Are they a product of your subconscious Dream is a word used to describe the subconscious experience of a sequence of images sounds ideas emotions or other sensations usually during sleep especially REM sleep There is no neurologically agreed upon biological definition for dreaming It is known that dreams are strongly associated with REM sleep But there is a lot that is unknown about dreams and the purpose of dreams is interpreted in many different ways What is the purpose of dreams Do we need to dream Are dreams an interaction between your subconscious and conscious REM stands for rapid eye movement REM sleep is a state of sleep in which brain activity is most like wakefulness Eugene Aserinsky discovered REM sleep in 1953 while working in the lab of his PhD advisor Aserinsky noticed that the sleepers eyes fluttered beneath their closed eyelids He later used a polygraph machine to record the sleeper s brain waves during these periods Adult humans spend about a quarter of their sleep time in REM approximately 90 120 minutes much of it dreaming During a typical night humans experience 4 or 5 periods of REM sleep short periods at the beginning of the night and longer periods as the night progresses Amount of REM sleep varies with age a newborn baby typically spends more than 80 of total sleep time in REM Physiologically certain neurons in the brain step known as REM sleep on cells located in the pontine tegmentum are particularly active during REM sleep and are probably responsible for its occurrence The release of certain neurotransmitters the monoamines are completely shut down during REM This causes REM atonia a state in which the motor neurons are not stimulated and thus the body s muscles don t move Lack of such REM atonia causes REM Behavior Disorder where sufferers act out the movements occurring in their dreams Heart rate and breathing rate are irregular during REM sleep Body temperature is not well regulated during REM sleep Lucid dreaming occurs when dreamers realize that they are dreaming lucid dreaming can occur with varying levels of awareness and dream control The dreamers are sometimes capable of changing their dream environment and controlling various aspects of their dream The dream environment is often much more realistic in a lucid dream and the senses heightened The realization is usually triggered by the dreamer noticing some impossible or unlikely occurrence in the dream Two types of lucid dreaming dream initiated lucid dreaming and wake initiated lucid dreaming Dream initiated lucid dreaming Starts off as a normal dream until the dreamer realizes that they re dreaming Wake initiated lucid dreaming The dreamer goes from a normal waking state directly into a dream state with no apparent lapse in conscousness Time passage appears to be the same during lucid dreaming as when awake There are How to books on lucid dreaming websites focused on teaching people the art and science of lucid dreaming advertisements stating Now instead of wasting up to Eight Hours Every Single Day with normal sleep by mastering the art of lucid dreaming I am now able to enjoy truly mind blowing experiences every night www lucid dreamer info Lucid dreaming is very appealing to people and many try to learn how to become lucid dreamers and control their dreams Is this possible Dreams provide clues to the nature of more serious mental illness Schizophrenics for example have poor quality dreams usually about objects rather than people According to one study good dreamers people who have vivid dreams with strong story lines are less likely to remain depressed It is thought that dreaming helps diffuse strong emotions Dreaming is believed to be a mental health activity However no one has yet been able to say that REM sleep or dreaming are essential to life or even sanity MAO inhibitors an older class of antidepressants essentially block REM sleep without any detectable effects although people do get a REM rebound extra REM if they stop the medication That s also true of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors SSRIs like Prozac which reduce dreaming by a third to a half The Ontogenetic Hypothesis of REM sleep states that this sleep phase is particularly important to the developing brain possibly because it provides the neural stimulation that newborns need to form mature neural connections and for proper nervous system development Studies investigating the effects of Active Sleep deprivation have shown that deprivation early in life can result in behavioral problems permanent sleep disruption decreased brain mass Mirmiran et al 1983 and result in an abnormal amount of neuronal cell death Morrissey Duntley Anch 2004 REM sleep is necessary for proper central nervous system development Marks et al 1995 Further supporting this theory is the fact that the amount of REM sleep decreases with age as well as the data from other species Zhang hypothesizes that the function of sleep is to process encode and transfer the data from the temporary memory to the long term memory NREM sleep processes the conscious related memory declarative memory and REM sleep processes the unconscious related memory procedural memory Numerous studies have suggested that REM sleep is important for consolidation of procedural and spatial memories A recent study Marshall Helgad ttir M lle Born 2006 shows that artificial enhancement of the REM sleep improves the next day recall of memorized pairs of words Freud proposed that dreams protect sleep which might be disturbed by the arousal of unacceptable wishes Ferenczi proposed that dreams may communicate something that is not being said outright subconscious thoughts There have also been analogies made with the cleaning up operations of computers when they are off line Dreams may remove parasitic nodes and other junk from the mind during sleep Dreams may also create new ideas through the generation of random thought mutations Dreams may also regulate mood Hartmann says dreams may function like psychotherapy by making connections in a safe place and allowing the dreamer to integrate thoughts that may be dissociated during waking life Both Freud and Jung identify dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious Dreams are seen as projections of parts of the self that have been ignored rejected or suppressed It is believed that people resolve issues in their sleep and use dreams to reorganize thoughts are dreams used to deal with traumatic events Another idea is that