Maybe it’s just due to the lack of sleep I will be getting over the course of THON weekend’s 46 hours, but the concept I am considering this week is dreams. According to Disney movies, “A dream is a wish your heart makes when you’re fast asleep.” Beyonce sings of a “sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare”, and the Eurythmics hauntingly chant “Sweet dreams are made of this…”. Why are dreams talked about all of the time in our wake state? We’re so enamored of dreams because they are largely still a mystery to us, even in our own minds.
Sigmund Freud thoerized that our dreams reveal our unconscious desires. They are symbolic, and tell us more about our truer selves, our deepest, intimate yearnings. And it is interesting to think about how at times, when we let our minds wander, day or night, we find out what we really want… when it’s outside of our contol to determine our trains of thought.
But there are countless other theories. The YouTube video “Why Do We Dream- Amy Adkins”, on the Ted-Ed Channel, highlights some other possibilites. Maybe we dream to prepare ourselves for danger, and fine tune our instincts. That dream I had when a shark was swimming after me? It could have been more than the cause of a sleepy heart attack, but instead practice for avoiding such a threat in the future (fingers crossed it won’t come up). Others believe that sleeping helps us remember. You are told to get some sleep before a test so that you will be alert come the time the exam lands on your desk. What if dreaming, rather than just sleeping is what could help you get a better grade? In a 2010 study, subjects had to complete a complex 3-D maze twice. After the first time through, some remained awake and thinking, while others took a nap. Those who took a nap AND DREAMED about the maze performed up to ten times better on the second try than those who contemplated the maze while awake, or those who napped without much consideration for the task. So, if you can somehow teach your brain what to dream about, I would highly recommend adding that to your list of study habits.
Other theories included were that dreams help us to forget, to release some of the endless information we absorb. Our brain might use dreams to rid ourselves of useless neural connections having to do with unnecessary information. This is referred to as “reverse learning”. In a way, it reminded me of Spongebob emptying his mind in order to become a fancy waiter (Season 3, “Squilliam Returns”).
If you don’t know the reference, it’ worth the watch. This just continues to show that there are so many plausible possibilities for the purpose of our dreams, and maybe there are multiple correct ones. We can dream up to 7 times a night, and most people dream four approximately 2 hours during an 8 hour snooze. That is a great segment of our lives. I hope one day we know for sure, but until then, dream on.
The first comment you made about THON was extremely relatable to me, considering I was awake for the 40 out of 46 hours for thon. I slept from 5pm the Sunday of THON until Monday morning at 9. As much as I slept that night, I didn’t have any dreams (or any that I remembered having when I woke up.) I’m taking psych 100 this semester and we recently learned about Sigmund Freud and his theories about how people dream and what those dreams mean. My psych teacher always tells us to try to write down our dreams in the morning so we can remember them, but I can never remember to write them down anyway (the irony).