Dreams

By: Cassandra Powers 6th

Sleep is a condition of body and mind which typically recurs for several hours
every night, in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, leaving your eyes closed
while our consciousness is suspended. This activity takes up a third of our lives.
Scientists have discovered that while sleeping, we pass through five different stages,
the last one being REM or Rapid Eye Movement. Its during this phase in which we
dream, causing our eyes to move quickly from side to side. Dreams are a series of
images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind that
can last anywhere from five to twenty minutes. These images while happening, if
remembered, may seem real, but are infact fantasies made up from your lower brain . In
1977, Allan Hobson and R. McCarley discovered that electrochemical pulses from the
brainstem in the lower brain create the stage of sleep in which most dreams occur. After
dreaming begins, the limbic system in the middle of the brain becomes active. Overall
on average, humans dream for about two hours a night. That means an average human
spends 6 years of their life dreaming.
Dreams are very unpredictable and have no pattern to them. But the question
remains throughout scientists on why we have dreams. There are many theories and
explanations that scientists have come up with, but there is no consistent factual
evidence throughout most of their explanations. Many scientist believe our dreams our
tied to our memories, making our short term memories turn into long term memories.
Another theory is that dreams reflect our emotions, making dreams essential for
emotional health. Some believe that our brain slows down while we sleep, making our

emotions during that day blur together by figuring out how we really feel about certain
events specifically, or by obvious imagery. On the complete opposite spectrum, many
believe that a dream is a pointless byproduct of the brain firing while we deeply sleep in
the REM stage. They believe that dreams are just random and meaningless.
I chose this topic because I have many dreams and find them fascinating. I have
dreams anywhere from sitting on my couch playing connect four to spying on care bears
for the CIA. Dreams are so wierd and random that I have always wondered why People
dream, but have never put in the effort to really find out. I also chose this topic because
I love to learn about the brain and the many functions it has. One of the things a brain
does is project imagines in your mind during REM, also known as dreaming. But why
does your brain do that? Why do we dream instead of peacefully sleeping through the
night? I have heard many ideas from my mom and friends but they are all so different. I
decided that this would be my topic, so that I may figure out why we do this absurd
crazy thing.