The Science of Dreams - What Happens When We Sleep

Greetings to the ever growing StemSocial community. It's a pleasure to join the community and contribute as a huge fan of science and everything we have been able to accomplish and discover through science in our world.

In today's blog post I'll be sharing on a rather interesting topic that I'm pretty sure you'll definitely want to know about.

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In today's science blog we'll be talking about the science of dreams, what really happens when we sleep. How is it that our minds are able to create this illusion that we're still active and it creates mental pictures.

One fun fact about sleep is that you can only know you slept after you wake up.

That's one very mysterious concept about sleep. We only realize that we slept after we wake up. You will feel sleepy and feel like you're sleeping but you'll never know the exact point where you fell asleep. Isn't that a wonderful mystery.

Dreams are like the secret adventures that we have in our minds when we sleep. There are dreams so sweet you would wish you never woke up from it and there are dreams so scary you wish you can forget them. Those are what we call nightmares

However scientists have been working really hard to figure out the secrets behind dreams. Why do we dream and how does it happen.

Now apparently there are different stages of sleep. From the knowledge science has acquired, our sleep is divided into two main stages, the REM and the non-REM. REM there stands for Rapid Eye Movement.

Now most of the dreams we have apparently happen during REM sleep. So you can try observing a friend or a sibling when they sleep, if their eyes are moving rapidly, there's a high chance that they're having a dream at that moment. That's were we tend to have very clear and vivid dreams.

Now you may have noticed that there are times where you sleep super deep and you can't recall having any dreams at all. Yep that's non-REM sleep for you. It's pretty deep sleep guys. It's almost like passing out. You wake up and they ask you what happened and then you say "I don't Remember" 😂

Now everything happens in the Brain. The brain is basically the movie set, the scenes, the director and it creates the casts for the whole show. 😂

Now through science and technology, scientists are able to utilize special machines like an EEG(electroencephalogram) to see what happens to the brain during sleep.

What they found out was that the same part of the brain which is responsible for creating and controlling our emotions and the things we have in our memories seems pretty busy during the time we're having dreams.

So we probably realized the reason why you can have feelings in a dream and after you wake up you are able to remember what you dreamt about and how you felt. Without this mechanism of the brain being involved, we may not be able to remember every dream or feel anything that happens during dreams.

Now we know how dreams work and the parts of the Brain that handles it and makes it all work but we're still figuring out why it happens in the first place. There's really no actual or factual answer to that question yet. Different people have different opinions about why we dream.

Some say it helps people handle their emotional issues. Maybe when this very difficult exams date is approaching and you're filled with fear and anxiety you tend to dream about weird stuff related to exams and how you will either overcome or fail miserably 😂.

Others think it's the Brain's time to send us back into the past to remember things more vividly or to solve some problems we have when we are awake.

Religiously speaking, Christians believe that dreams are either a message from God or the Devil.

Some also believe that your dreams are influenced by the things that happens to you while you're awake. Things that you have more emotional attachment to. That's pretty obvious right guys.

When you get a crush on someone and you start dreaming about the person. 😂 Or you dream about the scariest animal you fear or your phobia of height.

Now here's a special kind of dream guys. There's a dream called Lucid Dreams. There are points where you sleep and dream and then you're basically aware that you're dreaming and that you're asleep.

That's where you feel in control of the dream and you're fully in control of your cognitive functions. This is a profound concept that scientists are still trying to figure out how it happens.

What is the line between dream and reality? That's also a topic for another day.

Now the purpose of this research of dreams and how it happens is to understand human nature, to find solutions to sleep problems like how to take care of a person that has repetitive nightmares.

I'll end my blog post right here guys. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog post guys. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it was informative. I'll be than happy to respond to any question or comment you may have regarding my blog post. Have a lovely day and sweet dreams guys. Bye

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