There are lots of crazy things in science, but dreams are a special kind of crazy.  No matter how many dreams you've had in your life, every once in a while you awaken from your sleep and think 'what the was that?' Luckily, science is assisting us to discover what exactly is behind this exterior. After my weeks of conducted research, this is my presentation of what I have learnt and comprehended. I had a natural interest in this topic, it was captivating in my opinion, and without interest I usually don’t perform as well because I need to research something which stimulates my mind and which I am actually passionate to learn about.
Dreaming has been studied and interpreted by many people in the past and the present, they unambiguously had some advances in this topic as I am presently performing a research project about it, but as much as there were advances, there were more unsuccessful attempts too. Some of the theories they conjured were absolutely absurd and had no scientific evidence to support their claims, but some proved to lead to more advances in this field. Dreaming is an undeniably interesting topic, these manifestations which occur all supposedly have an underlying moral or explanation, but scientists haven't quite reached that point of discovery yet but still have a rough idea. The person most associated with dreaming today was a man named Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud wrote a book, 'The Interpretation of Dreams', his theories were that dreams were largely symbolic and an expression of repressed wishes collected in our subconscious minds. His theory made sense but there was one substantial idea he mistook which will be mentioned later so pay close attention as we delve into the world of dreaming. This study on dreaming and how unknown and mysterious its foundations were, initiated many people to set in voyage to discover the science behind dreaming.
In the 1950's, two pioneers from the University of Chicago, Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleiton began to conduct research in the field of dreaming, oneirology. The two peers developed a device to read the electrical activity of the brain, (EEG Machine) and intended to use it to monitor the brain activity of people while sleeping. Eugene and Nathaniel hooked people up to the machine and began recording their results. They predicted that a sleeping brain was a resting brain, but found the opposite. Brain activity fluctuated over a predictable patter over 90 minutes and sleepers experienced the cycle of initially drifting off, to gradually being immersed in a deep sleep and back to almost awake. The stage of deep sleep was the most interesting. Brain activity during this stage was identical to the awake brain, but even more peculiar than this was that the test subjects became functionally paralysed except for the eyes .The eyes repeatedly darted back and forth and so the 2 pioneers coined the term of R.E.M. Sleep (rapid eye movement). This is what our brain is up to while dreaming which was on the contrary to what the majority of us believe.
The discovery of R.E.M. Sleep or also known as paradoxical sleep was imperative to advancement in the field of dreaming. The subjects who were at this stage were awakened and reported experiencing the most vivid of dreams, which were often emotionally intense. The sleepers experienced the most lifelike dreams and these depictions were the complex, fascinating and compelling; the intensity achieved couldn’t compare to dreams experienced in any other stage. Every 90 minutes or so the brain would phase into R.E.M. Sleep and our brains would create crazy narratives which each lasted between 20-30 minutes. What was so important about dreaming that our body had to be paralysed to have realistic dreams? One answer was that our brains were making important connections between real life experiences which would help us in our waking lives. The brain is strengthening the important links and weakening the unnecessary connections. Freud was wrong about dreams, we don’t necessarily dream about our repressed wishes and desires, but instead dream about what we did in the day. When we are sleeping our brains are sorting through what had happened while we were awake. Collaborating with our memories to search for seemingly unrelated links that may be able to help us become a more successful human tomorrow. The reason why our conscious mind cannot perform this while we are awake is because our brains are too compulsive and controlling to allow this process of creative problem solving to occurs, thus we dream while we are asleep. This is the reason behind why we dream, the science behind it lies in our waking minds. Just like a computer our minds also need to defrag, but just more regularly.
Dream time activity provides our minds to improve at things that require making connections and thinking outside the box. Dreams have actually been responsible for some really important inventions and discoveries in the past. Dmitri Mendeleev developed the system to structure elements (periodic table) in a dream. After months of drooling on the topic and where conscious thought was getting him nowhere he dreamed up the system to express the elements which we still utilised today. Research has authenticated that when solving puzzles the subjects who rest in the middle are 60% more likely to be successful in solving the puzzle compared to who didn’t lapse into R.E.M. sleep. Dreams are all about making associations and finding patters that our waking brains have a hard time detecting. This is the association between dreams and our waking life.
Non - R.E.M. sleep is where you dream, but these aren't necessarily vivid, usually something boring is reported. Non - R.E.M sleep usually reinforces things that your brain already practices. Something as simple as driving on the left side (Australia), or showing enough courtesy to not pick your nose in public. However in R.E.M. Sleep gets considerably peculiar as it provides the opportunity to safely test something difficult in an environment indistinguishable from reality. It is our brain running simulations of vivid and lifelike depictions. The dreams animated are usually intense in nature and is something like driving a tank through Brooklyn. It has an evolutionary purpose just like everything else we do; it has the purpose to try to make us a more successful person. The great thing about this phase of sleep is that it gives us the ability to perform a task without any consequences what so ever. It can also be a way of depicting something emotional as well, if you're dreaming about your parents fighting, you might actually have some animosity between each other, dreaming can be another way to handle our emotions in a way we can wrap our heads around. The content you may dream may seem bizarre but the emotions attached to your dreaming are related, and remember your dreaming brain is equipped on working on real life problems and this is another benefit of R.E.M. Sleep.
On the topic of absolute idiosyncratic things our brain can do I’d like to mention lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is becoming aware of the fact that you’re dreaming and can actually direct the events of your dreams. The other parts of the brain lets a portion of the conscious mind in on the action, most people have experienced this phenomenon once in their lifetime. During Non R.E.M. sleep your cerebral cortex tosses its ability to communicate with other parts of the brain, but in R.E.M. sleep the cerebral cortex becomes active. It begins communicating with the other areas except for the area allocated in the front of the brain next to your left temple, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This is the areas in control of applying memories to other situations, planning and predicting outcomes. This is the answer to why R.E.M. sleep is so weird, it’s because your brain cannot tell what's going to happen next. But during the period of Lucid dreaming, this area in charge of planning is awakened and regains consciousness and begins to the plot out the stories. This is also practiced in sufferers of recurring nightmares to help with depression and anxiety.
Concluding this report and study I want to say that dreams are one of the most sceptical topics out there and I’m so glad that I researched this because if not then I would’ve delayed the discovery to know what the bounds of the subconscious are and how it is amplified while dreaming.  However on the topic of dreaming and all its wonder, it really is important that we dream. Not only does it have many benefits and advances us in becoming a more successful human tomorrow, but dreaming is imperative to the functioning of the waking brain.