Five main theories about the nature of dreams and their purpose

The first known recorded history of sleep was a dream of the Sumerian king Dumuzi, who ruled about 2500's BC. "Eagle grabbed a sheep from the pen, - tells the manuscript. - Hawk caught sitting on the fence Sparrow ... And finally, the whole paddock carried away the wind. "

Five main theories about the nature of dreams and their purpose

The king was shocked by this dream. He told it to his sister, who was, apparently, a great master of dream interpretation. sisters Council was as follows: coming terrible times and it would be necessary "podstelit straw."

If you ever have seen a dream that can not be out of my mind, you are not alone. The tradition of interpretation of the strange dream has about 4000 years. During this time, mankind (in the form of religion, philosophy, psychology, neurobiology) plenty of time trying to explain what is a dream and that our brains are actually doing at the time, when we are asleep.

To date, there are five major theories about dreams and their purpose:

Dreams - pragmatic prophecy

Queen Maya, mother of Buddha Shakyamuni saw in a dream, as it approached the white elephant and predicted that her son would become a Buddha. It was around 500 BC.

In Genesis Pharaoh has a dream about the seven lean cows eating seven fat cows and seven thin ears, which absorbed seven strong spikes. Joseph interprets the dream and predicts that over the seven years of Fruitful followed by seven years of famine. Purpose of this dream is obvious - it gives people the opportunity to prepare for the heavy times. Author of "The Science of Sleep and the origins of religion," Kelly Bulkeley writes: "We do it all the time in reality. We are all endowed with a certain foresight: we can foresee that the winter will be cold, so it is better to make reserves ahead of time. We depend on your own ability to predict the future in a variety of situations. The brain appears to me to work 24 hours a day system, which continues to predict the future, even in a dream. "

According to Bulkeley, shortest sleep definition may sound like "imagination", which is often focused on the future. No mystery.

Aristotle believed that during sleep when we are separated from the bustle of the real world, most imperceptible to the human experience of waking may come to the fore and give him a hint of what awaits him in the future. And because the world is full of potential threats, during sleep our brain visualizes the danger to which we have not paid enough attention during wakefulness.

Dreams - a guide to action

Life is the great skeptic 17th century Rene Descartes changed after sleep, he saw one November evening. In the dream, it was the sea and huge waves beating against the shore. And suddenly everything froze. Waves, sea foam, like a cloud of frozen ... And you can wander along the frozen waves and frozen fish to see there, immobile algae. And could it all be seen and studied.

Waking up, Descartes took a pen and drew something like a grid of lines. Thus it was discovered the coordinate system, which later became known as Cartesian. Sigmund Freud wrote his "Interpretation of Dreams" under the influence of his own dream, which he saw on the eve of the funeral of his father in October 1896. In a dream, from the shop was in front of the door, above which hung a sign: "You are asked to close their eyes."

Abraham Lincoln saw the vivid dreams that helped him make important decisions during the war. In addition, he saw in a dream the funeral at the White House for a few days before his murder.

Dreams - a way to communicate with our subconscious

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud theorized that dreams - this is the message of our subconscious. "The interpretation of dreams - this is the easiest way to understand the subconscious brain activity", - he wrote.

Purpose of Dreams, he believed, is to release the repressed desires, and their substance appears in the form of images, associations.

The great psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that dreams - this is part of us, which is outside of conscious awareness. They bring us the information with the help of the universal, and yet personally meaningful symbols. For example, if you have seen in a dream receding boy or girl, this may mean that you lose any chance in life.

Dreams - a repository of information

Especially active scientific community began to study dreams in the 1950s, beginning with the discovery of what we know as REM and non-REM sleep. Today, with the help of brain scans, researchers are able to even determine the content of dreams, recording and decoding algorithms of activity of our gray matter. Researcher Dr. Bulkeley dreams created his "Base of Dreams", which includes about 20,000 dreams of volunteers from around the world. He says that people rarely stay in their dreams alone, and most of them dream of those to whom they are most emotionally attached.

"Dreams reflect the emotional anxiety concerning our relations, - he says. - In fact, a dream - it is a valuable resource for the analysis of our relations with those about whom we care, and that for which we want to fight. "

The dream - it is a mosaic of our memories

Over more than a century, scientists have investigated how sleep affects memory, especially long-term memory formation. Now neuroscientists are more and more convinced that the kaleidoscope of images in our dreams is not that other, as a byproduct of the process of creating memories. When the different strands of our lives come together, the result seems to us friends, and strangers in the same time.

"Often it is strange, composite image, which seems unfamiliar," - wrote the University of Manchester researcher Sue Lyulin in 2013. "It is not real, because at the same time composed of several completely different memories."