DREAMING:

• Dreaming is said to occur in REM sleep, yet 15% of all REM awakenings had no reported dreams and 20% of all NREM awakenings have reported dreams (a lot have been discounted due to lack of vivid imagery but some remain).
• We also question if infants dream, they cannot give dream reports and due they have enough life experience to dream?
• Some researchers claim that children begin to dream at about 2 or 3 years old.

DREAM RECALL:

• There are few people in the world who do not dream and those who say they do not dream are not non-dreamers, but in fact non-recallers.
• We have on average about 4 dreams per night and can recall less than 1... Why?
• One possible explanation is Freud’s Repression Hypothesis.
• Repression Hypothesis: a Freudian hypothesis that our inability to recall the content of dreams derives from the threatening nature of the dream; forgetting protects us from the unpleasant dream material.
• Freud claimed that dreams consisted of latent content and manifest content.
• Latent Content: the hidden part of the dream that is obscured by various dream processes.
• Manifest Content: the part of the dream that is available for report.
• Freud claimed that even when dreams were recalled, the true meaning of the dream was often hidden.
• There are other possible explanations for the various elements of human dream recall.
• Saliance Hypothesis: the idea that highly emotional dreams are more likely to be remembered because of increased awareness of the dream content.
• Interference Hypothesis: an account of dreaming that states that our inability to recall dreams is due to the interfering effects of events that occur after the dream takes place.

DREAM CONTENT:

• Dream content is analyzed in sleep labs in which the individual is awakened during REM sleep and dream reports are tape-recorded.
• But why do we dream what we dream?
• Activation Synthesis Hypothesis: is the idea that dreams present a blending of thoughts that are produced by spontaneous neural activation during the REM period.
• Lucid Dreaming: dreaming in which a person is aware of dreaming.

DREAM INTERPRETATION:

• Dreams probably have meaning for the dreamer and can be accurately interpreted by the dreamer or someone who knows the dreamer well.

NIGHTMARES AND NIGHT TERRORS:

• Night Terrors: class of nightmare that usually occur during stage 4 sleep.
• Night terrors most often occur in preschoolers and are accompanied by signs of fear: increased heart-rate, rapid breathing, and dilated pupils.
• Children recall very little dream content although fear is clearly experienced.

FUNCTIONS OF DREAMS:

• Carl Jung suggests that: dreams a way to process experiences that have been repressed during the day.
• Another theory is that dreams (and REM sleep) may be involved in the repair of neurons through increased levels of protein synthesis.
• Francis Crick suggested that dreaming is a way to rid the brain of useless nonsensical information.
• Then there are the ideas of Freud the question remains.

This Web page was created and is maintained by Aaron Zafran, Mary Rozenman and Dave Zawitz.