The evolutionarily older parts of our brain are also the seat of our basic emotions. According to this theory, the emotion comes first, and dreams are made to make sense of that emotion. Evidence for this position comes from scene changes that happen: when we have anxiety dreams, for example, they often switch from one anxious situation to a different one—so rather than us feeling anxious because of the content of our dream, it could be that our feeling is causing an anxious narrative in the dream!
Another major theory of dreaming is threat-simulation theory, which holds that the evolutionary function of dreaming is for us to practice how to behave in threatening situations. There is a lot of evidence for this theory, too. First, most dream emotion is negative.
Also, people tend to dream of ancestral threats: falling, being chased, natural disasters, and so on. These frightening elements are overrepresented in dreams—that is, we see them in dreams much more than our experience in our day-to-day world would predict. Many people dream of being chased by animals, but how often does this actually happen to people?
The overrepresentation of animals chasing us in dreams, especially for children, suggests that we have some innate fear of them. These two theories of dreaming are often presented as competing, but as far as I can tell, they are compatible—that is, even if dreams are interpretations of chaotic input from the spinal cord, there is still a theory needed to describe how that chaotic input is elaborated into narratives that we experience as dreams, and it is quite possible that the mind takes advantage of this opportunity to practice dealing with dangerous things.
Why do we feel the urge to talk about our dreams? Dream recall frequency is associated with medial prefrontal cortex white-matter density. Front Psychol. Murzyn E. Do we only dream in colour? A comparison of reported dream colour in younger and older adults with different experiences of black and white media.
Conscious Cogn. Schwitzgebel E. Do people still report dreaming in black and white? An attempt to replicate a questionnaire from Percept Mot Skills. Mathes J, Schredl M. Gender differences in dream content: Are they related to personality? International Journal of Dream Research.
William Domhoff G, Schneider A. Similarities and differences in dream content at the cross-cultural, gender, and individual levels. Consciousness and Cognition. Do all mammals dream? J Comp Neurol. Lucid dreaming incidence: A quality effects meta-analysis of 50 years of research. The dreams of college men and women in and A comparison of dream contents and sex differences.
Information processing during sleep: The effect of olfactory stimuli on dream content and dream emotions. Journal of Sleep Research.
Domhoff GW, Schneider A. Rapid Eye Movements Rems and visual dream recall in both congenitally blind and sighted subjects. SPIE; Farooq M, Anjum F. Sleep paralysis. StatPearls Publishing; Typical dreams: Stability and gender differences. J Psychol. Your Privacy Rights. The researchers carried out six studies in both Eastern and Western cultures the United States, South Korea and India that led them to conclude that people place considerable importance in their dreams, because dreams come from within the brain, not from outside sources, and thus contain "hidden truths.
A majority of commuters in Boston reported that dreams affected their daily behavior. Some 68 percent said that dreams foretell the future, and 63 percent said at least one of their dreams had come true.
Three-hundred forty-one pedestrians were surveyed in Cambridge, Mass. Sixty undergraduate psychology students at Rutgers University were asked whether they believed in God on a five-point scale ranging from definitely to doubtful.
Also, not surprisingly, "agnostics reported that dreams were more meaningful when God suggested that they should take a year off to travel the world than when God suggested they should take a year off to work in a leper colony.
Consistent throughout the study is the thread that dreams do play a role in the waking lives of most people. They come from within and, thus, contain "hidden truths" that could be useful in real life, or so most of us believe. But they go on to add that dreams of infidelity may also be based on fact. Almost 40 percent of children have night terrors, though most outgrow them by their teens.
Around 3 percent of adults have night terrors. Eating before bed makes nightmares more likely, because it increases your metabolism, signaling your brain to be more active. Certain medications, such as antidepressants and narcotics, increase the frequency of nightmares.
Confusion, disgust, sadness, and guilt are more often the driving force behind nightmares than fear, according to research. People forget 95 to 99 percent of their dreams. You may be able to learn to control your dreams by using techniques for lucid dreaming. Swearing is a common occurrence in sleep talking, according to a study. Hypnic jerks may be the cause of dreams about falling, which is one of the most common dream themes. Dreams about your teeth falling out may be caused by undiagnosed dental irritation, like bruxism, rather than a premonition of death like old folklore suggests.
Dreaming is the most extensively studied cognitive state. While some experts believe that dreams have no meaning and serve no function, others believe that our dreams do mean something.
These barely begin to scratch the surface of dream interpretation theories. Here are some other interesting theories on the meaning of dreams:.
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