A question that even today has not been resolved, and scientists from all over the world are working to provide an answer.
It was in the 50s when some scientists realized that during sleep there is a phase where brain activity, breathing and heart rate increase while the muscles are paralyzed. And something that caught their attention much more: a frantic movement of the eyes. For this reason, this new phase discovered was called REM (“Rapid Eye Movement”). This phase, which occurs approximately every 90 minutes, occupies 25% of the time we sleep and it is in this phase that dreams occur, we spend 6 years of our lives dreaming!
According to many psychologists, there are two types of dreams: the one that represents a recreation of what happened during the day and others that represent our worries, illusions, fears, desires, etc. But in all of them there is something in common: our whole brain works except for the logical center, which is why dreams are usually unreal.
Although the answer to why we dream is not yet available to scientists, there are currently two hypotheses that are the most supported:
- Activation-synthesis hypothesis. This hypothesis holds that the neural activity of the waves that originate during sleep makes the prefrontal cortex want to give an interpretation to the information that is received.
- Clinical anatomical hypothesis of sleep. Dreams originate from any external stimulus, memory or stimulation. During sleep the part of our brain that controls movement (motor cortex) and the part that coordinates thought (prefrontal cortex) are deactivated but the activity in the hypothalamus (area of emotions) is at full capacity, so our dreams are full of emotions and feelings.
Despite there being no consensus, all the hypotheses of the dream agree on something, the environment where we sleep intervenes in our dreams. Sleeping at the right temperature, on a comfortable mattress, in a well-ventilated room, etc. provides us with a pleasant feeling and makes our dreams more pleasant as well. That’s why choose a good mattress for your rest and dream beautiful things! 😉
