Plunging every night into the “kingdom of Morpheus,” we see dreams. Some people, waking up in the morning, do not remember the dream, while others perceive the plot very emotionally and give it a certain meaning.

Why do we have dreams? Until now, the mechanisms and causes of this human condition remain at the level of scientific hypotheses.

WITH medical point vision, sleep is natural physiological process, and night visions are the result active work brain

• Ancient peoples It was believed that during a night's rest the soul of the sleeping person leaves the body and travels around the world.
• Esoterics They attribute mystical properties to dreams - a warning of danger or a prediction of the future.
• Psychologists They believe that this is how the subconscious “speaks” to us.

How are dreams different from dreams?

The dream is physiological state, inherent in both people and animals. This is a state of relaxation and reduced reaction of the body to external influences.

A dream is a set of visual images that a sleeping person dreams of and causes accompanying experiences.

The stage of sleep during which a dream occurs is called the "phase" REM sleep" At the same time, a person does not feel the border between the imaginary world and reality.

Often both words are used interchangeably, but sleep should be considered a natural physiological process. “Telling your dream” means telling about the dream (images, actions, experiences that arose during sleep).

“A dream, first of all, reveals an indisputable connection between all parts of hidden thoughts by connecting all this material into one situation...”

Sigmund Freud

What do dreams mean?

During the period of nighttime relaxation, our brain produces all kinds of pictures. In most cases, they are a consequence of emotions experienced the day before.

• Did you watch a scary movie in the evening? It is likely that terrible images will haunt you at night.
• After a quarrel with a loved one, you may dream of fighting a monster.

Such dreams mean practically nothing, so you should not attach much importance to them.

It is more important to pay attention to the actions performed in a dream and the feelings experienced. If they are not related to recent life events, they can carry a certain semantic load.

Psychologists' opinions on dreams

Fundamental theories about dreams began to appear only at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Scientific researchers have tried to explain the phenomenon of dreams in different ways.

The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, believed that dreams are manifestations of the subconscious and unconscious in our psyche.

While falling asleep, a person does not stop thinking, that is, his brain continues to work, but only in a different mode. Information located in the subconscious and unconscious areas flows into consciousness. It is this amount of information that is the basis for the occurrence of dreams.

“It is obvious that a dream is the life of consciousness during sleep”

Sigmund Freud

In most cases, according to Freudians, dreams are a way of realizing our repressed desires and hidden aspirations. This is a specific mechanism that allows you to “unload” the psyche through the fulfillment of unrealized desires in a dream.

Oneirology is a science whose subject of study is sleep and various aspects of dreams.

However, there is the exact opposite opinion of researchers explaining the mechanism of dreams.

Psychiatrist Alan Hobson claims that sleep carries absolutely no meaning. According to his theory, called the action-synthetic model, the brain interprets random electrical impulses during sleep, resulting in vivid and memorable visions.

Opinions of other scientists and psychologists studying the phenomenon:

• Sleep as "sending short-term memories to long-term storage"(Zhang Jie, author of the "constant activation theory").
• Dreams as a “way of getting rid of unnecessary rubbish” (“reversal learning theory”, Francis Crick and Graham Mitchison).
• The biological function of sleep as practice and “rehearsal” natural reactions organism (Antti Revonusuo, author of the “theory of the protective instinct”).
• Sleep as a solution to accumulated problems (Mark Blechner, author of the “theory of natural selection of thoughts”).
• Dreaming as “a way of smoothing out negative experiences through symbolic associations” (Richard Coates), etc.

Ernest Hartman, one of the founders Modern Theory Dreaming, considers dreams to be an evolutionary mechanism by which the brain “mitigates” the consequences psychological trauma. This happens through associative images and symbols that arise during sleep.

Color and black and white dreams

The overwhelming majority of people see dreams in color, and only 12% of the inhabitants of our planet are able to perceive images in dreams in black and white.

• Bright, colorful, colorful dreams are most often seen by creative people.

As a result of the research, it was found that color saturation dreams are influenced by a person's level of intelligence. In addition, colorful dreams are typical of impressionable people who perceive the world emotionally and react excitedly to various events in their lives.

• People with a more rational mindset dream of black and white.

Dreams without coloration help to better know your “I” and comprehend what is happening. Therefore, they are characteristic of pragmatists who, even in their sleep, try to “digest” information and carefully think about something.

According to parapsychologists, colored dreams foreshadow future events, while black and white dreams are a reflection of the past. Some scientists see a relationship between a person's mood and dreams.

Sadness, fatigue and melancholy “discolor” sleep, and good mood is the key to a bright and colorful dream.

There is also an opinion that there are no black and white dreams. People focus only on the content of the dream, and not on the colors, and therefore claim that they see black and white dreams.

Bad dreams

A bad dream is a dream with negative images and experiences that cause a person to experience anxiety and discomfort. Such dreams are remembered in detail and do not leave your head.

According to scientists, bad dreams reflect an influx of negative information that the brain does not have time to cope with during wakefulness. Therefore, he continues to “digest” this information at night.

Bad dreams about natural disasters, catastrophes, wars, etc. are a signal nervous system about human powerlessness, the inability to cope with some task.

Doctors have identified a direct connection between dreams and health problems.

• For example, people with heart disease often dream of chases.
• Malfunctions in the functioning of the respiratory system are reflected in dreams where a person is “strangled” or drowns in water.
• Wandering in a dream in labyrinths and forest thickets can signal the presence of depression or overwork.

Nightmares

In a nightmare, a person feels the approach of death. This is its main difference from a “bad” dream.

“Nightmares exist outside the boundaries of logic, there is little fun in them, they cannot be explained; they contradict the poetry of fear" (Stephen King)

If a person is in a difficult situation, worries for a long time about some unresolved problem, then negative energy finds a way out through dark dreams. Stressful events manifest themselves in dreams so that a person can finally “process” them.

Frequent nightmare plots:

• encounters with monsters, monsters, evil spirits and so on.;
• bites from poisonous spiders or snakes;
• pursuit and pursuit;
• natural disasters and car accidents;
• military actions (attacks, shootings, capture);
• receiving injuries and injuries;
• death of a loved one.

Lucid dreaming

Almost every one of us has the experience of experiencing a lucid dream with a clear understanding that everything that is happening around is a dream and an illusion. This condition occurs during the REM sleep stage, when muscle tone is very low.

Experts have found that lucid dreaming is accompanied by synchronization of activity various areas brain and the appearance of high-frequency rhythms (about 40 Hz) in the temporal and frontal areas. Such gamma rhythms are associated with a state of active wakefulness. This explains the “on” consciousness of a person during sleep.

The term " lucid dreaming" was first used by the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in late XIX century.

The ability to be aware of oneself in a dream and to independently simulate a dream is most often innate. However, gamers and people with high level self-control are also susceptible to such experiences.

Today there are special techniques that help control dreams. Such abilities can be fully developed only by individuals with the highest level of intelligence in the cognitive sphere (most often yoga).

Prophetic dreams

People try to predict the future based on dreams. Esotericists suggest convincing facts of existence prophetic dreams. According to many researchers, such dreams are nothing more than the voice of intuition or “smoothing out” negative emotions through symbolic associations.

Memory improves when we become more interested inner world. Accordingly, we remember dreams better.

Psychologists have found that women, due to their emotionality and impressionability, treat dreams more carefully than men.

Reasons for lack of dreams and how to get them back

It may seem strange, but some people don't dream at all. Why is this happening? British scientists concluded that only smart people, with a high IQ level.

If a person does not strive to understand the world and himself, then he sees dreams extremely rarely, since his brain is “sleeping.”

Other reasons for the lack of dreams include brain overload in daytime. Consciousness does not generate dreams so that the mind can recover from the abundance of impressions. That's why we don't dream after long trips or active holidays.

Nervous and mental disorders, alcohol intoxication, moral or physical fatigue are the factors that “destroy” sleep.

How to regain the ability to see and remember dreams?

• Relax before going to bed.
• Meditate at night.
• Do not abuse alcohol.
• Alternate mental and physical work.
• Stick to your daily routine.

Conclusion

Conclusion

The phenomenon of dreams has not been fully studied. Only one thing is clear: our thoughts and perception of the world, emotions and impressions are reflected in the quality of sleep and control our subconscious. This is how vivid and emotional dreams are born with various plots that make our life more mysterious and interesting.

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? This question has been asked by people since ancient times. Probably each of us has had dreams more than once and asked the question “What does this dream say?”
Over the years, a significant amount of research has been conducted on the topic of dreams. However, scientists still do not have a definitive answer to the question “Why do we dream?” True, there are several theories, as well as specific knowledge about the physiology of sleep.
Dreams occur during (rapid eye movement). The stages of REM sleep themselves occupy approximately 20% to 25% of a person's sleep time. Interestingly, brain activity during sleep is similar to brain activity when people finally woke up.
Dreams can last from a few seconds to 15-20 minutes. As already mentioned in the article, complete sleep cycles in healthy person occur approximately five times per night. At the same time, the stage of REM sleep is accompanied by periods deep sleep called slow-wave sleep (Non-REM sleep). Some scientists believe that it is during the stage slow sleep Information about dreams that have arisen is “erased” in people’s memory. Each of us is familiar with such a situation when, waking up in the morning, we know that we had a dream, but we do not remember what it was about.

Why do we dream? Theories...

There are many theories related to the question “Why do we dream?”, some are physiological, others are psychological, and some are a combination of different ideas.
Relationships between sleep and daytime activities and emotions
Most research seems to confirm that the daily activities that happen to us while we are awake have some influence on our dreams, at least part of the time we sleep.
In many cases, people can see connections between their dreams and the hopes, fears, worries, and experiences that occur in daily life. During various stages sleep, the brain and body go through a process of "Repair and Tuning" in which hormones are re-balanced, renewal occurs immune system, the pressure in the circulatory system decreases.
Some researchers believe that dreaming is just part of another function that occurs in our brains during this time - reorganization and processing. last memories and experiences. Our dreams may be one of the mechanisms our brain uses to find agreement between emotionally charged or traumatic events that happen to us while we are awake.
Activation theory
When considering the question “Why do we dream?”, activation theory suggests that dreams are the result of the brain trying to organize random signals, messages, memories and everyday activities into something recognizable. This theory believes that there is no real logic or reason why our dreams develop.
Freudian explanation
Theoretically, the answer to the question “Why do we dream?”, which was popular at one time but has now received less attention, was put forward by Sigmund Freud. In his own words, S. Freud believed that sleep could be “the hidden fulfillment of repressed desires.” In other words, he believed that we hold back certain emotions and actions in our conscious world because they may be socially unacceptable. However, during sleep, the brain feels free to explore these activities. However, not a single study has proven Freud's hypothesis.
Justification Everyday life
This is a more recent theory about why we dream, which puts the elements various theories together to create a new one. During sleep, the brain takes in the thoughts, ideas and emotions that a person experiences while awake and mixes information together in an attempt to interpret and organize it in a way that is consistent with each person's beliefs.

Sleep: REM sleep phase and slow-wave sleep phase. It all starts with slow-wave sleep, which includes 4 stages.

At the first stage, falling asleep occurs. Remember this feeling when you seem to be on the verge of falling asleep, in a kind of half-asleep, which can be interrupted by a sharp start. At this time, muscle tone decreases.

The second stage is characterized by shallow sleep and takes up most of the total time allocated for sleep. The heart rate slows down and body temperature drops. In addition, there is a further decrease in muscle activity.

The third and fourth stages are the time of deep sleep. It is during this period that the body receives the necessary portion of physical sleep. There is a flow of blood to the muscles, increased production of growth hormone, etc.

After the completion of the slow-wave sleep phase, rapid sleep occurs. During such sleep, rapid eye movements under the eyelids are observed, increased blood pressure, increased blood flow to the brain, as well as irregular frequency heart rate and uneven breathing. It is at this stage that a person dreams.

The functionality of the REM sleep phase is still not fully understood. American scientists believe that it is necessary in order to organize information stored in memory. Based on experiments, it has been proven that nerve impulses received by a person while awake are reproduced by the brain seven times faster during sleep. Such reproduction of impressions received during the day is necessary for the formation of memories. That is, all information is, as it were, rewritten from short term memory on long-term media.

Early 20th century scientific world started talking about the fact that during a person’s waking hours they manage to accumulate chemical compounds such as: carbon dioxide, lactic acid and cholesterol. During sleep, these substances dissipate, affecting the brain in such a way that it generates projections.

According to another theory, dreams are a way to reboot the brain. In other words, dreams help the brain get rid of information and work properly. Otherwise, the brain would quickly fail.

Another possible explanation for the occurrence of dreams is disordered electrical activity. About every 90 minutes, the brainstem activates and begins sending uncontrollable electrical impulses. Meanwhile, they are intercepted by the analytical forebrain, which tries to make sense of the unclear signals. This analysis manifests itself in the form of dreams.

It’s unlikely that anyone would argue that sleep is directly related to emotions, fears, and desires, both manifest and hidden. At the same time, dreams can also be influenced by any factors affecting the human organs of perception. Depending on these factors, the plot of the dream constantly changes. Anyone who goes to bed on an empty stomach will most likely see food in their dreams. If a sleeping person is chilled, he will look for warmth and comfort. And a person who rests his hand while sleeping will obviously dream that there is a wound, a cut, or something worse on his hand.

People have been trying to understand the meaning of their dreams since history began to be recorded. And, probably, our ancestors did this even earlier, so it is not at all surprising that we continue to unravel our dreams in an attempt to at least understand something.

One of the most famous researchers in this field was Sigmund Freud, but today, thanks to modern technologies, scientists have the opportunity to literally look into the brain to see what happens to us while we sleep.

Why do we dream

In 2004, scientists were able to explain where in the brain, by studying a patient with Charcot-Von Willebrand syndrome - rare disease, which leads, among other things, to the loss of the ability to dream. Scientific American reports that researchers were able to find a person who does not have serious symptoms, but still lacks dreams.

During the experiments, it turned out that the girl had damage to the part of her brain associated with emotions and visual memories. This led scientists to suggest that this particular area of ​​the brain is associated with the generation or transmission of dreams.

Medical Daily cites a 2011 study in which a team of Italian scientists measured electrical brain waves and concluded that the reason people feel better is because they low frequencies waves in frontal lobes at the moment of awakening. This suggests that the mechanisms for remembering dreams and real events are almost the same.

What dreams can tell about us

Dream books often try to interpret events or images that we see, but these descriptions are relative and unscientific. However, this is not to say that dreams mean absolutely nothing. Sleep is an indicator of what a person is thinking about. A DreamsCloud survey showed that people with higher degrees of dreaming are more likely to see situations related to work or study, and, in addition, they dream quite often, unlike less educated people.

“We dream about the things that bother us most,” Angel Morgan, MD, PhD, explains to The Huffington Post. In other words, dreams educated person more complex and always filled with events, since in his life there are likely to be more problems that need to be solved.

Some studies suggest that people who lucid dream (that is, understand that it is a dream and can even control it) are more effective in solving everyday problems.

According to Live Science, dreams can also talk about our lives. Researchers from Central Institute mental health(Central Institute of Mental Health) in Germany have proven that people who commit murder in their sleep are more often introverts in life, but rather aggressive. Business Insider reports that people prone to schizophrenia discuss their dreams using few words, while people prone to schizophrenia talk a lot and in a confusing manner.

Why are dreams needed?

Sigmund Freud argued that dreams are manifestations, and today a number of experts share the same opinion. Others suggest that dreams do not exist at all. This theory, also known as the activation and synthesis hypothesis, proposes that dreams are thought of as brain impulses that pull random thoughts and images out of our memories, and people construct a dream from them after waking up.

But most experts agree that dreams have a purpose, and that purpose has to do with emotions. “Dreams most likely help us process emotions by encoding them. What we see and experience in our dreams does not have to be real, but the emotions associated with these experiences certainly are, writes Sander van der Linden, a lecturer at the London School of Economics and political sciences(London School of Economics and Political Science), in his column for Scientific American.

Simply put, dreams try to rid us of unpleasant or unnecessary emotions by tying them to experiences in the dream. Thus, the emotion itself becomes inactive and ceases to bother us.

Our dreams are a world in which real reality, passing through the human subconscious, creates images that often have nothing to do with reality, but thus reflect our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. This state can be compared to a mirror of an irregular spherical shape, which seems to show us the real world, but distorts reality. Each of us has dreams since childhood. When we go to bed, we wish each other “good dreams,” but what actually comes to us in our dreams remains a mystery. Human memory has the ability to remember images, fantasies created by our imagination, and all this, superimposed on concrete reality, comes to us in a dream. We can re-experience, but in a form divorced from reality, some events that happened to us during the day, experience and feel desires, real life unrealized, and even see yourself from the outside in an unsightly, frightening form. Dreams can fulfill our wishes, but they can also terrify us so much that when we wake up, we experience great pleasure and relief from the realization that “it’s just a dream.” Happy is the person who, after wishes " Good night! sees calm, beautiful and even exciting dreams. The brilliant A. Einstein very expressively said about this state - “I spent a third of my life in a dream, and this third is by no means the worst.”

It is obvious that sleep is an integral part of our lives that we encounter every day. And if, after waking up, it seems to you that the night passed without dreams, then this is a delusion. Everyone sees dreams, but not everyone remembers them. Sometimes forgetfulness is a form psychological protection. Of course, this also depends on individual characteristics memory. The human brain is designed in such a way that it stores only vivid, emotionally charged images and fantasies in its memory. This explains a large number of dreams in a child.

Despite everything, scientists still cannot answer the question: “Where do dreams come from?” The question, “why do you have a dream of this or that content?” generally has no answer. Humanity has been since ancient history tried unsuccessfully to find an explanation for this phenomenon. For example, Aristotle explained sleep as something intermediate between life and death. Delphic priests predicted the future by analyzing dreams received from the god of dreams Morpheus. In Ancient Greece, the god of sleep Hypnos and the god of death Thanatos were, in general, twins - to such an extent the Greeks were afraid of the mystery and uncertainty inherent, in their understanding, in this human condition. Over the following centuries, people were unable to make any progress in solving this problem. Almost until the beginning of the twentieth century, attempts to explain dreams always came down to the “supernatural” version. The first who tried to explain this phenomenon without resorting to “otherworldly” forces was Sigmund Freud. At the dawn of the new century, in 1900, he wrote a book, Scientific research"Interpretation of Dreams". The main idea of ​​this work was the statement that unconscious processes human psyche can be traced through dreams, their interpretation and comprehension. This well-known “Freudian” theory of the unconscious remains relevant and modern scientists have not yet found a better theoretical basic basis to explain the nature of sleep.

But this does not mean that science has not made any progress on this issue. It has been proven that it is still possible to control a person’s sleep in some way, through preliminary suggestion and “programming” dreams. In 1978, a serious study was conducted under the supervision of psychologists, where their subjects, who were not fully aware of the purpose of the experiment, were “implicitly” instilled with the idea that they were wearing glasses with red frames. After waking up, almost all of them said that they had dreams that were visually colored red. The physiology of sleep is no longer a mystery. Scientists have come to a common understanding about the processes occurring in the human brain during his stay in the sleep stage.

Modern ideas about the origin of dreams are based on the thesis that they occur during a certain period of time, which scientists call “REM sleep.” It is during this period that our brain experiences very high activity. This phase of sleep alternates with “slow” sleep and is repeated cyclically up to 5 times during the night. The dream itself, according to modern researchers, is the result of human thinking processes that occur unconsciously. In the images that a person sees in a dream, his psyche, on an unconscious level, brings to consciousness a form of behavior that can be used by him after waking up to solve a specific problem. It follows from this that everything that happens to us in a dream, during the period “ fast phase"is a way of compensating for all dissatisfaction during the waking period. Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine, Richard John Roberts noted that if a person does not dream for a long time, he can fall into a state bordering on madness. In his opinion, this happens because a person’s brain accumulates a huge number of fragmentary ideas and thoughts, unnecessary and insignificant impressions that block necessary thoughts.

The well-known Russian proverb “the morning is wiser than the evening” is also proof that the brain, during sleep, continues to look for ways out of the current situation in which a person found himself the day before. Modern science came to the conclusion - what calmer man, the shorter his REM sleep phase. This is due to the fact that he has no unmet needs and, accordingly, the need for this form of sleep is minimal. A state of stress, anxiety, unresolved problems, as well as illnesses, all this, on the contrary, forces the brain to be in a tense, active state during the period of “REM sleep” and the night is accompanied by dreams. After awakening, as a rule, the problem has clear solutions.

We tried to explain what actually happens to us during dreams, which are always, very often completely invisible, present in our lives. There is no need to be afraid of them, but rather try to understand the hidden meaning contained in them. It’s not for nothing that they say, “Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”