Rapid-Eye-Movement Essay, Research Paper

dream, mental activity associated with the rapid-eye-movement (REM) period of sleep. It

is commonly made up of a number of visual images, scenes or thoughts expressed in terms

of seeing rather than in those of the other senses or in words. Electroencephalograph

studies, measuring the electrical activity of the brain during REM sleep, have shown that

young adults dream for 1 1/2 to 2 hours of every 8-hour period of sleep. Infants spend an

average of 50% of their sleep in the REM phase (they are believed to dream more often

than adults) a figure which decreases steadily with age. During dreams, blood pressure and

heart rate increase, and breathing is quickened, but the body is otherwise immobile.

Studies have shown that sleepers deprived of dream-sleep are likely to become irritable

and lose coordination skills. Unusually frightening dreams are called nightmares, and

daydreams are constructed fantasies that occur while the individual is awake. Studies have

demonstrated the existence of lucid dreaming, where the individual is aware that he is

dreaming and has a degree of control over his dream.

Sigmund , in his pioneering work The Interpretation of Dreams (1900, tr. 1913), was one

of the first to emphasize dreams as keys to the unconscious. He distinguished the manifest

content of dreams—the dream as it is recalled by the individual—from the latent content

or the meaning of the dream, which Freud saw in terms of wish fulfillment. C. G. held that

dreams function to reveal the unconscious mind, anticipate future events, and give

expression to neglected areas of the dreamer’s personality. Another theory, which PET

scan studies appear to support, suggests that dreams are a result of electrical energy that

stimulates memories located in various regions of the brain.