Understanding the Dreams

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18 Feb 2024

Dreams: From Ancient Fallacies to Modern Analyzes...

Dreams are a phenomenon that we cannot talk about sleep without mentioning. Therefore, we think it would be useful to provide some basic information on this subject and talk about some interesting facts about the subject. Dreams are so interesting, so frightening and so effective that the narratives and traces of dreams in human history can be seen in the Sumerians in the 3100s BC and BC. We can encounter it in Ancient Egypt in the 2000s.

Of course, when it comes to dreams, the first thing you encounter is unfortunately not science, but baseless fallacies. Because the origins of these fallacies go back much further than the science of dreams. We can trace the history of associating dreams with phenomena that have no scientific validity, such as "God" and "devil", and fallacies such as dreams containing predictions/prophecies about the future, back to the Assyrians and Babylonians. Nowadays, there are many people who profit from such lies and make money by misinforming the public.

Although there were some societies and individuals throughout classical history who tried to develop a more objective, realistic and scientific perspective on dreams, the person who made the first scientific inferences about dreams was (perhaps as expected) Sigmund Freud. In his article titled The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, Freud suggested that dreams, especially meaningful dreams, are related to the functions of the brain. However, he also emphasized that dreams "give meaningful information".

Despite this, he said that dreams originate from our brain itself, not from realms claimed to be "beyond physical". Freud thought that we could realize some of our wishes in our dreams and called this wish fulfillment. In other words, during our sleep, our wishes and desires that are in our subconscious and suppressed due to the Ego and Superego are satisfied. According to Freud's claim, our desires, which are suppressed especially by family and society, find a place in dreams.

Discussion of Freud's claims and scientific nature may be the subject of a separate article. However, Freud's main task in explaining dreams was to show that they are ordinary biological and psychological elements rather than "what they mean". All research conducted today shows that dreams are not an event separate from the body, as can be predicted from a scientific perspective; On the contrary, it has been shown that it is a product of ordinary biochemical reactions in the brain.

Although it is not yet clear which region of the brain is actually responsible for dreams, a study conducted on people with and without a disease called auto-activation disorder showed that dreams originate in the brainstem. The brainstem is a brain region that connects our spinal cord to our brain and controls our very basic impulses, especially sleep.

Auto-activation disorder is an interesting and frightening disease in which the brain is unable to initiate and sustain any conscious and emotional processes, leaving those with this disease in a state of "mental emptiness". These people usually just sit aside, do not talk or move. If someone warns them or talks to them, they can recall their memories and respond. However, when left to their own devices, the brain does not perform any mental activity. It has been determined that dreams occur during sleep even in people who are in such an "empty" and "basic" state of consciousness.

This is rather than the fact that dreams are a complex structure produced in regions with higher-level functions such as thinking and conscious perception; This suggests that it is a phenomenon that is constructed in an increasingly complex way, originating from brain regions that are more basic and formed early in the evolutionary process. In other words, instead of dreams being produced in regions where complex and higher-level functions of our brain are controlled, such as the neocortex, and then descending to lower regions (that is, instead of being a "top-down" system); It is a process that is produced in lower and older brain regions and then shaped in higher and more complex regions (that is, it is a “bottom-up” system).

Since Freud, dream research has settled on a much more concrete and scientific basis, and in the past century, very interesting information has been obtained about dreams, their causes, how and functions. Thus, dreams have ceased to be mysterious messages telling when a king will die, and have turned into a biological phenomenon that arises from brain functions and may have become selectively widespread because it provided an advantage in the evolutionary process.

Fundamental Challenges in Dream Research

Studying dreams is really difficult because it is not currently possible for researchers to actively "see" other people's dreams with today's technology. Therefore, researchers must resort to indirect methods, which seriously reduces the reliability of scientific data. Understanding the problems that scientists face in dream research will help us understand why it is very difficult to make scientific judgments about dreams. Therefore, we can summarize as follows:

The Difficulty of Trusting Patients' Words: Everyone lies. The average person tells 2-3 lies in a 10-minute conversation. Each person hears an average of 200 lies from the people they encounter during a 24-hour period. Moreover, people are easily deceived creatures; The average person can detect only 54% of lies told to them. People's babies learn to deceive and deceive the people around them when they are only 6 months old, and they begin to practice it. Our brains also have a mechanism to close the gap by filling the lack of data with fabricated data. For this reason, we prefer to fill the topics we are not sure about with ambiguous information, and it is very easy to create optical illusions with simple games. All these are the main reasons why we cannot trust patients' words about their dreams and their content.

Problems Arising from Individual Differences of Patients: Another difficulty in conducting research on dreams is that the nature of dreams varies from person to person. While some people remember most of their dreams, some remember almost none of them. While some people have very clear and understandable dreams, others have meaningless and abstract dreams. While some people connect their dreams to their daily life, others believe that they contain messages and meanings about the future. Comments made by patients during the reporting of these in research can actually distort the research results.

Natural Observation Difficulties in a Laboratory Environment: People who are asked to sleep in laboratories for sleep experiments are in a different psychological state than they normally are while sleeping in an environment they are not accustomed to. In most sleep experiments, subjects were found to be restless and agitated. This makes it difficult to detect dreams; Even if detected, it reduces data reliability.

Statistical Problems: Usually in sleep experiments, subjects have to sleep in university or clinical laboratories. Finding enough people to volunteer for such an experiment is a very difficult task. This brings with it statistical problems.

Technological Problems: Today, in dream research, brain activity, eye movements and muscle movements are monitored using Electroencephalography (EEG), Electrooculography (EOG) and Electromyography (EMG). Research is generally done by comparing the information received from these electronic devices with what people remember from their dreams when they are woken up at different stages of sleep. However, not every technological measurement tool used can collect data from every region of the brain. Although measurements are taken on some devices, small changes cannot be recorded because the sensitivity of these measurements is low. For example, small changes occurring in the locus coeruleus, raphe nucleus and pedunculopontine tegemental nucleus, which are known to be associated with dreams, cannot be recorded with EEG. Nevertheless, observations show that technological difficulties are a less effective factor than other problems.

Today, researchers focus directly on the brain and neural activity to learn about dreams. Although these methods cannot (for now) directly convey the physical appearance and qualities of dreams, they can provide a lot of valuable information that can be used in research.

As we explained in the sleep-related sections of our article, research conducted in 1957 revealed that dreams occur in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase of sleep, and this has been confirmed repeatedly until today. However, another study conducted in 1988 showed that dreams can also be seen during the NREM phase; However, it has been revealed that it usually occurs or begins in the REM phase. Dreams seen during the NREM period can be remembered much more blurry; It is rarely remembered as brightly and clearly as in REM. This situation is also observed in laboratory experiments.

Even identifying dreams, let alone detecting them, is difficult; because it is not yet known exactly which brain regions arise from cooperation. However, one of the relatively current definitions of this experience, which is shared by all humans, was made by the famous cognitive neuroscientist, psychologist and philosopher Antti Revonsuo in 2000: "Dreams are experiences based on an imaginary consciousness experienced during sleep." Moreover, in his article, Revonsuo explains the function of dreams and their evolution. He also guided the research on dream evolution by revealing that if we want to understand why, we need to understand the environment and conditions in which our ancestors lived.