Reference News Network December 13** According to Japan's "Mainichi Shimbun" on November 26**, many elderly people will have black and white dreamsWhy didn't my deceased husband appear in the dream?Why do some people dream a lot, while others rarely dream?Here, we invite Eiko Matsuda, a dream expert and professor at the Department of Sociology at Toyo University in Japan, to solve the mysteries related to dreams for us.
Avoid confusion in your memory.
The reporter asked: Some people can clearly remember their dreams, while others say that they "hardly dream".
Matsuda replied: It's not that I don't dream, I just don't remember. In addition to brain damage due to injuries or tumors, most people have 3 to 5 dreams a night.
If you observe how people sleep in the experiment, you will find that even people who claim to be "non-dreaming" will know that they are "dreaming" by constantly rolling their eyes. When you wake them up, they will remember the scene in the dream, and many people will be surprised and say, "I was really dreaming." ”
People who are easy to remember dreams are generally people who are prone to worry and have anxiety tendencies. On the contrary, people who can't remember dreams are usually emotionally stable and have a strong ability to cope with stress.
Q: When you move your eyes, you're usually dreaming.
A: Yes. When a person sleeps, they usually repeat the sleep cycle of alternating between the two types of sleep every 90 minutes to 120 minutes. One is "non-REM sleep," which is formed by several stages of light sleep to deep sleep, and the other is "REM sleep," in which the brain is nearly awake but the body is deeply resting. Eye movements are characteristic of REM sleep, and dreaming occurs mainly during this sleep.
American sleep physician Alan Hobson and others believe that in REM sleep, the "pontine area" of the brainstem sends signals to activate the circuits of sensation, emotion and memory. They theorized that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for thinking, would summarize the impressions generated by the activated circuits without adequate activity, thereby forming dreams.
Non-REM sleep in the deep sleep stage is enough if it is just to eliminate the fatigue of the brain, but dreaming through REM sleep is to organize information from the past and prepare for the future.
If the brain is the "library of memories", then dreams are like librarians. It puts repetitive memories on the same shelf, and less used memories in the innermost part of the stack. Categorize in sleep where no new information from outside enters to avoid memory confusion.
Why is there a "black and white dream".
Q: Do people dream differently when they get older?I feel like I had brighter dreams when I was a kid than I do now.
A: It's true that when I was a child, I often dreamed of bright colors. As we age, dreams become less bright, and colors and contours become blurred. The reasons for this are not clear.
There are also elderly people who say that they often dream in black and white instead of in color. Although the cause is unknown, it may be related to the increase in age and the fading of the color of the dream. There is also a theory that they were influenced by watching black-and-white TV and movies as children.
Q: Does the content of dreams change with age?
A: I often hear retirees say, "I'm starting to dream positive and happy." "Maybe it's because more people are relieved to be freed from work, raising children, and taking out mortgages.
Many people dream of traveling with family, friends, or when they were children. Nightmares also decrease with age.
There is a theory that young people often have nightmares that may be in response to future crises, rehearsing in dreams in order to apply their knowledge, skills and strategies to cope with them at critical moments. Children, in particular, have less experience in overcoming stress and are less able to cope with crises, so they feel anxious and prone to nightmares even when trivial things happen.
Q: How should we understand the appearance of a dead person in a dream?
A: Dreams about death are so common all over the world that I don't think there's anything to be afraid of. Thinking that the dead are still alive is a dream that is more often a good dream.
There will be a "supreme experience" in the dream
Q: I've heard that some people have dreams that are called supreme experiences and are full of emotion.
A: Paul McCartney, the Beatles member who wrote the famous song "Yesterday", is said to have captured this melody in his dreams. Of course, this was not created from scratch in his sleep, but the beautiful melodies he had heard before were wonderfully mixed together in his dreams, and this famous song was miraculously born. Because the song is so good, even he himself once mistakenly thought it was "a song composed before".
Q: It is precisely because I have had many touching experiences in the real world that I have the supreme experience in my dreams.
A: Yes. This is true for paintings, food, etc. If you want to have a good dream, you need to expand your knowledge in the field you like, get in touch with beautiful things, and hone your sensibility. However, if you don't have the ability to express your feelings, then the rare supreme experience will end up as if it was a great dream. As for Paul McCartney, he is able to turn dream melodies into real-world compositions because of his excellent expressiveness. (Compiled by Liu Jieqiu).