Every night when I sleep, I dream. On average, I have four or six dreams. Each dream lasts about 5 to 20 minutes. We have been dreaming for nearly five to six years in our lives.
You may think it's a little exaggerated. People don't dream every night. In fact, you don't know or remember that you are dreaming, because 95% of dreams will be forgotten.
People will go through different sleep stages during sleep, mainly rapid eye movement stage and non-rapid eye movement stage (deep sleep). These two stages are constantly alternating, alternating for about 1 10 minutes, and each time will last for about 4-5 sleep cycles.
And our dreams often occur in the rapid eye movement stage, because at this stage, our brain waves are very active, which is exactly the same as when we are awake. Such an active brain can easily awaken our memories and abstract thinking to produce dreams.
If you dream in REM stage, but don't wake up, you will go into deep sleep after the dream, and then go through the next sleep cycle, and the dream will not be remembered clearly;
The reason is that during the rapid eye movement stage, the brain has no ability to process and store the information needed to form memories. Scientists' scans of the brain during REM show that the prefrontal lobe is not active at this stage, and this area is very important for the formation of memory.
20 16 A study published in Behavioral and Brain Science found that during REM sleep, some neurotransmitters, especially acetylcholine and norepinephrine, were inhibited, which may also lead people to forget their dreams.
So you actually dream at night but you don't remember much, but if you wake up in a dream, you will remember your dream for a short time.
This is why all the dreams we can remember are dreams we had before we woke up, but we have no impression of the dreams we had all night.
The origin of dream content
You can recall your dream experience, and you will find that in your dreams, the dreams that make you afraid, uneasy and strange are better than MUBI that makes you happy, happy and comfortable.
Everyone is like this, not just you, so biologists believe that dreaming is actually an objective representation of the inner pressure, fear and desire of the brain;
When sleeping, brain consciousness and prefrontal cortex responsible for highly logical thinking are suppressed. At this time, the images buried deep in your memory will emerge, and after the illogical processing of the forebrain, strange dreams will be formed.
For example, a chivalrous man who can fly a sword through a wall in a dream and has extremely high martial arts. Such a dream is an objective representation of your wishes by your brain.
And those weird scenes, characters, and martial arts are all dark memories buried deep in your mind. It may be the plot of a novel you have read, a TV play you have seen, etc. To be sure, all the plots in the dream are retrieved from your memory and then pieced together without logic.
These dead memories may not be remembered when you are awake, but they do exist in your brain and can be traced back to the source.
When we are stressed and afraid, we will have nightmares, and all the scenes that scare you in the dream are also pieced together from the fragments in your brain memory.
Some dreams look really strange as a whole. You have never been to this place, but you are very familiar with all the elements, such as streets, roads, bridges, houses and so on. These details are what you see in reality or in movies.
After the re-processing of the brain, a completely strange place appeared. Sometimes there are strangers in your dreams. You've never met this man. Why did he show up?
But have you ever found that in your dream, you just thought this person was strange, but your brain didn't vividly describe this person's facial details. The next day, when you look back at your dream, you only know that you dreamed of a stranger, but you can't tell his facial details at all. You can only roughly say that it was a man, a woman and a dress.
Why is this? The reason is simple, because your brain can't dream of something you haven't seen at all. Although dreaming is abstract and illogical, your brain will not draw anything beyond your cognition.
So dreams are an objective and illogical expression of your memory of reality. Every detail in every dream is stored in your brain memory.
So what you haven't seen, you won't dream, and the things and scenes that make you feel strange in your dreams are all abstracted by brain reprocessing. But you can find the template.
Dreams are not only an objective representation of reality, but also a shadow left by human evolution.
For example, we often suddenly dream that we fall from a height, and we often dream that we are chased and then wake up. This is actually the memory left by our ancestors, and such a dream is also a common problem of all mankind.
Millions of years ago, we were little monkeys riding on trees. There are not only fruits in the trees, but also shelters for us to avoid predators on the ground, so our ancestors also slept in the trees.
Think about it, our ancestors were still worried about falling from trees. This is not only painful but also dangerous, so when they sleep, they always dream that they fell from the tree. This dream has been passed down to this day.
The mechanism of triggering this dream is that when our ancestors just fell asleep and entered the rapid eye movement stage, the muscles of the whole body would relax, and when they fell from the tree, the muscles of the whole body would also be in a relaxed state, which is why the brain mistakenly thought that they fell from the tree;
Form a dream in a short time and wake up. Until today, when we sleep, our muscles are relaxed, and our brains sometimes make wrong judgments and think that we fell from a height.
Dreaming of being chased, not only humans, it is estimated that all mammals in nature will have such nightmares. Excuse me, which animal has not been chased by natural enemies, and human beings have also been chased.