The Science of Dreams

      Dreams. What do they mean, why do we have them, how do they affect us? Since the beginning of time human dreams have been a subject of science and pseudoscience alike.
Our dreams combine verbal, visual and emotional stimuli into a most likely nonsensical storyline. Many even think that we can learn from our dreams. 
      Some psychological theories say that we dream because it helps to sort out problems and events that happened that day. Other theories say that we dream in order to test neural connections that affect how we learn, some scientists even believe that it is a combination of the two. More recently, around 1973, researchers Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley set forth another theory that threw out the old psychoanalytical ideas. Their research on what was going in the brain during sleep gave them the idea that dreams were the result of random electrical impulses that pulled imagery from traces of experience stored in the memory. 
      Most dreams take place when we enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep or the fifth stage of sleep which typically happens after being asleep for an hour and a half or 90 minutes. Physical changes also during REM sleep, your heart rate and breathing quickens, your blood pressure rises, it is harder for you to control and regulate your body temperature and your brain activity increases. Other than that the rest of your body is mostly paralyzed until you leave REM sleep, This is so you don't act out your dreams while you're having them. 
      Did you know that 5 minutes after a dream ends we forget almost fifty percent of it then and in ten minutes we forget over ninety percent! So you may ask why do we forget our dreams? research points to the simple reason that other things get in the way. We are forward-thinking by nature, so remembering something when we first wake up is difficult. But L. Strumpell a dream researcher believe that there could be a few things contributing to the fact that we forget our dreams. Strumpell stated that dreams are forgotten first thing in the morning just like many other things. he also stated that since most dreams are not very intense so it easier to forget them. Dreams are also usually unique and vague to begin with so that could be one of the reasons why remembering them could be difficult.