Daily Mysteries #2: Why do we dream?

So you were walking around your house, when all of a sudden a huge bird the size of car snatches you, flies you up so high to the top of the Empire state building, and then drops you, and as begin your free fall towards the ground..

While this could be a sci-fi movie, of whom you are the star (if you're Hollywood star), it could simply be, a dream!

And then you wake up! all trembling by the fear of that huge thing that snatched you, the fear of crashing into the ground and dying. Thankfully, it was just a dream!

We dream. Ever since we are born, we dream. I don't recall when I first started to, nor do i even recall yesterday's dream, as many others don't.

Dreams are these huge mysteries that surround the complexities of how our brains operate, and they definitely affect us one way or the other. Happy, sad, or fearful dreams influence both our psychological well-being, but also induce responses from our physical body.

Why do we dream?

Many researchers have tackled the topic of dreams since the dawn of humanity. While some had suggested that dreams are simply meaningless or purposeless representations of the brain, yet more profound theories argue to the importance of dreams to the emotional, physical, and mental well-being of humans.

Theories go back as far as Greek philosophers as Aristotle and Plato, who interpreted dreams as related to drives and motive, until 20th century Sigmund Freud, the renown neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, whose famous quote states:

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious

And who basically identified one of dreams' key purposes to be the fulfillment of wishes.

Per Freud, such dreams can come either in clear form, or as symbolic images to relief the brain from the anxiety that follows "bad wishes"
One example from Freud's patients, was one who hated her sister-in-law, and often referred to her as dog. She used to have dreams of strangling a small white dog. Freud linked this to an action of the unconscious mind, to relief the resentfulness towards the sister in law, yet while preventing the feeling of guilt.
This symbolism is an aspect Freud relied on in further explanations of different dreams and related aspects, with symbols being personal more than universal.

Recent experiments conformed with Freud's reasoning, such as one conducted by Daniel Wegner, whereby he claimed that dreams are manifestations of suppressed thoughts. Essentially during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, the thought suppressing brain agents (attention, control,...) are inactive, which allows those suppressed thoughts to appear in the form of dreams.

Other theories regarding dreams attribute them to allowing us to solve specific problems in our lives. How many times would you be working around your brain all day to resolve a particular work or study related issue, only to dream about it, and wake up with the solution at hand, or at least a pathway to the solution of the relief.

Dreams are also theorized to be associated with storing memories into the mind, whereby they assist the brain in the properly filing those daily activities and new knowledge. This helps memorize newly acquired information, particularly for children.

Nightmares, are no exception to the above, and explained as essentially representations of stress, trauma, emotional or physical problems or illnesses. Which is why it is very common to dream being chased by that homework, boss, annoying childhood teacher, or even sitting for that exam you haven't studied for.

On the other hand, religious and spiritual thoughts took different approaches towards dreams, whereby some attributed dreams to be windows to the soul and spiritual communication, predictions of the future, and or guidance towards a particular path. One manifestation of such concepts are deja vu moments, which are often associated with dreams and moments in the future. Yet the deja vu is a topic for a different discussion altogether :)

So in brief, dreams are this weird virtual reality in which our brain operates, and which is a window to a whole lot of research. Why we do dream? the above provided some answers, yet the definitive answer is still unclear and is yet to be agreed upon.

I leave you with these final philosophical thoughts: How do you acknowledge you are in a dream? What is the boundary between reality and dreams? Could our reality be a dream?

Thank you for reading through!

@mcfarhat

References:

Photo Credits:

Pixabay

Prior Posts:

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to check out some of my earlier posts:

My posts aim to be contribute to the following projects:

#steemSTEM / @steemstem - A project to increase both the quality as well as visibility of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (and Health).
#steemiteducation / @steemiteducation - A project to promote high quality educational posts on Steemit.