Lucid Dreams: The Science Of Dreaming

Every individual dreams; however, some people are affected more than others. Dreams are sequences of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Most occurring during rapid-eye movement or REM—when brain activity is high and resembles being awake. Many believe that dreams are a connection to an individual’s subconscious. Sigmund Freud, a scientist in the early 1900s performed extensive studies on dreams, including their interpretation, why they occur, and what they indicate. In addition, people have done studies to see the connection between dreams and certain sleep disorders.

For many centuries, people would think of dreaming as curses or blessings that we can not fend off or operate. Lucid dreaming, a dream in which a dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming; they may be able to control the dream by exert amount. In this dream stage, we perform superhuman features that would be impossible when we’re awake. While a person dreams, these wonderful things become a temporality reality. Researchers says that a average person dreams four to six times a night(insert). Many people dream every night without even realizing that their dreams can be controlled. Others might not give too much care about the dreams that they might experienced. Lucid dreaming can turn scary dreams into happy dreams, or happy dreams into more relaxed ones. This method of dreaming can provide the dreamer endless ways to control their subconscious which can provide enjoyable experiences.

Without REM sleep, people can experience hallucinations or “waking dreams,” which can affect their memory, learning, and ability to focus on tasks. Through science it has been proven that dreaming is essential to the prosperity of a human’s mental health and can even improve one’s mood.

Dreaming, although a substantial component of our nighttime lives, remains somewhat of an enigma due to the fact that it occurs while we are unconscious. The inaccessibility of the unconscious mind weakens full analysis and comprehension of dreaming which researchers have been attempting to accomplish. However, over the years many researchers have elucidated many mysteries about dreams, such as when we dream, why we dream, and what we dream about, in order to bring forth an understanding of dreams as well as identify

Methods: The participants, all males age 23-32, slept in a dark, quiet lab while their brain waves and eye movements were recorded. They were not aloud to sleep at all during the day when they were not in the lab because they might dream. To establish a base for the experiment, participants in the study were allowed to sleep normally for a few nights. The next few nights the participants were fully awaken every time that they started to dream. The next section was the recovery phase where they could sleep normally followed by more nights where they would be woken between

As we progress through the hypnagogic state, it is believed that our dreamlets become more complex and organised (Leaning, 1926; Kubie, 1944; McKellar & Simpson, 1954; Critchley, 1955, Sartre, 1972; Sherwood, 2002) until they appear as fully-fledged dreams (Ellis, 1897, 1911). For the purposes of this project I wanted to avoid the deeper stages of sleep — exposing myself only to the abstruse and richly varied images of the hypnagogic state as a passive observer. This dichotomy is expressed by Schwenger (2008): In the hypnagogic state observation is from a distance; the images appear as if projected up on a screen, and one is oddly detached, observing the phenomenon with interest and curiosity… [while] [d]reams wholly enfold us within their world; only at intervals do we manage to remind ourselves that this, this has to be, a dream. (p.

They used twenty-eight female and male participants, some with frequent others with less frequent nightmares. All participants were screened for any mental or psychological disorders. In the study, participants would have a nap, complete a task, and fill out questions on the state of their dreams and experiences. The participants would also nap for longer and then be awakened right before they entered into REM sleep. Then the participant would once again answer questions and write about their dream experiences. The questionnaire contained questioned related to the state of their dream, stress levels, nightmare frequency, etc. The participants also slept in rooms with continuous surveillance and with a polysomnography. The participants were tested on their dream and daydreaming conditions with similar procedures that were previously

A dream, by definition, is a sequence of emotions, ideas, images, and sensations that involuntarily occur in the mind at various times; typically during the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep (American Heritage Dictionary, 2000). Throughout history, dreams have been the cause of much speculation; holding both philosophical and religious interests (Hobson, 2009). Before the days of scientific research, opinions varied regarding dreams, and their usefulness in psychotherapy. Dreams were often viewed as either being divinely inspired or having derived from a dark, evil source. Even in today’s scientifically advanced society; dreams are still not totally understood.

An abundance of research has been generated on sleep and why it occurs, with results suggesting that dreaming may partially explain the phenomenon. Though results have failed to discover the primary function of sleep, they have unveiled dreaming as a secondary function, which despite not being fundamental for survival possesses a great deal of utility nonetheless. While the primary function of dreaming, much like the primary function of sleep, remains ambiguous; a number of theories and empirical studies have proposed secondary functions relevant to waking life. The threat simulation theory, for example, postulates that dreaming serves an evolutionary function, thought to have heightened survival and reproductive success in the Pleistocene era. The theory purports that dreaming allows for an endogenous simulation of potential threats, which rehearses the cognitive mechanisms necessary for threat perception and avoidance in reality (Valli, Revonsuo, Pälkäs, Ismail, Ali, & Punamäki, 2005; Arnulf, Grosliere, Le Corve, Golmard, Lascols & Duguet, 2014). Additionally, the continuity theory posits that dreams mirror waking life experiences, thus serving a predictive function. In accordance to this theory, dream imagery can be used to predict wellbeing, and diagnose depression and anxiety (Miller, DeCicco, Fox, & McCourt, 2015; DeCicco, Lyons, Pannier, Wright, & Clarke, 2010; Michels, Schilling, Rausch, Eifler, Zink, Meyer-Lindenberg, & Schredl, 2014). Lastly, dreams have a

Relate to Audience: This information may help someone you know or maybe even yourself if you’ve ever wonder about lucid dreaming. IV. Speaker Credibility: I have extensively researched this topic through articles, scholarly journals and websites. V. Preview Main Points: Today I will talk about dreaming and its history, lucid dreaming and teaching oneself how to learn it, and how it has had a positive effect on people.

Noticing a dream can come in different ways. REM sleep is when the eye twitches back and forth to start the dream. When this happens, peoples heartbeat moves rapidly, and their body temperature goes low. Some people do not realize that they are dreaming because they are in a deep sleep. When REM is really active during the night, someone’s dream gets more intense.

Holzinger, G. Klosch, and B. Saletu (2015) at the Institute for Consciousness and Dream Research involved an initial forty participants, thirty females and ten males, ranging in age from twenty to fifty-nine. All participants were volunteers recruited through unspecified media (Holzinger et al., 2015). The only pre-requirement, as stated in the advertisement, was for participants to be experiencing frequent nightmares at least twice a week (Holzinger 2014). In addition, participant’s nightmares had to fit the institutes definition as ‘recurrent awakening from sleep with recall of intensely disturbing dream mentation’s and were accompanied by dysphonic emotion’ (p. 355). Prior to acceptance to the study, all participants were required to go through a screening process to eliminate any person with additional sleep behavior disorders, excluding anyone experiencing sleepwalking or night terrors and anyone suffering from REM sleep behavior disorder, epileptic seizures, or psychotic symptoms. After passing all screenings, participants were randomly assigned to two groups; group A: Gestalt therapy group (GTG) and group B: Gestalt and lucid dreaming therapy group (LDG) where each group had twenty members.

In (Spoormaker, V.I. et al., 2003), it was their primary goal to investigate the effects of lucid dreaming on nightmares. Therefore, their hypotheses states that lucid dreaming would decrease nightmare frequency along with their other variables, trait/state anxiety, and improve quality of the participants sleep. In this experiment it was found at the 2-month follow up that nightmare frequency had indeed decreased, while quality of sleep had increased only slightly. As for state and trait anxiety, there were no changes. Within this study lucid dreaming seemed to be effective in reducing nightmares however, how effective it was is not clear since it did not change the other variables quite as significantly. Interestingly, the effect of lucid dreaming as a treatment for nightmares was conducted once more three years later by

In 1911 the term, “Lucid Dreaming” was first used by a Dutch psychiatrist named Frederick Van Eden. He described it as a person sleeping but taking on an active role. Lucid dreaming is actually defined as a dream where the person dreaming is aware they’re dreaming and have somewhat control over the characters and narrators and their role in the dream. Over the course of this document the basics of lucid dreaming and the knowledge we have of it will be covered, as well as the senses it effects and how we perceive it.

Dreams are very unique and many people have theorized about what a dream 's meaning or purpose is, and what affects them. In most present day studies, more vivid dreams have been linked to the stage of sleep called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. REM dreams are emotional, bizarre, and sometimes so vivid we may confuse them with reality. Most commonly, a dream’s story line incorporates traces of previous day’s experiences and preoccupations. Unless a person is awakened during REM stage of sleep or the dream is exceedingly vivid or intense, most people don’t remember anything about their dreams during REM sleep. This is likely due to the fact that during REM sleep, our brain essentially turns off the ability to encode,or create, new memories.