Let's Talk About Dreams

We all have dreams, even if we don't always remember them. We all woke up scared or just confused because of our dreams, but in the end, what are dreams?

To this day, researchers are unsure and cannot answer this question accurately. Scientifically speaking, dreams are images, sounds, actions, thoughts, and voices. Dreams can include people you know and places you've been to, but also strangers and new places.

Dreams that are usually remembered take place in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep. When we reach this stage, our breathing slows down and becomes irregular, as does our heartbeat, and our skeletal muscles "paralyze" (not something scary, it just happens not to reproduce the actions we do in dreams).

REM usually takes up 25% of the entire complex sleep process and can sometimes last up to 30 minutes in a single shift (because REM occurs several times during the night, just for a few minutes). Even if we remember the dreams of these periods, we forget about 90% of the details when we wake up. We have 4-6 dreams every night, although most people only remember one or two.

There are many theories about dreams. Some say that dreams are methods of the brain to store what happened one day in our memory, thus giving rise to other variants of reality.

Others say that it is our thoughts and the subconscious that comes to light at night. Another theory says that our brain is trying to create, to "assemble" some of the random stimuli it receives at night. Unfortunately, no theory can be proven.

Many people believe that dreams predict their future. Most of the time, if a dream comes true, it's just a coincidence or the recognition of that dream and its fulfillment. But dreams can help us "control" our future, to aspire to do something different.

However, some people believe that dreams can even predict the future, with the human mind being able to transcend linearly overtime in an unknown way. Although there is not much scientific evidence, many people dream of certain events that then happen, on the dream date and in the dream place.

As for dreams about the past, things are different. If dreams present our past, it is just a relived memory in this form or a way to change it if the memory is not pleasant. The past in dreams is something common because the memories are closely related to them. If dreams do not present our past, it may be a matter of collective consciousness.

The collective consciousness is a set of memories, fears, and prejudices transmitted subconsciously from one generation to another. The memories we inherit are not usually accessible, but sometimes they appear in dreams. Irrational fears, such as fear of the dark or of spiders, and thoughts of certain actions, certain people, or certain cultures also appear in this collective consciousness.

This consciousness includes common dreams (for example, tooth loss). Although the existence of "collective consciousness" has not been proven, many researchers believe in it.

Maybe there is a connection between dreams and our mood. For example, if you are stressed in real life, in a dream you may be chased by an animal or trapped in a dead-end room. Many people try to interpret their dreams with the help of "dream dictionaries", which can lead them to a wrong conclusion.

Of course, many dreams mean nothing, but some have meaning (such as the stress-related ones listed above). Every dream is unique and should be interpreted as such. There are also lucid dreams, dreams in which you know you are sleeping and you can control, in a dream, your actions and those of others.

This type of dream is accompanied by increased activity of parts of the brain that are usually dysfunctional during sleep.

It is not known why we forget our dreams so quickly and easily. It could be because if we kept them all in mind, we would not be able to distinguish the reality of the dream.

It is also difficult for us to remember them because, during the REM stage, the memory system is turned off in our body. It is also said that we do not forget dreams, but they are stored somewhere in our brain, but we cannot always access them.

For this reason, it happens to us to remember a dream in the strangest moments, maybe even longer after we dreamed it. Something around us or something we thought triggered the memory of that dream.

Dreams are and will remain something fascinating and incomprehensible to us. Even if science helps us understand the maze in our brains, we will never have an exact definition of dreams.