Why do people dream? Dreaming during sleep is a life experience that almost everyone knows. Freud, a famous Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist, once pointed out: "All dreams have the same characteristics, the first is sleep." Dreams are produced in sleep, and modern research has also proved this.
Modern research on sleep and dreams has found that sleep actually includes two states. One is non-rapid eye movement sleep, also called normal sleep. At this stage, there is no rapid eye movement period. Another state is called rapid eye movement sleep, also called heterogeneous sleep. At this stage, a remarkable feature is the rapid eye movement period during sleep. In the process of sleep, these two States change periodically and alternately. When sleep enters the rapid eye movement sleep stage, sleepers often dream. Up to now, most sleep laboratories report that the recall rate of dreams after waking from REM sleep is 90% ~ 95%, and some reports are lower than this figure, but the lowest is 74%. So rem sleep is also called dreamless sleep, and non-rem sleep is called dreamless sleep. Dreaming sleep and dreamless sleep are isomorphic to the whole sleep process. Therefore, dreams depend entirely on the process of sleep, which is a special phenomenon in the process of sleep.
Dreams occupy about one-fifth of people's sleep and have a very special position and function. If everyone spends one-third of his life sleeping, if he dies at the age of 70, he will sleep for about 27 years, and during these 27 years of sleep, he will dream for at least five or six years. Such a long dream time seems to be a waste of time. In fact, dreaming is a physiological need of healthy people and can play many positive roles.
There are mainly the following points:
Helps restore and strengthen brain function: almost everyone dreams when they sleep. Dreaming can produce an extremely active chemical reaction in the brain, which makes the protein synthesis and renewal of brain cells reach the peak, while the fast-flowing blood brings oxygen and nutrients, takes away waste, and lays the foundation for future activities. It can be seen that dreams contribute to the recovery and strengthening of brain function.
It can bring happy memories: some cells in the brain don't work when they are awake, but when they are asleep, these cells become active, thus forming dreams. Dreams can bring happy memories and exercise brain function. Yamanashi University in Japan found that proper dreaming can also prolong life; Sweet dreams often bring people pleasant, comfortable and relaxed feelings, make people clear-headed, enhance their thinking activities, contribute to digestion and physical and mental health, help stabilize people's emotions, promote and improve people's intellectual activities, and sprout inspiration and creative thinking. No wonder people in some countries and regions regard "sweet dreams" as their pet phrase for greeting people before going to bed.
It can give people early signs of diseases: some diseases often appear in the form of dreams before they happen. Especially nightmares, although nightmares will make people unhappy, they will also interfere with sleep and affect the functional activities of the brain. This is often an early sign of cancer and other diseases, especially nightmares that are repeated frequently and have roughly the same content, which may be an obvious sign of the disease and reveal the location, nature and severity of the disease.
Dreaming sleep can prolong people's life: modern research shows that about 50% of babies sleep long every day in dreams. What are the contents of these dreams is still a mystery. However, it is believed that if babies' eyes move rapidly during sleep, it means that they have stored a lot of stimuli they feel when they are awake in their memory. The dreamy sleep of the elderly is greatly reduced, but it is only about 1 hour every night. If calculated, dreamless sleep remains relatively unchanged in a person's life, from 8 hours at birth to 6 hours in old age; However, dreaming and sleeping have changed a lot. If we can try to increase the sleep time of dreaming, we can prolong our life.
Help people's creative thinking: Freud said: "Dreams not only have the function of reproduction, but also have the function of innovation." Mendeleev, a famous chemist, clearly saw the periodic table of elements in his sleep, so that various elements were arranged in the best way. German chemist Kekule pondered the structure of benzene for a long time, and one day he thought of it in his dream, thus laying the foundation for the study of aromatic chemistry. Fleming discovered penicillin in his dream; Edison dreamed of inventing the electric light bulb; Yu? CB2E？ Chinese White Swan Hotel in South China's Dream. Many people want to become "geniuses" by reducing sleep. Many people have this experience: inexplicable questions will find answers in dreams, and unforgettable things will be "fresh in memory" in dreams. This makes people think about whether dreaming will benefit people's intelligence. Scientific research shows that rem sleep with dreams is beneficial to memory, can prevent the brain from forgetting new knowledge, and is helpful to people's creative thinking.
Help to stabilize people's mental state: some people think that "the role of sleep lies in dreaming" and think that dreaming sleep is very important. Someone has done a dream sleep deprivation test, which wakes up the subject during dream sleep (with rapid eye movement or rapid brain wave as the index) and then lets him sleep; So, he went through the dreamless sleep stage, and then turned to the dreamless stage; Wake him up again at this time, thus depriving him of dreamy sleep. In the long run, he will be insane, even insane. It can be seen that dreaming and sleeping is helpful to stabilize people's mental state. The positive effect of dreams on sleep is far more than the above points. If there are no dreams in people's sleep, life will become lonely, just like there are no white clouds in the blue sky, no sails in the sea, no waterfalls in the mountains, no pastoral songs in the countryside ... how desolate the world will become. Yes, dreams are poets' daydreaming world and a paradise created by scientists. With dreams, life is more imaginative and creative.