I woke up this morning with a strange and bizarre dream still fresh in my head, slowly walked to my kitchen to get some coffee, and read this article about why I (and you for that matter) even dream in the first place. There are numerous reasons why we dream, although what we glean from our dreams in the first place is up to us.
According to the results of a 2001 study using rats, a majority of the rats in the study appeared to be dreaming about the experience that they had just previous to falling asleep in the first place: namely, running in circles on a circular track so to speak.
Dr. Wilson, the researcher who performed the study posited the idea that this might be the same case for people and are used for “trying to figure out what we can remember and what we can afford to forget.”
I’m more than a little curious about the relationship between “rat dreams” and the dreams of people because lab rats would definitely have considerably less experience than a majority of people, so it seems difficult to confirm the exact origin of the rats experience in the first place.
Of course, I am not a neuro-scientist. Dr. Wilson was even able to determine where roughly 50% of the rats were on the track in their dreams in based on REM cycles.
You may have heard about other studies which confirm what college students are always told to do before an exam: study before you sleep and don’t pull all-nighters before exams. If you are figuring out a task before you sleep, research in two at least two different studies has proven that 40-59% of participants in studies involving puzzles and algorithms were able to perform better on their tasks after sleeping briefly.
The ability to process information during sleep cycles definitely gives new meaning to the saying, “I’ll sleep on it.”
Then, of course, there are those who like to consider the symbols of their dreams and what each strange thing in each dream might mean. I found this site which lacks any research from actual neuro-scientists, but does have information on dream theorists from Freud to Perls. The main categories of dreams include chase dreams, falling dreams, naked dreams and teeth dreams. Teeth dreams, for example, could mean anything from the fact that you are anxious about how others perceive you, or if you subscribe to an Ancient Greek interpretation, that a family member may become ill or die.
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