In 1953 scientists discovered REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. A couple times a week we fall into REM, a type of sleep where your eyes move a lot under your eyelids. Each time we fall into REM sleep it lasts 10 minutes to an hour! Its during these minutes that we dream the most. Dreams combine strong sensations, images and story lines that tend to not make a lot of sense. They also tend to contribute to strong emotions. The emotion that is most common in dreams is anxiety.
We have found dream interpretation guides! Some of the oldest books of existence, ancient culture says that our spirits go to a dream world when we sleep. They also thought dreams were omens, or messages about the future. It wasn't till the twentieth century that scientists started studying dreams. Well the studying of dreams actually started in 1899 that the book, The Interpretation of dreams was published by Sigmund Freud. In his book he called dreams "the road to the unconscious". He thought dreams were a way to fulfill our desire for wishes, representing things we want to happen that we may not consciously know about. He influenced several people along with his student Carl Jung, who helped him with the research. They controlled most of the research about dreams for a long time until others joined in trying to figure out all they can about dreams.
Have you ever heard the term "sleep on it", well many people even long ago have said they went to bed and woken up with a solution. Many scientists think dreams come from somewhere psychological but more recent studies have shown that dreams may not have a reason. So, as you can see there are many different theories but no one knows for sure why they happen. One of the theories is called the activation-synthesis theory. It says dreams happen due to "random electrical signals" that come through our brain. It also says that they don't have a point and the brain tries to make the random pictures make sense. However, other theories say dreams are more of a physical effect on the brain. For instance one of the researchers,called Francis Crick said that dreams are a way for the brain to clean out the unnecessary memories. (Francis discovered the structure of DNA!) Maybe in the future someone will find out what dreams are for sure. It might be something between all the theories.
Well I can't leave you without some links, so here ya go! :)
Click here for more about health theories for dreams!
Click here to see more about REM and how dreams work!
