Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,
Assalamualaikum w.b.t
I had a weird dream last night. I was on a world that is 247degrees different from the world I am living in. In the world, I was kind of like a normal me. There was green field and red sky. Also, there was a weird animal. The front was like platypus. With the head, the beak and the neck. But the body was like hippopotamus, with the feathers on top of the body, like shuttle-cock. I had a fight with that animal. After I killed the animal, was brought to this shopping mall I guess. The ceiling was made from glass, almost Hogwarts-like.
Then, there was a lot of dresses and sweat-shirts. The sweat-shirts are mostly white and black. There was many colourful dresses but I saw a black-purple dress and was deeply attached to it. I wanted to buy the dress but I couldn't since I don't have the money that is used in that place. But there is a small ATM next to the shop. I had to use my ID Card to withdraw the money and all the money was shilling. After I finished paying for the dress, I wanted to go out from the mall. But all the door was closed and I had to jump from the third floor and fight some giants, elfs and I also remembered a fairy. And so was it, I couldn't remember the rest of the dreams.
This whole day, I had my mind all over the dream and I keep on repeating what I saw in my dream. Well, I am a person who couldn't live with all the curiosity. So, I had to made my own little research as usual. I read about how dreams are formed, why people dreams, and a few other facts about dreaming. So, before we move on about dream. We have to first, understand 'sleep' and brain condition during our sleep.
So, basically, when we sleep, we have to go through 5 stages of sleep. The first stage is the light sleep where the muscles started to relax. At this stage, it is easy to wake up. On the second stage, the heartbeat and breathing rate starts to decrease slowly and a person enters a calming phase at this stage. At third stage, the brain starts to generate slow delta waves and the person falls into deep sleep. At this stage, the brain starts to organize info, data and memories of the day. The fourth stage is when the person is in really deep sleep and full rest. The brain starts to produce delta waves and breathing becomes rhythmical and stable. The fifth stage is the stage where dreams are formed. The brain waves speed up at this stage and muscles are temporarily paralyzed. Heartbeat and breathing rate increases. Rapid eye movement (REM) occurs at this stage.
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| The sleeping stages |
Scientist and researches believe that a person goes through the five stages of sleeping repeatedly when they are sleeping. The sleep during the fifth stage is called the REM sleep while the other four stages are called the (No Rapid Eye Movement) NREM sleep. REM was first discovered in 1953, when researchers first described REM in sleeping infants. Studies about sleep and dreams was considered absurd at the time. When they realized that there are strange,
illogical experiences we call dreams that happened during REM
sleep, they start to carefully observe this phenomenon. Studies were also conducted on mammals and birds where it was found that they show signs of REM sleep while the reptiles and cold-blooded animals don't. This concludes that mammals and birds most probably dream in their sleep too.
Believe it or not, REM sleep actually stimulates the brain region that is used to learn. Cerebral cortex (refer the paragraph before) is the region of the brain that is used for thinking, learning and organizing information. This is probably the reason why sleep is so important in daily life. People who are lacking of REM sleep usually have difficulties to recall what they have learn. Some scientists also believe that during the sleep, the cortex is organizing the information that it receive during the day and in the attempt to do so, it creates a 'story' out of the fragmented brain activities.
The story are the dreams that the person is having. Some dreams are incorporated with the memory, the thoughts and some are just the mere fantasy that the brain created. The visual dreams, as in what we see in the dreams are basically what we have seen, or at least what we hope to see. The blind people do not have visual dreams. They usually dream of things they touched, heard and feel. Researchers also believe that more negative emotions are portrayed in the dreams, such as fear, anger and frustration. Dreams that comes with the positive emotions are usually the fantasy dreams in colours. Dreams that portrays negative emotions are usually in black and white or dull colours.
People dreams more that five times when they sleep but they usually forgets their dreams because the part of the brain that is used to memorized is inactive during the sleep. People who have accustom themselves to recall their dreams as soon as they wake up have tendency to remember their dreams. They could also remember details and colours in their dreams and this is said to have association with their creativity and imagination. People with creative minds tend to remember their dreams more vividly because their dreams are usually weird and out of the world with lots of colours and different things that what they have seen all day. :)
source:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/understanding_sleep.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/dream2.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/tp/facts-about-dreams.htm
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/dream-in-color
