Dreams: Sleep and Dreams Essay

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Renteria 1
Sandra Y. Renteria
Professor Mark Richert
English 2
12 February 2013
Dreams
Dreams are like a world full of mysteries and fascinations, where there is very little reality or none at all. Dreams are made out of a series out thoughts, images, and emotions that happen in a person’s mind while they are sleeping. 90% of your brain requires to be active in order for you to be able to dream. According to psychologist Wiseman there is people who can actually dream the future, it might not be exactly as they dreamt about it buy something very similar, however there is also many who disagree with Wiseman. Scientist have found out that when you are sleeping, and enter REM sleep (when your large voluntary muscles are paralyzed and your brain activity is very high) a portion of your brain stem is activated, a few areas in the middle of your brain start working for example: the hippocampus that is associated with the formation of memories, the temporal lobe responsible for the visual imagery and lastly the amygdala that is in charge of the emotional memories. When all the parts mentioned before activate, the frontal cortex, also known as the self-system which is in charge of planning and reasoning becomes unaware so people can be able to dream. When that process happens then the images, emotions, and memories come together and we “see” dreams (Roberts, 2). Approximately 90% of your brain is active while your body rests.
Renteria 2
The process of dreaming can be quite complicated. “We can think of a dream as a report of a memory of a cognitive experience that happens under the kinds of condition that are more frequently produced in a state called sleep” explained Domhoff. Dreams are kind of an explanation of your own memories that can come a little bit twisted from what the real truth is. Dreams are normally made when we are sleeping. In other words you can think of a dream as your brain creating a story when your self-system shuts down and let us unaware of the real world out there (G. William Domhoff,1).
Experts say that everyone dreams every time they go to sleep, but before falling asleep the body temperature starts to slowly decrease. A structure in the brain called the pineal gland releases a hormone called melatonin into the blood stream, which prepares the body for sleep. Every 90 to 100 minutes people go through a cycle of five different sleep stages. In stage 1 sleep, alpha waves become less regular and then disappear, at this point the individual loose awareness of the outside world. During stage one people might experience fantasy images or something similar to hallucination. People often start feeling they’re falling and their leg might jerk. After two to five minutes, stage 2 starts. Stage 2 is a deeper level of sleep that consist of quick (13 to 16 per second) rhythmic waves also known as sleep spindles that last two to three minutes. The sleep spindles are responsible for causing all the non-sense and sleep talking during this stage. After another 20 minutes you enter stage 3 sleep, a much deeper sleep level which consists of low-frequency, high-voltage delta waves. A sleeper is much harder to wake at this time. The stage 4, the deepest sleep level also consists of slow delta waves that they almost happen constantly. Delta waves last about 20 minutes, if sleepwalking were to happen it’ll happen at this
Renteria 3 stage. The 5th stage is associated with dreaming is called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. It’s when dreams happen the most. It happens at regular intervals of time throughout the night. During REM sleep the dreamer’s muscles are paralyzed. REM sleep only lasts about ten minutes, after that the person goes back to stages 3 and 4, this pattern keeps on repeating throughout the night, for approximately four to six times a night or until the individual wakes up (Rosen, 31-32). “Dreams are not a by-product of sleep, as has been assumed all along dreaming might be what allow us to sleep” says Solomon,
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