Illucidity of Dreams

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this.

Dreams are a universal human experience that can be described as a state of consciousness characterized by sensory, cognitive and emotional occurrences during sleep. The dreamer has reduced control over the content, visual images and activation of the memory.

Dreams occur most often, but by no means exclusively, during periods of REM sleep. “Since dreams are thought to primarily occur during REM sleep, the sleep stage when the MCH cells turn on, activation of these cells may prevent the content of a dream from being stored in the hippocampus, consequently, the dream is quickly forgotten.”

Frequent, vivid dreams may be related to stress, medications, sleep disorders, or early pregnancy. While we think of sleep as a time for recharging the body, the brain is actually quite active during sleep dreaming. Our dreams can be soothing or scary, mysterious or helpful, and realistic or fantastical.

There's a lot that experts don't know about why people dream and where dreams come from. There are three major theories: The Psychodynamic Theory of Dreaming; Physiological Theory of Dreaming; and Cognitive Theory.

• The first, follows Freud's ideas that dreams are meaningful and the major function of dreams is wish fulfilment. Dreams, under this theory, contain deep desires and needs which are buried in the unconscious.
• The second, discuss how the brain processes information, and how it manifests as a dream. Some theories believe that dreams are simply the result of trying to make sense of the high amounts of cortical activity. Theories under this realm believe that dreams come from the brain's attempt to interpret cortical activity, or that dreams help forget unnecessary information. Another part of this theory is that dream helps aid memory, and consolidate things that were previously experienced.
• The third, covers the ideas that dreams have important psychological functions, and they help people solve ongoing problems they face. Dreams relate to the status of our ongoing needs and dreams function to assimilate new data and reorganize related memories.

Lucid Dreaming is a fascinating phenomenon that has been studied and reported for many years, in which a person is aware that they are asleep and dreaming. Those who are more adept at lucid dreaming are able to control the action and content of their dreams to varying degrees.

Lucid dreams can feel like they're going on forever but only last from ten minutes to one hour.

Generally, lucid dreaming is quite rare. Only one half of the general population know the phenomenon from personal experience, approximately 20% have lucid dreams on a monthly basis, and only a minority of approximately 1% have lucid dreams several times a week. Young people are more likely to spontaneously have lucid dreams.

Lucid dreams feel so real partly because strong emotions created during the dream directly stimulate our limbic system, which is responsible for processing emotion and feeling. This is why many people who have experienced lucid dreaming often report feeling completely immersed within their dream environment.

Studies showed that lucid dreaming often occurs during moments of particularly high arousal or change in brain wave activity in the outer layer of the brain. Recognition of dreaming may occur specifically in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, where working memory, planning, and abstract reasoning occur.

Although not all studies on the topic have replicated this finding, others have found lucid dreaming can reduce anxiety and depression. However, lucid dreaming might pose a risk to people who experience psychosis.

Lucid dreaming may also cause problems, including, confusion, delirium, and hallucinations. In people who have certain mental health disorders, lucid dreams may blur the line between what's real and what's imagined.

In one study lucid dreams were associated with increased mental health and self-confidence (Doll et al., 2009). Another, exploring LD and personality found that lucid dreamers were socially bold, dominant, experimenting, enthusiastic, and warm (Gruber et al., 1995).

Some researchers have introduced another problem with lucid dreams: they are potentially disruptive to sleep. Since lucid dreams are associated with higher levels of brain activity, it has been suggested these dreams can decrease sleep quality and have a negative effect on sleep hygiene.

Lucid dreaming can inhibit relaxing and restful sleep, and the more involved you are in directing your dreams, the less benefit you'll get from the hours you spend in bed.

According to Christopher Edward Nolan CBE, a British-American filmmaker, each second in the real world takes almost six hours in limbo. Each hour in the real world would take two years and four months in the dream state.

Dreaming uses more energy than being awake, and if you dream too much, you will find that you wake frequently. Your brain will rouse you from sleep if your energy levels are dropping. This accounts for the kind of broken sleep that tends to accompany a night of extensive dreaming.

Everyone dreams anywhere from 3 to 6 times each night. Dreaming is normal and a healthy part of sleeping.

That said, Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which participants spend 47% of their waking time on average on daydreaming.

Daydreaming is a form of imagination that opens new horizons for the individual to his unknown future visions; i.e., it is the psychological process that allows the individual to live his distant or impossible ideas. Daydreaming is the process of using mental skills and employing them to reach goals and desires.

Spontaneous daydreaming can be a subtle symptom of 'Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder' (ADHD) for some people, especially girls and women. Excessive or disruptive daydreaming may also be linked to other mental health conditions, like maladaptive daydreaming. One study found that more than half of participants with maladaptive daydreaming also exhibited signs of 'Obsessive compulsive disorder' (OCD).

Daydreaming is classed as a form of autistic thinking, since the individual's imagination is controlled primarily by inner desires and not by outer reality. While, recent research in both psychology and neuroscience makes clear that daydreaming is an essential part of mental processing, reasoning and, yes, even learning.

There are four types of daydreaming: Visualization; fantasy; escapism, and rumination. These are listed in order of most conscious to least conscious. Planning is probably the most popular type of daydreaming.

Research shows that out of the top 50 most common daydreams, winning the lottery takes the number one spot. This type of daydreamer, dreams big and is looking against all odds to get lady-luck on their side. To this end, good luck…

Food for thought!