Sleep is rest, recuperation and a kind of reboot for the body. Scientists have long been interested in the nature of dreams and have discovered many interesting facts. To get quality sleep, it’s worth finding out what a person’s sleep consists of and how to use it correctly. And scientific research, presented in simple language, will help with this.
Why do I have dreams every night?
Healthy sleep charges a person with energy for the whole day.
Many people wonder why people dream every day? Every day a person lives is filled with some events that the subconscious remembers. Every day you need to think about what the brain actually does during sleep. The more emotional a person is, the more often dreams come to him in the arms of morphine. This is because even after falling asleep, emotional people continue to worry about what happened, admire, or, on the contrary, be disappointed.
Length of day rest
If you remember about the permissible duration of a siesta, it will help improve your well-being, add vigor and good mood, and increase performance:
- 15-20 minutes;
- 1 hour;
- 1 hour 20 minutes;
- 2 hours.
Benefit:
- the production and circulation of cerebrospinal fluid increases;
- toxic metabolic products are removed from the brain;
- serotonin is produced - a hormone of good mood;
- vasodilation occurs;
- blood supply improves;
- further performance increases;
- Cognitive abilities improve.
Other periods of rest lead to awakening in a phase of deep relaxation. The muscles have not yet returned to tone. A person wants to lie down some more; he is on the verge of reality. In this state, it is impossible to immediately get into the working rhythm.
How many dreams do you have per night?
How many dreams does a person have per night? A person can have many dreams in one night. Moreover, they can be completely different. Continuing each other or completely different, colored and black and white. Science believes that a person sees dreams in the stage of quickly falling asleep. This phase has not yet been fully studied, but it is known that in this phase the brain hardly sleeps, it is actively working. In one dream cycle, over a dozen such phases can occur, their duration being up to 15 minutes. As mentioned above, dreams can be different, even if the phases follow one after another.
During dreams, the conscious and subconscious minds “solve” various problems in turn. This means that the more active the life of the sleeper and the higher the emotional background, the greater the likelihood of seeing several dreams.
Let's take a closer look at sleep cycles. The first dream cycle lasts from 40 minutes to 1 hour. Approximately 9.5 cycles fit into 8 hours. By the way, having woken up during a period of unfinished sleep, the awakened person risks being in a broken and sleep-deprived state all day. This one in backgammon is called “Get up on the wrong foot.” Those who wake up at the end of the cycle always feel excellent. In people who prefer to go to bed and wake up at the same time, the body adapts, shortens or increases the cycle, so that by the time they wake up the next cycle is completed.
There is fast and slow sleep. In the short term (duration from up to 15 minutes) the dream occurs. Moreover, both phases of sleep are important for the body. One person can get enough sleep in a few minutes, another in a longer time.
Moreover, during the experimental study, the following was revealed: people who were woken up several times at the beginning of the fast phase, over time, the duration of the phase increased at the expense of the slow one. A maximum extension of one and a half hours was noted.
Dreams in the past
People have long been trying to unravel the secrets of dreams. The ancients believed that at night the human soul goes to other worlds and travels.
Until the twentieth century, scientists confirmed this theory! And they were partly right. It is during sleep that the human brain learns to solve problems and cope with difficulties. He builds new chains of events. And the dreamer himself observes this process, becoming a participant in the story that his own brain suggested.
In order not to interfere with man's exploration of the worlds, Europeans for a long time adhered to one pleasant tradition. It was forbidden to wake up sleeping people. It was believed that a sudden awakening would deprive a person of his soul. Also, a dozing child should have covered his mouth so that the same soul would not escape through it. She was supposed to leave only through the crown, because this way she could find her way back.
Such dark beliefs were debunked not so long ago. At the beginning of the twentieth century, active research into the lining of the brain began. It was then that scientists discovered that the human body does not remain unattended at night. The convolutions continue to work around the clock, and the body itself only moves from one phase to another. There are three in total:
- Wakefulness
- Slumber with dreams.
- Phase without visions.
Every night I have similar dreams
Do you constantly see similar events and the same images, patterns of behavior in your dreams? Try to understand what the subconscious is pointing to. Look for a problem or situation that needs resolution. Dreams with the same plot cannot just happen all the time. They may indicate the need to resolve the situation. This can relate to relationships, attachments, health. Repetition of the scenario indicates an upcoming significant decision, that it is time to reconsider your stereotypes and behavioral line. After this, the same dreams may stop. However, having stepped on the same rake, a person can see the same dream again, and absolutely the same one.
Why don't I have dreams?
Dreams reflect the anxieties and emotions of the sleeper. As already mentioned, they can indicate upcoming events, such as problems. However, some people never dream at all. In fact, dreams are present, but not everyone is given the ability to remember them. Dreams are often suppressed by the brain, especially if a person is very tired or overloaded with reality.
Why people don’t dream: psychological factors
There are various reasons for the lack of night dreams. One of them is psychological. Psychotherapists claim that dreams are absent due to excessive brain reloading during the daytime. Therefore, the subconscious mind stops showing pictures so that the mind can move into a stage of rest from emotions. Before falling asleep, it is recommended to leave all problems and worries outside the bedroom. There is a second psychological explanation for this phenomenon - the sleeper can only remember disturbing night dreams.
Neuroanatomy of sleep
Dreams are inextricably linked with the structures of the central nervous system. In the brain there is a complex relationship between neurons from different parts. The neuroanatomy of hypnogenic centers is divided into 3 interacting formations of nervous tissue.
The structures that regulate the slow phase are located in the brain stem. These include:
- Preoptic neuron clusters in the hypothalamus.
- Nonspecific nuclei of the thalamus.
- Dark, bridged, upper central suture core.
- The center of Morutia is in the central section of the bridge.
The centers of paradoxical dreams include:
- The reticular formation, which runs through the entire midbrain, is one of the most important structures responsible for central inhibition and wakefulness.
- Other neuronal structures associated with the reticular formation include the vestibular nuclei, superior colliculus, and locus coeruleus.
The following structures are responsible for the correct sequence of stages and the usefulness of the cycle:
- Locus coeruleus (with electrical stimulation, a person wakes up).
- Individual neurons from the cortical areas of the brain.
The harmonious interaction of brain structures contributes to good rest for the whole body.
The appearance of images in a dream
Vivid and colorful dreams are caused by many factors. The content of the picture displayed in the mind can be influenced by the current emotional state, negative or good events that occurred before or during sleep.
The appearance of images in dreams also depends on the movement and sounds of surrounding objects. This is due to incomplete shutdown of the senses, with a lulled consciousness. For example, a sleeping person next to whom pebbles are thrown into the water may dream of war and shooting around him. Nightmares often arise from pain from internal organs, which is transmitted to the brain and passes through a kind of prism.
In any case, the pictures that appear in the mind of a sleeping person carry information, and their correct decoding will help to identify and prevent the development of serious illnesses.
Some interesting facts about dreams
Quite a lot is known about the nature of night dreams. We invite you to learn a lot of interesting things about them:
- Television influences dreams. A person’s sleep is influenced by a TV show, movie, or cartoon watched on TV. The study found that 80% of participants under 30 had colorful dreams. Moreover, if before this you watched programs with color images on TV.
- The brain permanently erases the dream after the dreamer has seen it. This is similar to cleaning a computer disk, except for interrupted dreams. Note that what is mostly remembered are the dreams from which we awoke.
- Blind people also tend to dream. People with disabilities such as blindness see images in their dreams. Those with congenital blindness, unfortunately, do not see dreams, but such people dream of sounds, tactile sensations, events, and smells.
- When a person sleeps, his body is paralyzed. Now you know why it doesn’t hurt in this state. That is why many medical surgical procedures are performed under different types of anesthesia. During the first phase of falling asleep, the body paralyzes a special brain signal so that the sleeper does not reproduce body movements that occur in sleep.
- During the night, a person can see from 4-7 night dreams. Now you understand why the expression “Having the seventh dream” exists. In fact, you can see approximately 7 sessions.
- The sleepy state blocks psychosis. A study was conducted during which those who took part in the experiment were not allowed to dream, but were given the opportunity to sleep 8 hours a day. After three days, each participant in the study began to experience difficulties: he became irritable and inattentive, and lost concentration. The study participants also experienced hallucinations and primary manifestations of a psychotic state.
When the experiment participants were given the opportunity to visually enjoy interesting dreams, all of the listed negative manifestations, including psychosis, ceased to bother them. The subjects began to experience longer night dreams.
If we talk about the frequency of dreams, each person has an individual number of dreams. On average, 2-5 cycles occur per night. You can remember all of them, partially, or not remember a single one at all after waking up. Whatever your brain decides, so it will be. Most often, several cycles are observed when a person wakes up several times. Even in 5 minutes you can have several dreams. All you have to do is interpret them correctly by looking into a dream interpreter.
History of sleep research
Sleep, as a phenomenon and its structure, has interested humanity since the times of ancient civilizations. During the heyday of Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt, dreams were given magical meaning and their prophetic meaning was interpreted.
Scientific substantiation first begins in ancient culture. The philosophers of Ancient Greece, although they could not establish the relationship between the brain and dreams, already rejected the connection between the phenomenon and the intervention of the divine essence in human consciousness. In the Middle Ages, the study of sleep stopped, and during the Renaissance it was only mentioned fleetingly by Kant in his philosophical reflections.
The first major breakthrough in the study of dreams came from Sigmund Freud's work entitled The Interpretation of Dreams.
Discussion of the book in scientific circles led to the fact that the slow and fast phases began to be studied according to the physiological and psychological variants, respectively.
Practical study using diagnostic instruments began in the second half of the 20th century. Identification of the electrical activity of the brain (electroencephalogram), muscles (electromyogram), and eyes (electromyogram) made it possible to finally establish the relationship between abstract dreams and the physiological functioning of the central nervous system.
