“It doesn’t let you sleep you move!
It’s not music to make you groove!
It will make you get up and fight!
Cause that’s what makes the dream and day unite!”
This is one thing which only humans can do!
Well; there are a lots of things which only humans can do! Like tell a lie or make an imaginative story for example! But this is the only thing which only humans can do when they are sleeping!
or is it?
read on!
Of course the first question is very self explanatory! The dream!
It has often been said that dream is not what you have when you sleep but the one that does not allow you to sleep!
That of course it the metaphorical dream!
The actual dream is a phenomenon which happens at specific time or stage of your sleep! On average, most people dream for around two hours per night. Dreaming can happen during any stage of sleep, but dreams are the most prolific and intense during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage.
During the REM sleep stage, brain activity increases considerably compared to the non-REM stages, which helps explain the distinct types of dreaming
during these stages. Dreams during REM sleep are typically more vivid, fantastical, bizarre even though they may involve elements of waking life.
By contrast, non-REM dreams tend to involve more coherent content that involves thoughts or memories grounded to a specific time and place.
REM sleep is not distributed evenly through the night. The majority of REM sleep happens during the second half of a normal sleep period, which means that dreaming tends to be concentrated in the hours before waking up!
Which is why you do remember the dream in the morning but over a period of time you tend to forget them! Short-term memory areas are active during REM sleep, but those only hang on to memories for about 30 seconds.
You would also remember dream depending on a host of factors including lifestyle factors, sleep hygiene practices, and differences in brain physiology!
You can also remember a dream if the theme of the dream in recurrent or the incidents are similar. What you read or see before you sleep has a great influence on the content of your dream!
If you recall and write your dream immediately after you get up then you would remember your dream more. Dreams are also dependent on your imagination and state of mind! But why we do dream when we sleep when there is actually no point is still not known!
The most prominent theory is that dreams help us to process and consolidate information from the previous day. However, other theories have suggested that dreams are critical for emotional processing, creativity, and self-knowledge!
Of course when you have such vague theories then you know that no one is sure!
Another aspect of dream in the paralysis! You see that scary looking person coming towards you and you try to move or scream but you can’t! No voice comes and your body just freezes over! Then you suddenly get up to realise that it was a dream!
And what you felt is sleep paralysis! Sleep paralysis is a feeling of being conscious but unable to move. It occurs when a person passes between stages of wakefulness and sleep. During these transitions, you may be unable to move or speak for a few seconds up to a few minutes. Some people may also feel pressure or a sense of choking.
Another shocking aspect of dream is the fall! How you fall from a building or a high place with a thud and you ‘feel’ that thud in the sleep!
Or when you hit someone or get hit by someone! Like Neo in Matrix; you do feel the pain at that moment!
You sometimes even try to fight back if you could overcome the sleep paralysis! Once I even punched my brother in sleep! (At least that is the official story since I could never punch him otherwise!)!
So just when you thought that only you can dream, comes the spider! not spiderman!
So researchers noted how some young jumping spiders dangle by a thread through the night, in a box, in a laboratory. Every so often, their legs curl and their spinnerets twitch. The retinas of their eyes, visible through their translucent exoskeletons, shift back and forth!
What these spiders were doing seems to be resembling – very closely – REM sleep! The sleeping animal’s eyes dart about unpredictably, among other features is a feature of REM sleep!
REM is when most dreaming happens, particularly the most vivid dreams. Now this may mean that if spiders have REM sleep, might dreams also unfold in their little-seed-size brains!?
Researchers have reported on the retina-swivelling spiders and training cameras on 34 spiders, they found that the creatures had brief REM-like spells about every 17 minutes. The eye-darting behaviour was specific to these bouts: it didn’t happen at times in the night when the jumping spiders stirred, stretched, readjusted their silk lines or cleaned themselves with a brush of a leg!
Today, scientists are finding signs of REM sleep in a broader array of animals than ever before: in spiders, lizards, cuttlefish, zebrafish! Like evolution; dreams also has begun in the sea! Watch out!
Then again it was ages back when the Greek philosopher Aristotle said that almost all other animals are clearly observed to partake in sleep, whether they are aquatic, aerial, or terrestrial!
He added that it would appear that not only do men dream, but horses also, and dogs, and oxen; aye, and sheep, and goats, and all viviparous quadrupeds; and dogs show their dreaming by barking in their sleep!
So maybe the difference is that only Humans may remember what they dream!? Let us hope so! If a dog dreamt that he was flying and remembered it then it may not bode well into the tech of things!
Of course some things do make us unique! Like even if it sings like a dream, a bird cannot compose and make music like the legend Sachin Dev Burman! By the way did you know that he was Royalty? His father was a king and his mother, a queen! Of course he can be called as the king amongts musicians for ever!
Now see something nice or read something knowledgeable like a blog perhaps (wink wink!) and sleep!
Shubh ratri!
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