Dreams

On Easter Saturday 1921, a man named Otto Loewi had a dream during his sleep. He was a German-born
pharmacologist who had a persistent question on his mind: How do nerves communicate with each other?
So he went to sleep that night, and had a dream about a scientific experiment involving frog hearts, a topic
he had been researching for a while. Loewi dreamed that he stimulated one frog's heart and then collected
the fluid surrounding it. He transferred this fluid to another frog's heart and observed a similar response.
So he concluded that chemical substances convey nerve signals to organs. Shortly after, he woke up
in the middle of the night, scribbled that exact experiment on a scrap of paper on his night-stand, and
went back to sleep.

What he doesn’t know yet is that, from that night on, the Nobel Prize he had always dreamed for was not a
matter of "if" anymore but of "when”.

Upon waking the next morning, Loewi realized the significance of his dream. He rushed to his laboratory
and conducted the same experiment he had dreamt about. To his amazement, the results were exactly
identical to what he had seen in his dream. This led him to the groundbreaking conclusion that nerves
communicate via chemical transmissions, which we now know today as neurotransmitters, and it also won
him on 1936 the Nobel Prize in Physiology.

Now you might look at this “event” as an accident, something that is of pure luck and will never happen
again. But interesting enough, many other discoveries in history were also based on dreams, such as

Dmitri Mendeleev and the Periodic Table:

August Kekulé and the Structure of Benzene:
Paul McCartney's "Yesterday"

Dreams are a both a complex and fascinating subject to talk about:

How can we solve psychological problems or explore the unconsious mind by analyzing dreams?
Can people be aware that they are dreaming, allowing them to take control of the dream's narrative?
Do you have to dream in order to get into REM?
Do animals dream?

So many questions await to be answered, but first, lets take a look at some definitions.

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur in the mind during certain
stages of sleep. They are typically generated by the brain during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of
sleep, although they can occur during other sleep stages as well. Dreams can be about a wide range of
subjects, such as daily life, past memories, future hopes, or completely imaginative scenarios.

There are several phases in your sleep, and dreams are more plausible to apprear in the last one.

Falling Asleep Phase (N1): This is the transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep. It lasts for a
few minutes and is characterized by a decrease in heart rate and body temperature.
Light Sleep (N2): In this phase, sleep becomes more stable, with infrequent eye movements. Dreams
begin to appear, although they are less frequent than in the REM phase.
Deep Sleep (N3): Also known as deep slow-wave sleep, this phase is marked by a significant
decrease in brain activity. It is the phase of physical recovery.
 Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (REM): This is the most well-known phase for dreams. It is when brain
activity is similar to wakefulness, the eyes move rapidly, and dreams are often more vivid and
memorable.

Dreams are also very important for your mental health.

Information and Emotion Processing: Dreams can help process and understand the information and
emotions from the day. They allow you to revisit experiences, interpret them, and react emotionally.
This can contribute to problem-solving and stress management.
Emotional Release: Dreams provide a space to release repressed emotions. They allow you to let go
of tension and anxieties, which can have a cathartic effect. This can reduce anxiety and promote
better emotional well-being.
Trauma Processing: Dreams can assist in processing past traumas. Nightmares, for instance, may be
a form of reaction to post-traumatic stress. Working on these dreams can be a way to overcome
traumas.

The Activation-Synthesis Theory is a theory proposed by Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley in 1977 to
explain the process of dreams, especially rapid eye movement (REM) dreams. This theory suggests that
dreams are the result of a combination of random brain activation and cognitive synthesis.

The Activation-Synthesis Theory suggests that dreams result from random brain activation during REM
sleep. The brain then tries to make sense of these random signals by creating dream stories or images.
This may explain why dreams often seem bizarre and devoid of logic. This theory does not address the
specific content or personal meaning of dreams but focuses on the general mechanisms of dream
formation.