Curious children are a series of children of all ages. If you have a question you would like to answer the expert, send it to [email protected].
Do we visualize dreams in color or black and white? – Srihan, 7 years old, western Bengal, India
Dreams are a wonderful state of consciousness. When sleeping, your mind creates fantastic and strange stories, rich in visual details – all of this without a conscious contribution.
Some dreams are boring. Others show shocking events or amazing images. I often dream of alligators going vertically, wearing sunglasses and yellow t -shirts. Often alligators are friendly and go with me on adventure, but sometimes they are aggressive and chasing me.
The way the brain works while you dream explains why dreams can be so fantastic. A small structure called amygdala is mainly responsible for the processing of emotional information, and it is very active in dreaming. In contrast, the front bark of the brain, which helps you plan and strategize, is usually quite quiet. This model explains why dreams can move from one peculiar scene to another, without a clear line of history. You seem to be swimming an emotional wave without a captain.
Dreams can actually be emotional and sometimes scary. But dreams can also be pleasant – maybe you had a dream that you were disappointed to wake up and realize that this was not a reality.
Are images in your dreams a bright colors? You may have dreamed of playing Candy Crush and you can remember the brightly colored red, purple and yellow candy that cascades in your dream.
As a neuroscientist studying sleep, I can say that about 70-80% of people report color rather than just black and white shades. However, this rating can be low, as scientists can really not see what the dreamer sees. There is no complex technology that shows them what’s going on in the dreamer’s head. Instead, they have to rely on what dreamers remember about their dreams.
Researchers capture brain and eye activity when monitoring volunteer sleep in the laboratory. Greg Kohut
Sleep examination in the laboratory
To study dreams, researchers ask people to sleep in laboratories, and they just awaken them by dreaming and then ask what they just think about. This is quite the primary science, but it works.
How do scientists know when people dream? Although dreams can occur at any stage of sleep, research has long shown that dreams are likely to occur during fast eye movement during sleep or during REM sleep.
Scientists can recognize REM according to the electrical activity of your scalp and your eye movements. They do this using an electroencephalogram that uses several small electrodes directly on the scalp to measure brain activity. During the REM, the dreamer’s eyes move back and forth again. This probably means they scan – that is, looking at their dream.
That’s when dream researchers awaken their participants. Dreams are really difficult to learn as they evaporate so quickly. So, instead of asking participants to remember the dream – even the one they had a moment ago – we ask them what they were just “thinking”. Dreamers do not have time to think or reflect, they just react – before losing their dream.
Dreams are full sensory experiences
Dream color differences seem to be age differences. Older people report much less colors in their dreams than younger people. The prevailing explanation is based on the media they experienced when they were young. If photos, movies and television you saw as a child have been black and white, then you are more likely to report more black and white dreams than color dreams.
This phenomenon raises some interesting questions. Do people really dream of black and white, or do they just remember their dreams so after the fact? Was it commonplace that people said they had dreamed of black and white, before they were invented by these visual media? There were no focused studies based on instant dream reports before black and white photos and films existed, so we would never know.
Although visual properties dominate, you can also hear, smell, taste and feel things in your dreams. So, if you dream of a visit to Disneyland, you can hear music from a parade or smell French fries from a food booth.
You may also have wondered if the blind are dreaming. They do it. If a person becomes blind after 5 or 6 years, their dreams will have visual images. However, someone who is innate blind or becomes blind about 5 years old will have no images in dreams. Instead, their dreams contain more information from other sensations.
Remembering their dreams
Some people may say they don’t dream at all. They do it, but many people don’t remember their dreams. The vast majority of dreams are forgotten. This is because when we sleep in Rem, the hypokamp, the brain area responsible for long -term memory is essentially disabled.
Others may remember the dream right away, but forget it soon. This is because the hippocampus is a bit sluggish and it takes a while to wake up, so immediately after waking up you are unable to create long -term memory.
Perhaps the biggest question about dreams is whether they mean something. People have been discussing it from ancient times. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, called his dreams “the royal path to unconscious.” He believed they had a deep meaning that was hidden from the dreamer.
Today, however, scientists agree that dreams have no hidden meaning. So while it is fun to think about what your dreams mean, for example, there is no scientific basis, for example, to think that your dream of your teeth automatically means you are worried about loss.
If you want to better remember your dreams, just keep the notebook and a pen to your bed and practice writing down your dreams right when you wake up. This is the best way to remember the fantastic stories your brain creates you every night.
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This article has been published from a conversation, non -profit, independent news organizations that provide you with facts and reliable analysis to help you give meaning to our complex world. It wrote: Kimberly Fenn, Michigan State University
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Kimberly Fenn does not work, consult, have any funding for any company or organization, or receives funding that is beneficial from this article and has not disclosed any related relationships for their academic appointment.