Dreams – A Scientific View

(based on the dream diary class in Divination)

Throughout history, people have sought out the hidden meanings within dreams, looking deep into the subconscious as we lay asleep without a care in the world. In recent times, scientific studies have occurred on the resposes to the neural process we as humans take during our sleep and researchers will continue to delve into physiologically reflections of both the unconscious and the spiritual side of dreams.

Most scientists believe that almost all humans dream with more or less the same regularity. Even those who rarely remember dreams report having them if awakened during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

What is REM?

REM, or Rapid Eye Movement is the lightest form of sleep stage and is categorized by rapid movements of the eyes. During this stage, the activity of the brain's neurons is quite alike to that during waking hours. Most of the lucidly recollected dreams occur during REM sleep and it has been scientifically shown that people who are awakened during REM usually feel alert and refreshed.

There is no commonly agreed-upon biological explanation of dreaming. Some scientific studies show that a person’s time sense during a dream period closely matches their time sense during waking hours. For example; If it felt like a dream lasted fifteen minutes, it most probably did. All this said, as most scientific studies show, other studies contradict this, therefore, there is some debate regarding the division of time in a dream parallel to reality.

The mysterious and often uncanny nature of dreams has led many to construe dreams as celestial gifts or messages, as predictions of the future, or as messages from the past, which has lead to many theories regarding the supernatural and religious beliefs.
We have only touched the surface into the studies of dreams, yet the scientific research continues to astound us. Many well know scientists have derived their own theories, yet to this day, nothing has actually been set in hard concrete.

There is one question, though, that we must consider. If we did not dream, would our waking hours continue to run as they do now. If dreaming is a way for our subconscious to work through what is on our minds, then without dreams we would not be able to vent our emotions properly, preventing normal life from resuming. Therefore, how would we act? As a documentary once showed, the possibility of dreams becoming extinct would surely open up a world further into the realms of anger and hate than we live today.


Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream

Another fascinating read - 50 points.