiencing a stressor or anxiety that actually follows us into sleep,” says Gehrman. That explains why you might find yourself dreaming about being back in school and missing a test if you’ve been really anxious about your job.
Neubauer adds that while our dreams can be useful for helping us better remember things, they can also help us forget the moments we’d rather not hold on to. “Think of it as a computer processing what is important to keep and what to get rid of,” he says.
Do dreams actually mean anything?
From a scientific point of view, do our dreams actually mean anything? “When we think about the meaning of our dreams and where they come from, there are lots of ideas,” says Gehrman. “Sigmund Freud would say our dreams reflect what’s going on in our unconscious and represent wish fulfillment, while Carl Jung would say that our dreams reflect our collective unconscious and more about what is going on for us culturally.” This is where dream interpreters come in.
Why do some people have lucid dreams?
The power of the mind takes on a whole new meaning when you’re lucid dreaming—suddenly you’re conscious that you’re asleep but you’re still not awake. The mind is a powerful thing! When it comes to who is more likely to have lucid dreams, age might be a determining factor. “We’re more likely to lucid-dream when we’re younger,” Gehrman says. “My hypothesis is that as we get older, because we are more easily awoken, it’s harder for our brains to remain asleep once we become aware that we’re dreaming.” This may explain why you’ve found yourself experiencing lucid dreams less frequently now than when you were a teen.
Why do we remember some dreams and forget others?
If you’re still stuck on a dream that happened months ago but can’t even begin to recall the one you had last night, that’s a good indicator you didn't “wake out” of your latest one. “A lot of the time, dreams occur at the end of these 90-minute sleep cycles. And at the end of each sleep cycle is a period of night where we are most likely to wake up,” says Gehrman. “Often we wake up for maybe 15, 30 seconds—not long enough that we remember waking up the next day, but it’s long enough for our brain to store the dream in memory.” If you don’t experience that brief awakening, you’re less likely to recall the dream in the morning.
On the positive side, Neubauer thinks another reason you may forget a dream here or there may simply be due to having a night of uninterrupted sleep. “It might be that those who don’t remember their dreams are simply sleeping more soundly.” Interestingly enough, he explained that developing sleeping disorders could actually make you more inclined to remember your dreams. “An example would be of a person who typically would not be aware of their dreaming and then over a period of time becomes more aware,” he says. “One reason that that might be is if they developed obstructive sleep apnea, which makes it more likely that someone will awaken from their REM sleep and therefore be more aware of dreaming."
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Michella Oré
