Analysis of Four Different Ways on Why and How We Dream

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The study of dreaming has been a popular research topic in psychology for a long time. Multiple researchers have their own opinions on the subject and many have conducted research tests on where in our brain dreaming happens and why it happens. The articles that have been analyzed in this paper will go over four different ways on why and how we dream. One researcher named Calvin Kai-Ching Yu believes that when we dream we are biologically predisposed to dreaming themes. The researcher conducted a study on three cultures and studied what they dreamed. Another researcher thinks that WLE (Waking Life Elements) are what influence our dreams. The researcher did a study with university students. They would go about their daily lives and when they woke up from sleeping, they had to right away write about what they dreamed about. Nir and Tononi say that dreaming happens during REM (Rapid Eye Motion) but can possibly be influenced by sounds and other things (Nir, Tonino) like sleep talking and sleep terrors during NREM (Non Rapid Eye Motion) and that has been reported to influence dreams in REM. David Kahn thinks dreams are a way for the brain to make a dream self that directs the dream of memories, feelings, and new thoughts that are in the brain (Nir, Tonino). Erin J. Wamsley takes the stance that when sleeping the brain puts new memories in long term storage because sleep provides a stable state of mind to store the memories.

The first viewpoint to look at is saying that we dream typical dreams every night. We don’t choose our dreams. Yu did a study on these following ethnic groups Chinese, Canadian, and German. The main themes for the Chinese ethnic group dreams were school, teachers, studying, being chased, arriving too late, and falling (Yu). These all are things that a lot of people struggle with in this ethnic group or are things that are important to this group. Which could be a possible reason why these themes are recurring in their dreams. Yu also discovers that only some dreams depend on age and populations like cultures. University students having dreams about sexual experiences is more probable than that of middle and high school students because of the age difference. Dreams like being chased, falling, school, teachers, and studying were found to be early dream themes in Chinese and Canadian ethnic groups (Yu). A lot of people experience typical dreams in early childhood and continue to have those dreams into adulthood. In the study’s that Yu and other researchers use there are faults. It’s not uncommon that people can’t remember their dreams completely. When they take the surveys that ask them to choose all the themes that they have dreamed, they do have the possibility of coming up with a false memory of the dream and will pick a theme that doesn’t apply to them. To avoid this they did a study where they invited seven people to sleep at a laboratory and when REM was in progress they awakened the people and interviewed them. The next morning they wake up and they were asked to pick from a list of dream themes. The results were mostly positive. One of the people were able to identify 11 of the common dream themes. The people in the study didn’t do anything to prepare themselves to recall dreams. This study was a helpful study in correlating themes to dreaming (Yu).

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The second viewpoint is that our WLE (Waking Life Elements) influence our dreams. There are five factors that can influence our dreams, time, emotion, experience, personality of the person dreaming, and the time of night when it happens. An experience that happened in your life a long time ago is unlikely to be in your dream like eating breakfast or turning an assignment. If you experience something very emotionally inflicting like a family members death or your parents getting a divorce, that is more likely to be in your dream. An experience like riding your bike has little chance of being in a dream over you getting into your dream college. Personality plays apart because if you are a worker you have high chances of dreaming about work. Or if you are a person who plays music a lot, you may dream of music a lot. It also depends on the time of night you dream. When REM is happening parts of your brain that deal with memory are active, so later in the night you may dream of things that happened in your past, than when you first fall asleep you will most likely dream about recent memories. In the study they conducted they instead of asking for dream themes, when the participants woke up they asked them to name any WLEs in their dreams. This was to see if there was any correlation with WLEs in dreaming. For the trial they had to answer a lot of questions about WLEs in their dreams. When they woke up they had to immediately with a voice recorder record all of the WLEs they had in their dreams. The results showed that 207 out of 247 reported WLEs in their dreams. People reported dreaming about a dead family member, a test result they are waiting for, and a loved one struggling with an illness (Vallet).

The third viewpoint is …

The fourth viewpoint is that dreaming is for the brain to store memories into a long term storage space in the brain. “Sleep provides an optimal neurophysiological state to facilitate this process, allowing memory networks to be repeatedly reactivated in the absence of new sensory input” (Wamsley). During sleep you go into REM sleep and during REM sleep the parts of the brain that deal with memory are more active. In a new study it shows that sleep is where memories are replayed. Research studies also show that when you learn something new, your brain will go over it. They did studies with rats on this. The rats explored a new environment which set off hippocampal cell activity (Wamsley). When the rats fell asleep the hippocampal cell activity was happening (Wamsley). When the rats were sleeping their brains were thinking of the environment that they explored (Wamsley). A theory is that they were dreaming of the paths that they took during the day. Some researchers say that dreaming doesn’t help with memory consolidation because dreaming doesn’t showcase enough or accurately day to day life experiences. Memories are not always remembered the same way during sleep as they were in real life. They have elements of the waking life moment but the sequence of events is different or the plot changed.

In conclusion Scientists still haven’t found the exact cause as to why we dream. There are several theories and ideas of why we dream.

Works Cited

  1. Ekahn, David. “Brain Basis of Self: Self-Organization and Lessons from Dreaming.” Frontiers
  2. in Psychology, 16 july 2013, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00408/full.
  3. Wamsley, Erin J., “Dreaming and Offline Memory Consolidation.” 30 Jan. 2014,
  4. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4704085/, PMC, doi: 10.1007/s11910-013-
  5. Nir Yuval, Giulio Tononi. “Dreaming and the Brain: From Phenomenology to Neurop
  6. Yu, Calvin Kai-Ching. “We Dream Typical Themes every single Night.”

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