Dreams {dreaming} are free association narratives about self, with typical movements and surroundings [Aristotle, -350] [Cavallero and Foulkes, 1993] [Krakauer, 1990] [Louie and Wilson, 2001] [Malcolm, 1959]. Dreaming is unconscious and unaware but experiences sensations. In dreams, consciousness does not monitor cognitions.
sleep
Dreams can happen during rapid-eye-movement deep sleep [Hobson et al., 1998].
Orthodox sleep has little dreaming. Non-rapid-eye-movement-sleep dreams are mostly when first falling asleep or before waking. People remember them as well as REM-sleep dreams, but they are less interesting and have different subjects [Braun et al., 1998] [Hobson et al., 1998].
Sleep evolved separately from dreams [Horne, 1988]. Perhaps, dreams just happened when sleep evolved [Flanagan, 2000].
properties
Dreams are typically about play, recreation, and home, not current events, work, or exotic things. Dreamers are in the action, not just watching things happen. Dreams are not just watching a show. Dreams typically have strangers and friends, who are typically same age as dreamer. Family members appear less often. Both sexes appear equally. People typically change into someone else.
Almost all dreams have movements, with movement illusions. Dreams never violate arithmetic or geometry laws. Dreams have conscious episodes, each with consistent features. Episodes have no connections. However, people can distinguish one night's dreams from other-night dreams.
Dreams do not have reading, writing, or conversations between people, but may have implied conversations. People never dream rational analysis, only associations. Dreams tend to project meaning onto stimuli.
Dreams seem like movements in and through real scenes during stories, but typically have false perceptions and false beliefs, with poor memory.
One-third of dreams have color. People can always have or never have color dreams.
Complex dreams commonly have incongruity, unspecified objects, and some discontinuity. Adults and children have same proportions of discontinuity, unspecified objects, and incongruity. Adults have more complex and bizarre dreams than children do. Children's dreams are more about family and friends.
emotion
Dreaming has mostly anxiety, less frequently joy, and even less frequently anger. One-third of dreams have happy feelings. Dreams are mostly pleasant but can have anger and apprehension. Sadness, shame, and remorse are infrequent. Least common emotions are affection and eros. Erotic dreams are less than 10% of adult dreams.
Dream misperceptions can increase anxiety, and anxiety can increase misperceptions. One-third of dreams have strong anxiety and fear. Two-thirds of dreams have anxiety, fear, guilt, or sadness. As dreams continue, they get sadder. Dreams with anxiety do not have penile erections.
Dream emotion levels correlate with heart rate and skin potential. If heart beats faster and breathing rate increases, dream has anxiety. Dreams have more aggression than waking life. Emotional reactions to dream events are appropriate. Men and women have same dream emotions.
movements
Jerky eye movements, limb twitches, face twitches, middle-ear muscle twitches, and sudden respiratory changes are phasic REM-sleep components. Muscle relaxation and penile erections are tonic features. As night progresses, REM periods contain more phasic components, and dreams are more active and less passive. Limb movements relate to dreams with movement. Small face, finger, head, and limb twitches, with most other muscle activity suppressed, show dream is about running, flying, or swimming. Dreams have rapid eye movements that can follow dream movements. Large eye movements relate to dream content [LaBerge, 1985] [LaBerge, 2000]. Dreams have dilated pupils.
perception
Perception during dreaming uses same brain regions as perception during awakeness. The strongest dream perception is visual. Dream visual images are typically in color. Audition perceptions are weak. Touch, temperature, taste, and smell perceptions are very weak.
brain damage
People blind since birth have only auditory dreams. If blindness is in primary cortex, dreams have no seeing. Secondary-cortex-damage blindness allows seeing in dreams.
People are faceless in dreams of people who cannot identify faces [Kaplan-Solms and Solms, 2000] [Solms, 1997].
Patients with hemi-neglect cannot see dream right or left half.
development
20-week-old fetuses have REM sleep, indicating dreaming [Empson, 2001].
causes
Dreams are about recent events or ongoing problems. Events around sleeper during dreams often are in dreams. Human brain can respond to word meanings during sleep and have related dreams. Depressed people have dreams that contain failure and loss.
comparisons
Dreams have more characters and settings than fantasies. Unlike fantasies, dreams are not menacing and do not cause paranoia. In dreams, people often change into someone else, which never happens in fantasies.
Dreaming is like delirium, not dementia. Dreams have time and place disorientation, visual hallucinations, distractibility, attention deficit, recent memory loss, and insight loss, like hallucinations. Dreaming is like organic mental syndrome, such as caused by drugs or Alzheimer's disease.
Out-of-body experiences are similar to stage one dreaming.
behavior
Dreams do not change awake behavior [Hobson, 2002].
will
People cannot will dreams, though they can will in dreams if not in deep sleep. People cannot be responsible for dreams, so dreams cannot be sins.
interpretation
Dream-interpretation theories are invalid [Hobson, 2002] [Webster, 1995].
purposes
Perhaps, dreams help consolidate memories [Hobson, 2002] [Vertes and Eastman, 2002]. Perhaps, dreams help clear brain memory circuits and help to selectively forget [Crick and Mitchison, 1983].
Perhaps, dreams are activity rehearsals and are like playing or practice [Humphrey, 1983] [Humphrey, 1986] [Humphrey, 1992] [Humphrey, 2002].
Perhaps, dreams are rehearsals or practice against threats {threat simulation theory, dream} [Rossetti and Revonsuo, 2000] [Revonsuo, 2000].
brain
Dreams start in pons-geniculate-occipital (PGO) system, which locus-coeruleus catecholamines activate. Pons controls reticular activating system [Braun et al., 1998] [Hobson et al., 1998]. Perhaps, dreams are forebrain interpretations of midbrain signals. During dreams, brain blocks sense input.
If people are conscious or dreaming, high-amplitude electroencephalography waves arise in pons, radiate to geniculate body, and then go to occipital cortex.
Brainstem is active in REM sleep, and REM sleep has different transmitters from NREM sleep. Brainstem multiple motor-pattern generator excitations cause increased sense qualities [Empson, 2001].
Dreams have low cortex output and input, so brainstem inhibition from cortex is low. During dreams, cortex has no motor-neuron output. Area V1 and areas nearby deactivate during dreaming, while fusiform gyrus and medial temporal lobe activate. For dreams to have sense qualities, such as sight, sense primary cortex must be functioning. Removing visual cortex causes visual dreams to cease. If area V1 has damage, people can still have visual dreams.
Frontal cortex has low activity during dreaming.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224