Dreams

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by poliwog, Dec 20, 2005.

  1. poliwog Registered Senior Member

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    Why do we have dreams? I know how the brain makes us dream at night. I also know that some dreams are caused by something that might be bugging you, but what about the rest of them? What do they mean?
     
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  3. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    They mean exactly that.
     
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  5. Non-Logical-Idea-Guy Fat people can't smile. Registered Senior Member

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    dreams are caused by emotions you havent expressed yet
    ie swearing at a teacher
     
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  7. tablariddim forexU2 Valued Senior Member

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    Dreaming is akin to defragmenting a computer... almost. It's the way the brain processes all the information it has received during your waking hours... it files some things away, gets rid of other things and analyses other things in a creative way. I think dreaming is a learning tool, albeit on a subconscious level.
     
  8. Thor "Pfft, Rebel scum!" Valued Senior Member

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    Having studied dreams during one my stints in a psychology class in college I think dreams are there to keep our brain active while it repairs itself after the day. It's there to keep us amused while the rest of the body is in the shop. A bit like the magazines they provide when you're waiting for your car to be repaired.
     
  9. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    i'll agree with this. another thing about dreaming is, what happens around you while you are sleeping can be incorporated into your dreams. i find that kind of odd
     
  10. c7ityi_ Registered Senior Member

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    Dreams are throughts and imagination. Dreams can have meaning, but most people don't often have such dreams.

    It's because we're not completely unconscious and unaware of this world just because we dream.
     
  11. poliwog Registered Senior Member

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    So far c7ityi is the only person to even come close to answering my question.

    What about when you have extremely strange dreams where things die in firey explosions?
     
  12. Neildo Gone Registered Senior Member

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    Latest I've heard is that dreams are a way of self-defense and training. We act out ways to protect ourselves and whatnot. At least that's what was said when research was done as to why many people act out their dreams while sleeping and why most of them tend to be violent and involve animals. Some form of protection left over from our more primitive times supposedly.

    - N
     
  13. Light Registered Senior Member

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    Dreams aren't as strange as they might seem, Poliwog. Some are exactly as you stated - something that is very much on your mind will often provide some element in a dream. All the rest are perfectly meaningless.

    The most widely accepted idea about dreams are that they are produced while the brain is performing "housekeeping" functions. That is, it's sorting all kinds of bits of information that have been left over from previous periods of wakefulness. The fact that many of them seem so surreal is because during that process it has linked things that are totally unrelated. For example, seeing a fish drinking a cup of coffee or anything similarly silly. In that case, you have some sort of memory about a fish and another about coffee. The two memories obviously have nothing to do with each other but simply happened to be accessed at nearly the same moment.

    It's also felt that the whole process is intended to help keep us sane. A number of trials have been run involving dozens of different test subjects. They have been subjected to extended periods of sleep deprivation. In other rounds of the test, they were only deprived of REM sleep - which is the part of the sleep cycle when dreaming is experienced.

    The results were very similar. Under either conditions, the subjects eventually became first, slightly incoherent, cognitive ability was reduced, and eventually that moved into vivid hallucinations and they began to exhibit several different types of psychoses. That included paranoia, hearing voices, experiencing fictional sensory experiences - like being pricked by a pin or needle when indeed they were not, and several other irrational forms of behavior.

    Also, there have been a number of test run in attempts to determine if dreams were able to predict future events. The findings were pretty conclusive, to the dismay of the "psychic" crowd. The only cases where there was any connection to future events (I believe it was about 2% or less) was when the subject already had clear knowledge that related to what was going to happen. A wedding, for example, and similar things.
     
  14. c7ityi_ Registered Senior Member

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    Light,

    To dream about the future one would have to be psychic, of course. People dream differently depending on their level of consciousness.

    Not subjects, people.
     
  15. vslayer Registered Senior Member

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    think about a house you havent been to in a while, and think about the furniture there. you remember a couch in the corner, a chair by the window, and a tv opposite maybe. but what colour is the chair? what design are the curtains? how big is the tv?

    during the day we will store memories as sound, sight, smell, touch, etc, but that sort of memory is very resource consuming, and if all our memories were in that format, we would be unable to fit them all in. so when we dream, our brains link things together - you may tie locations of the furniture to that room, and what furniture it was, but not an image of it specifically - so your long term memory fill in the memory of a chair, with an image of a chair, which may be a mix of every chair you haev ever seen.

    basically, dreaming allows our memories to be processed into a more compressed format which allows us to retain more. as well as aallowing us a chance to play out situations in our mind and see all teh possibel outcomes, so that we are better informed to make decisions.
     
  16. Light Registered Senior Member

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    You're just being silly on purpose. Of course they are subjects! They are the ones being subjected to the conditions of the test.
     
  17. poliwog Registered Senior Member

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    September of 2003 I had a dream that it was Thanks Giving Day. I was playing football in the backyard with my cousin. The clouds were shaped like the backsides of a bunch of stampeeding horses (like you were chasing them). It was sunset so the sky was brilliant shades of scarlet and orange, which I thought to be natural. He threw the football but I missed it because I was distracted by something I saw in the sky. It was like a giant wooden square flying through the sky. Every time it hit one of the horse clouds they would explode in a firey colud turning the sky the shades of red and orange that it was.

    I know this doesn't mean anything to anyone yet, but I'd like to know what you think it means. After a few people respond to this I'll tell you what happened that I believe correlates to my dream.

    Also, I found this quote:
    “Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”
    - William Dement
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2005
  18. valich Registered Senior Member

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    Dreams have a neurobiological basis that comes from the cortical (cortex) components of the brain. It draws on your memory to make sense - or maybe nonsense? - of what you have experienced. Dreams are a result of your memory experiences and are retransmitted through the cortical integration network of your brain. Dreams are most vivid during REM sleep periods: the most active and closest part of awakeness period of the cortex.

    It may be of interest to know that mammals, especially dogs and cats - and birds - are also frequent dreamers. I know that my dog often paddles his legs when dreaming: as if she is running. Further, I've even heard that Armadillos have the longest REM sleep?
     
  19. Communist Hamster Cricetulus griseus leninus Valued Senior Member

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    Dreams are of course influenced by what just happened the day before. Yesterday I was watching my brother play a round of CS:S on a zombie-modified server. I had a dream about a zombie infestation destroying the world.
     
  20. bbcboy Recovering christian Registered Senior Member

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    Dreams can also be influenced by what is happening at the time.
    Bill Oddie (T.V. Personality in the uk) once did a tv show on dreaming and when he was asleep and in REM sleep someone sprayed him with water then woke him up and he said he was dreaming of being on a ship in rought seas
     
  21. poliwog Registered Senior Member

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    I know this, but what do they mean?
     
  22. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    if i was interested in knowing about dreams i would try the following in my browsers search box:
    sleep
    sleep research
    dreams
    dreaming

    there are others but that will start you off.

    dream interpretation is not valid science.
     
  23. valich Registered Senior Member

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    Poliwog: Your question is excellent, and you've been given some excellent explanations, but you have to tell us more by what YOU mean when you say "What do you mean"?

    This is extremely interesting. But I am sincerely at a loss to know what else you are searching for when you say this?
     

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