dreams

[murulidhara]

These are my questions on dreams:

1) Whe we get dreams ?

2) I read in some book that daily we get dreams only thing we con not recollect. Is is true?

3)Does dreams have ny relation with past or future events?

thanks

Murulidhara

[FreeThinker]

1) Could be an unavoidable side effect of having such a complex neural network?

 

2) I heard this as well. Not sure if its true though.

 

3) Highly unlikley. Just because we have dreams, there is no reason to suppose that they have some direct connection to the future or the past. Maybe in an indirect sence where they prepare us for the everyday challanges. This would make sense from an evolutionary point of view and the fact that most dreams are about sex or predators would further support the notion that they are indeed an evolutionary adaptation.

[1veedo]

#2 is true. Most of your dreams you don't remember. Actually just about anything that happens 1-2 minutes before you go to sleep you cant remember because your brain isn't 'recording' anything so to speak. If you want to remember a dream you have in the middle of the night wake up for a couple minutes or something.

[insane_alien]

1/ it is believed by some people that the brain is dumping things to long-term memory and getting rid of junk memories. there is no direct evidence either way. we're not close to understanding it yet.

 

2/ yeah this happens. the same way when you wake up and remember a dream but 2 minutes later, you've forgotten all about it.

 

3/you might have a dream vaguely about something that has happened(with your imagination putting in a lot of weird extras) or it maybe about something you have planned (like a holiday). mostly the content will reflect what you have been thinking about a lot recently. especially if it involves high levels of emotion and/or stress.

 

<unrelated note> w00t 3000th post

[Paralith]

I also know that #2 is true as well - in fact, you usually have anywhere from 3-5 dreams a night, you just only remember them a few nights a week.

 

Something weird has been happening to me lately, though. A few months ago, I started remembering my dreams every morning. And I still do. Every morning I wake up and I remember at least several dreams that I've had during the night. I've tried researching why this might be the case, but I haven't gotten anywhere. *shrugs* food for thought, I guess.

 

<unrelated note> congrats insane_alien! =)

[1veedo]

Higher levels of meletonin make your dreams more vivid and rememberable. Serotonin turns into meletonin when it gets late, triggered by both darkness and your internal clock (thus why they recommend going to bed and waking up at the same time every night). So it could be that your daily routines or something have altered thus effecting these hormones / you're just getting better sleep at night.

 

I know when I was in school I never remembered dreams cause I got up so early and although I got 8 (sometimes 7) hours of sleep I never sleep well on that schedule. Then on weekends I'd sleep in and I'd always remember dreams. It just has to do with how you sleep I guess.

[Paralith]

huh - I never knew that about melatonin. I thought it just helped you feel sleepy. I had this little theory that I remembered my dreams better because my brain was more active - around the time I started with the dreams, I began studying and working in a way that I hadn't for months before hand. Either that, or because I just wasn't sleeping very well on our old bed, haha. But we have a nicer one now and nothing has changed.

[brooke7holley]

number two is true. I think that our dreams are related to both our future and past.

(I still have nightmares about a crash that happened a long time ago) And I have been having the strangest dreams lately, I'll have a dream and then the next day it happens. For example, I had a dream about two girls in my music class singing a song I'd never in my life heard before, I vividly remember even the lyrics.