What is the true significance of dreams?

Question

We all have them and most people believe dreams to be something meaningful. But why? How? Is it simply randomness filtering through our minds as we sleep? If so, why would we do it? Is it simply a glitch in our minds? People, help me out here!

Answer 1

Dreams are of two things: 1)The mind empties itself of information from the previous day and resets itself for the next day 2)The subconscious mind, contacts the conscious mind by using dreams. Most dream interpetation is simply what the subconscious wants to tell the conscious mind.

Answer 2

A dream is subconscious interpretation of a feeling that could not be processed by your mind when it was active - and as such it was not stored in the correct memory cell of you body - instead kept as a stray information string in the closest cell where there was storage space available. In case there was already some information stored there - the string would connect to the existing string and the mind would keep trying to balance it correctly - and since the activity would carry on even after you were asleep - it would manifest as a dream - and the meaning of the dream can not be found out - because the trigger is not the right one for that information which manifests itself as a dream.

Answer 3

Dreams are how your mind puts all the thoughts in your head together when you sleep. Shows what you are mostly concerned about, what you should be concerned about, or just a simple escape out of the reality you currently live, as told by the mind as you sleep. You have no control of your dream unless you realize it. Waking from a dream means it was way too much for you to handle, therefore you are knocked back into the reality you live. Dreams may reveal what your deapest darkest desires are.

Answer 4

Well, nobody's sure yet, but I think it's your mind processing what has happened throughout the day. For instance, I once had a dream that an ex-boyfriend of mine had come out to visit, and he came out of the closet and said he was gay. I was very upset about the whole thing and left, and that night there was a huge concert in my backyard. People were moshing and crowd-surfing, and he was talking to someone and they found out. They proceeded to rip him to pieces in the mosh pit, and by the next morning when I went out there, all I found was some trampled grass and the few remains, which looked more like a tiny clay skeleton than anything. He'd been wearing the sweater I'd given him years ago...

That day, I had been pondering on his orientation anyway, had come across a shirt I'd bought for an ex-boyfriend that was still in my house, had found out that I'd missed the as-local-as-it-ever-is Tool concert, and was generally anxious. Thus this horrible nightmare of mine. There's always some sort of tie to your daily happenstances. *shrug* I think we just make peace with ourselves in the night.

Answer 5

Dreams are "mind discharge", during concious resting while sleeping. Dreams usually show what You have been thinking for the most of Your awake time, thus burdening Your brain with it. When the brain goes asleep, not all of it's parts are inactive, but the concious part is, and dischaging of burden begins. It hits centres for sight and hearing, sometimes even lower centres, like those for taste and smell, and colorfull dreams come before Your eyes.
Sometimes, especially while studing and taking exausting exams, correct answers to the exam questions come to Your dream, making You feel stupid, for not knowing it when You needed it the most. This is another proof for the above menitioned story.

Answer 6

dream facts & tidbits


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1. One third of our lives is spent sleeping.

2. In your lifetime, you would've spent about 6 years of it dreaming. That is more than 2,100 days spent in a different world.

3. Dreams have been here as long as mankind. Back in the Roman Era, striking and significant dreams were submitted to the Senate for analysis and interpretation.

4. Everybody dreams. EVERYBODY! Simply because you do not remember your dream does not mean that you did not dream.

5. Dreams are indispensable. A lack of dream activity can mean protein deficiency or a personality disorder.

6. We dream on average of one or two hours every night. And we often even have 4-7 dreams in one night.

7. Blind people do dream. Whether visual images will appear in their dream depends on whether they where blind at birth or became blind later in life. But vision is not the only sense that constitutes a dream. Sounds, tactility, and smell become hypersensitive for the blind and their dreams are based on these senses.

8. Five minutes after the end of the dream, half the content is forgotten. After ten minutes, 90% is lost.

9. The word dream stems from the Middle English word, dreme which means "joy" and "music".

10. Men tend to dream more about other men, while women dream equally about men and women.

11. Studies have shown that our brain waves are more active when we are dreaming than when we are awake.

12. Dreamers who are awakened right after REM sleep, are able to recall their dreams more vividly than those who slept through the night until morning.

13. Physiologically speaking, researchers found that during dreaming REM sleep, males experience erections and females experience increased vaginal blood flow - no matter what the content of the dream. In fact, "wet dreams" may not necessarily coincide with overtly sexual dream content.

14. People who are giving up smoking have longer and more intense dreams.

15. Toddlers do not dream about themselves. They do not appear in their own dreams until the age of 3 or 4.

16. If you are snoring, then you cannot be dreaming.

17. Nightmares are common in children, typically beginning at around age 3 and occurring up to age 7-8.

18. In a poll, 67% of Americans have experienced Deja Vu in their dreams, occurring more often in females than males.

Answer 7

if you have ever suffered an injury that caused nerve damage you have no doubt felt twinges as the nerves regrow. while we sleep our brains are sorting through items in our memory the more significant memories will cause dreams and new neural connections and these twinges will produce dreams unrelated to actual memories, this combined with actual memories will often produce nightmares.

Are dreams meaningful? Yes, as we dream we are unconciously rehearsing our memories. Our dreams may allow us more honesty than actual experience.

Answer 8

Although nobody for sure knows exactly why or how dreams work, I'd like you to read this article, it'll really explain a lot of whats known about dreaming, very interesting.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/dream.htm

Answer 9

Did you know that if you don't sleep for 3 days you are legally insane? So I guess dreams are what keep us sane.

Answer 10

memory consolidation