Why Dreams Occur and What They Mean: A Scientific Analysis

Introduction

All humans, and even some animals, know what it means to doze off to sleep and dream. Whether it is seen in the quietness of the dark in a partner sleeping in the same bed, whose eyelids flutter as he or she sleeps, or whether it is experienced firsthand as a series of recurring images drawn together by the threads of a seemingly important story, dreams are inescapable features of sleep — and particularly of REM sleep. Dreams are not just "B-rated movies," as some have called them, but are a way for the mind to sift through events and make sense of the day just passed, as well as to categorize experiences for later use.

Good dreams and bad dreams alike teach a lesson, and nightmares are often the mind's way of stressing that something must be done about a particular issue. The following paragraphs aim to make sense of the phenomenon of dreaming, and to explain that dreams exist for a very specific reason: they occur in order to help an individual — not hurt or hinder a person — and what they mean can be left to one's own interpretation in the quest to solve a problem.

Definitions

In order to begin to tailor the phenomenon to the purposes of this paper — an exercise aimed at understanding why dreams occur — it is important to clarify that when speaking of dreams, this means both good dreams and bad dreams, or nightmares. It is also important, prior to beginning the analytical section, to define the phenomenon of dreams and dreaming. A first definition states that dreams are "a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during REM sleep" (Merriam-Webster). Another explanation suggests that dreams are "the thoughts, or series of thoughts, or imaginary transactions, which occupy the mind during sleep; a sleeping vision" (BrainyQuote).

These definitions agree on the fact that dreams occur as thoughts or images during sleep, and include both good dreams and bad dreams. Of course, good dreams incite pleasurable feelings, whereas nightmares arouse "feelings of intense fear, horror, and distress" (The Free Dictionary). Even so, both types fall under the umbrella of the above-offered definitions.

Why Dreams Occur

The explanations as to why dreams occur vary to a high degree. Because of the intangible nature of dreams, the phenomenon has been "explained" by a variety of outlets, including psychologists, scientific studies, and superstitious tales. Yet no matter who aims to make sense of a dream or nightmare, the end goal is always the same: making sense of dreams is vital to understanding oneself, including one's problems and successes. This is, put succinctly, the very reason humans dream and seek to understand their dreams.

Though superstitious approaches to dreams do exist — as interpreted by psychic readers and imaginative grandmothers alike — this paper focuses on explaining dreams from a psychological-scientific perspective and references several studies in order to cement the various explanations as to why dreams exist and how they can help an individual in daily life. According to one article,

"…there's increasing evidence that our dreams are not neural babble, but are instead layered with significance and substance. The narratives that seem so incomprehensible — why was I running through the airport in my underwear? — are actually careful distillations of experience, a regurgitation of all the new ideas and insights we encounter during the day." (Lehrer, 2010)

In order to further substantiate this claim, Lehrer references the research of Matthew Wilson, who found tangible evidence that dreams interpret daily events when studying rats at MIT in the 1990s. Lehrer continues,

"Wilson was recording neuron activity in the brains of rats as they navigated a difficult maze. (The machines translated the firing of brain cells into loud, staccato pops.) One day, he left the rats connected to the recording equipment after they completed the task. Not surprisingly, the tired animals soon started to doze off, slipping into a well-deserved nap. And that's when Wilson heard something extremely unexpected: although the rats were sound asleep, the sound produced by their brain activity was almost exactly the same as it was when they were running in the maze. The animals were dreaming of what they'd just done." (Lehrer, 2010)

In other words, what Wilson found was that these rats did not simply drift off to sleep and dream about a random subject; the rats actually relived, through their dreams, the very circumstances they had just experienced. This proved that learning was still occurring long after they succumbed to relaxation, and also suggested that restful yet activity-laden sleep was accompanied by constant learning and the application of experiences. Researchers suggest these findings can very well transcribe to humans as well. With a view to a scientific explanation as to why dreams replay experience, Wilson and Louie's more recent study, which built upon Wilson's initial 1990s work, details,

"…in dreaming, rats are consolidating their new memories, embedding these fragile traces into the neural network. While [they're] fast asleep, the mind is sifting through the helter-skelter of the day, trying to figure out what [they] need to remember and what [they] can afford to forget." (Louie and Wilson)

Again, because of the very real similarity between rat and human sleep patterns, one can certainly apply these findings to humans.

Another study discusses not only the ways in which humans think and learn through dreaming, but also how this essential component of sleep helps foster creativity and keep long-term memory healthy. Lehrer references the fact that "scientists have discovered that R.E.M. sleep isn't just essential for the formation of long-term memories: it might also be an essential component of creativity" (Lehrer, 2010).

Essentially, this line of research claims that proper sleep — an eight-hour cycle inclusive of dreaming — in a manner parallel to the rat experiment, can help subjects perform better at given tasks. In the experiment, five scientists described the following:

"Insight denotes a mental restructuring that leads to a sudden gain of explicit knowledge allowing qualitatively changed behavior. Anecdotal reports on scientific discovery suggest that pivotal insights can be gained through sleep. Sleep consolidates recent memories and, concomitantly, could allow insight by changing their representational structure." (Wagner et al., 2004)

The researchers go on to state that the study, given the knowledge presented above, was designed to see how sleep can facilitate thinking, or insight, and whether dreaming has anything to do with the aforementioned gain of knowledge. The subjects in this experiment performed a "cognitive task requiring the learning of stimulus-response sequences, in which they improved gradually by increasing response speed across task blocks" (Wagner et al., 2004).

Essentially, the subjects had quite a dull task to perform, and even when told of a shortcut, many were unable to ease their workload without sleep. However, after being allowed to sleep for eight hours, the subjects were much more successful in finding the said shortcut. The authors also state that,

"…initial training establishing a task representation was followed by 8 hours of nocturnal sleep, nocturnal wakefulness, or daytime wakefulness. At subsequent retesting, more than twice as many subjects gained insight into the hidden rule after sleep as after wakefulness, regardless of time of day." (Wagner et al., 2004)

As expected, the authors found that "sleep, by restructuring new memory representations, facilitates extraction of explicit knowledge and insightful behavior" (Wagner et al., 2004).

A final study referenced here, in order to demonstrate just how important dreaming is to one's health and mental well-being, was conducted by Sara Mednick. In this paper, Mednick states that subjects were given a variety of puzzles that encouraged free association; in other words, subjects were required to find a word that could be associated with three unrelated words. For example, given the words broken, clear, and eye, the common word was "glass." After these initial instructions, Mednick instructed subjects to take a nap. The findings are as follows:

"Interestingly, subjects who lapsed into R.E.M. during their nap solved 40 percent more puzzles than they did in the morning, before their brief sleep. (Subjects who quietly rested without sleeping or took a nap without R.E.M. showed a slight decrease in performance.)" (Mednick)

Lehrer adds that "according to Mednick, the dramatic improvement in creativity is due to the fact that R.E.M. 'primes associative networks,' allowing us to integrate new information into our problem-solving approach" (Lehrer, 2010). This research on REM sleep and creativity underscores how deeply intertwined dreaming is with higher cognitive functioning.

Conclusion

The aim of this analysis was to examine why dreams occur and whether they are important to one's understanding of one's world and of self. The paper sought to show how dreaming occurs and why dreams are important, as well as what specific functions they can fulfill. Furthermore, it has been shown that dreams can only help — not hinder — an individual's understanding of self. This has been demonstrated through both scientific and practical evidence, all of which has proven that increased creativity and improved memory are among the gains to be had from dreaming and from understanding this fascinating phenomenon.

References

Lehrer, Jonah. "Why We Need to Dream." Opinionator. New York Times, 19 Mar. 2010. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.

"Definition of Dreams." Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.

"Definition of Dreams." BrainyQuote. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.

"Nightmare." The Free Dictionary. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.

Louie, Kenway and Wilson, Matthew. "Temporally Structured Replay of Awake Hippocampal Ensemble Activity during Rapid Eye Movement Sleep." Neuron.

Wagner, U., Gais, S., Haider, H., Verleger, R., and Born, J. "Sleep Inspires Insight." Nature, Volume 427, Issue 6972, pp. 352–355, 22 January 2004.

Mednick, Sara. "REM, Not Incubation, Improves Creativity." Web. 16 Apr. 2012.

Tartakovsky, Margarita. "How to Analyze Your Dreams (and Why It's Important)." Psych Central. 25 Jan. 2011. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.