Saturday, September 17, 2005

Dreams in our Brains


I have been thinking about dreams lately. It’s strange how there are complete stories that go on every night, if you can only remember them. Something I’ve noticed is how the feelings in dreams seemed tied to body position, while you’re sleeping. You can sometimes remember your dream, if you can get into the same body position as when you were sleeping. I’ve heard that some people never remember their dreams, and are unaware of even having any. There does seem to be a prevaling attitude that they are new age nonsense, and are not important. But then that’s like saying most art is nonsense, since dreams seem to be untapped or unfocused creativity. Of course, a lot of people do believe all art is basically worthless, except maybe to profit off of.

I also think it’s odd that dreams usually are ordered into a coherent story, with all these parts generally fitting together. If the main purpose of dreams is to process information you saw during the day, wouldn’t it just be random bits of pictures or thoughts? I’ve heard that we organize dreams into stories because our brains are wired to arrange incoherent events or ideas into a coherent form, and that’s why dreams seem to be complete stories. It’s still interesting that we even dream at all. Maybe it’s because our brains are active all the time, even during sleep. They are almost as active during sleep as when we’re awake. I used to think that they shut down, or sleep, like our bodies, with almost no activity. But if they did do that, I guess we wouldn’t be alive. I guess I’ve been thinking about brains a lot lately, mainly because it’s so interesting, and that so much of it is still unknown.

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