I consider the entirety of the human brain to be an anomaly, but dreaming in particular has always fascinated me. Sleep medicine expert Dr. Michelle Drerup has come to the conclusion that most dreams happen during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase during sleep. It’s an active cycle our mind goes through, produced by the brainstem which causes dreams. Dreams are like mini movies playing in our heads. They can be compelling and fantastic, but also frightening and confusing. I tend to have really weird dreams, but the most bizarre part is that most times I’m never able to describe them, explain why they happen, or even recall them the moment I wake from sleep. I’ve taken the time to research it in hopes for a better conclusion about the mysterious way our brains work during sleep.
The theories that I’ve heard consistently over my childhood and early adult years is that dreams are either our minds reliving a past experience, predicting something that might happen, or attempting to process a current emotional situation. As odd as it sounds, it’s not all a myth. One study by psychiatry professors Yuval Nir and Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin, say that dreams may come from a person’s imagination, memories, thoughts, and wishes. A neuroscience professor Dr. Erin J. Wamsley at Furman University in South Carolina claims that dreams come from the hippocampus, a part of our brain associated with memory, which is further evidence that memories are a leading cause of dreams.
I’m not even joking when I say the night after I started writing this article, I had three weird dreams consecutively. One in particular was extremely uncomfortable to experience and subsequently remember after waking, but why can dreams be so strange? It could have to do with our neurotransmitters and how active our brain is while asleep, where the chemicals such as acetylcholine and dopamine are present, with some researchers finding dopamine to be potentially related to hallucinations. I only remember a few images from my dreams and the rest is forgotten. Turns out that even though our brain can be as active in sleep mode as it is while awake, during REM sleep the long-term memory areas of our brains are mostly deactivated, causing short-term memories to last in dreams for about 30 seconds.
There is more to dreams than meets the eye. Cognitive processing doesn’t stop during sleep, because dreams are essential in continuing emotional processing of things that go on in our life. One example is how when dreaming, anxiety levels go down because of a decrease in noradrenaline, which is known to trigger the body’s fight or flight response. It’s also said that dreams may enhance the strength of our memory.
I know that when I wake up from a dream, the way I speak to others and the way I feel is affected. This is because our mood can change based on what we dream. If you have a dream that involves death or anxiety for example, it can induce a negative mood, whereas dreams about pleasurable experiences like leisurely activity, eating and drinking, and being around others you love can result in positive moods.
There’s one dream in particular that plagued my tween years and early adolescence, which was honestly more of a nightmare, but it came about once every month. That pattern stopped when I got into my late teenage years. I found out it wasn’t a common nightmare, but rather a kind of recurring dream that takes more effort and time to get past. Recurring dreams reflect parts of you as a person rather than a one-time experience you may have had. According to dream researcher Deirdre Barrett, recurring dreams come from our associations with certain topics and experiences and how we feel about them. For example, I know of someone who dreamt about being spit in the face by a black hole because they were scared that someone might be hiding in the dark closet in their bedroom.
I’m someone who dreams a lot, and I find that dreams can be as much of a gift as they can be a curse. Regardless of what research might say about it, I like to think it means I’m an imaginative person, or that my dreams are a trademark of my ambition. It feels like dreaming is some kind of superpower allowing us insight into ourselves on a completely mystifying level. When I curl up in my bed each night, I am grateful to dream, whether it makes me feel good or bad, because then at least I’ll know that my mind is alive and well.
Veronica is a Staff Writer at The Cascade. She loves to travel and explore new places, no matter how big or small. She is in her second year at UFV, pursuing the study of Creative
Writing.