How many dreams have been approved

Dream recall changes with age, too. Older people are less likely to report dreaming. This could also be related to memory: since older people have weaker memories, it could be that they dream but cannot remember their dreams by the time they wake up. A brain area called the medial prefrontal cortex is also related to dream recall. If this brain area is damaged, the person recalls few dreams, which may mean the person dreams less or not at all.

Also, how tightly packed the brain cells are in the medial prefrontal cortex can vary from person to person, which may cause some healthy people to dream more or less than other healthy people. There are also genes that affect how much REM sleep people get.

So, how long you sleep, your age, and your genetics may all explain why you dream more or less than someone else. The scientists made maps of the brain activity that occurred when people looked at pictures of things—keys, beds, airplanes.

Later, the people in the study slept in the MRI machine. The scientists matched the pattern of brain activity from the people as they slept to brain activity patterns for the pictures they viewed earlier, and then chose the best match Figures 1B,C.

This means that dreams are created in the brain during sleep. What is the purpose of our dreams? Memories move from temporary storage in the hippocampus , a brain structure that is very important for short-term memory, to permanent storage in other parts of the brain.

This makes the memories easier to remember later. Memories improve with sleep because the memories are replayed during sleep [ 6 ]. If you want to learn all the words to your favorite scene in a movie, you might re-watch that scene over and over again. The brain works the same way: neurons brain cells that are active with learning are active again and replay the learned material during sleep.

This helps store the memory more permanently. Memory replay may show up in our dreams. Dreams in non-REM sleep, when most memory replay happens, often contain normal people and objects from recent events. So, bizarre dreams in REM sleep may come from a combination of many different recent memories, which were replayed in non-REM sleep, and get jumbled up during REM sleep. If dreams help with memory processing, does that mean your memories are not being processed if you do not dream?

Could pandemic concerns become permanently woven into dream content? Therapists may need to step in to help certain people. The survey information considered in this article does not delve into nightmares in detail. But some health-care workers who saw relentless suffering later themselves suffered with recurrent nightmares. And some patients who endured the ICU for days or weeks suffered from horrific nightmares during that time, which may in part have been the result of medications and sleep deprivation induced by around-the-clock hospital procedures and interminable monitor noises and alarms.

These survivors will need expert help to regain normal sleep. Thankfully, specialized techniques are highly effective. People who are not traumatized but still a little freaked out about their COVID dreams also have options. New technologies such as targeted memory reactivation are providing individuals with more control over their dream narratives. For example, learning how to practice lucid dreaming—becoming aware that you are dreaming—aided by targeted memory reactivation or other methods could help transform worrisome pandemic dreams into more pleasant, maybe even useful, dreams.

Short of therapy, we can give ourselves permission to ease up and to enjoy banking those surplus hours of sleep. Dreams can be vexing, but they are also impressionable, malleable and at times inspirational.

This article was originally published with the title "Infectious Dreams" in Scientific American , 4, October Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. The Echo Chamber of Social Media There is one basic question about pandemic dreams that we would like to nail down: whether the dream surge was amplified by the media.

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Most dreams incorporate fragments of experiences from our waking lives. But do dreams ever replay complete memories—for instance, the last time you saw your mother, including the place, activities, and people? Memories like this are called episodic because they represent whole episodes instead of just fragments; studies the secret world of sleep of dreaming show that these types of memories are sometimes replayed in sleep, but it is quite rare around 2 percent of dreams contain such memories, according to one study.

Most of our dreams just recombine fragments of waking life. These fragments are relatively familiar and reflect the interests and concerns of the dreamer. This means cyclists dream about cycling, teachers dream about teaching, and bankers dream about money.

Some researchers have capitalized upon dream reports to gain insight into the process by which memories are immediately incorporated i. On the other hand, a more recently described phenomenon called the dream-lag effect refers to the extraordinary observation that, after its initial appearance as a day residue, the likelihood that a specific memory will be incorporated into dreams decreases steadily across the next few nights after the memory was formed, then increases again across the following few nights Fig.

The likelihood of such incorporation decreases gradually across the next few nights, with few memories incorporated into dreams three to five days after they occurred. Extraordinarily, however, the probability that a memory will be incorporated into a dream increases again on nights six and seven after it was initially experienced. What is going on here? Why are memories less likely to be incorporated into dreams three to five days after they originally occurred than six to seven days afterward?

One possibility relates to the need for consolidation. As with most research, the dream-lag effect raises more questions than it answers. Some dreams are fragmented, jumping rapidly from one topic to another, while others move forward in a more coherent story.

Recent analyses have suggested that these differences are far from random; instead they may be driven by the physiology of various brain states and the extent to which structures like the hippocampus and neocortex are in communication during different sleep stages. Dreams occur in all stages of sleep, but they seem to become increasingly fragmented as the night progresses.

In general, they appear to be constructed out of a mishmash of prior experience. These fragments can either be pasted together in a semi-random mess or organized in a structured and realistic way. The dreams that occur in non-REM sleep tend to be shorter but more cohesive than REM dreams, and often they relate to things that just happened the day before.

REM dreams that occur early in the night often also reflect recent waking experiences, but they are more fragmented than their non-REM counterparts. Conversely, REM dreams that occur late in the night are typically much more bizarre and disjointed. For instance, muddy water can represent sadness, tidal waves can represent overwhelm and clear water can represent emotional clarity. Fire most often equates to anger or distress, Loewenberg says, while wind can represent imminent changes or changes that you're currently going through.

While many symbols have a general meaning that can fit most people and common situations, you have to account for your personal associations with symbols, she explains. Kryger says it's very common to dream about death, particularly about the death of someone close to you emotionally. It's also common to interpret those sorts of dreams as communication from the dead, which isn't really a surprise: "death has such a great impact on the living that it is often incorporated into dream content," he says.

Loewenberg says dreaming about death can signify the end of something in real life, and that doesn't necessarily mean the end of a life. According to Kuras, "this all depends on what these images mean to the dreamer in the context of their life and challenges. Dream work is very much the exploration of feelings and meaning for the dreamer and is somehow related to the 'work' of managing life and its challenges.

Like the elements, there's no actual scientific proof that darkness and light have set meanings, but many dreamers associate each with a particular feeling, Loewenberg says. For example, dreams that take place in the dark can represent uncertainty in real life -- such as if you are "in the dark" about something going on and you need more information to make a decision. Darkness has also been associated with sadness or loneliness. Dreams that take place in the daytime, on the other hand, may not mean anything for most people.

But if you typically dream in dark settings and suddenly have dreams set in daytime, it could signify that an issue was resolved or that you've come out of a period of sadness. Again, dream interpretation is almost entirely speculation, and what's important is how you relate your dreams to your own life. Have you ever dreamed that you were falling and jerked awake?

If you've ever discussed said dream with other people, there's a good chance someone else chimed in saying, "I've had that dream, too! An archetype, by definition, is "a very typical example of a certain person or thing" Oxford -- when applied to dreams, an archetype is something that signifies " patterns of the psyche.

Other common dreams, which may or may not be archetypes depending on what's happening in your life at the time you have the dream, include:.

Loewenberg says these dreams are so common because they're connected to common behaviors, actions, thoughts and fears.