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Dream Meanings

What are dreams? This question has intrigued the human race all through history.

From the ancient Greeks, right through to Sigmund Freud, human beings have been asking what the mystical stories that play out in the sleeping mind are and why we have them.

Dreams are classified as the involuntary conjuring up of visions, sounds, ideas and feelings together with other stimuli in the course of sleep.

Dream imagery usually is fanciful and not realistic and they are frequently outside the control of the dreamer, with the exclusion of Lucid Dreaming. Dreamers usually are participants in their dreams and the dreams will look very real while asleep.

Dreams will be scary and horrifying, magical and fantastic adventures or they could be quite monotonous and boring.

Dream Meanings - What are they exactly about?

Even now there is no agreed on biological rationalization to solve the question of Dream Meanings.

Within the past decade however, with breakthroughs in imaging techniques, for instance MRI, our comprehension of dreams has progressed.

For the first time we are qualified to see inside the sleeping brain and easily see which regions of the brain are active throughout dream sleep. The mystery behind dreams is closer to being clarified than in the past.

Observations in the sleep lab have indicated that dreaming is linked with REM sleep .

Scientists now also understand that the brain doesn't turn off when we sleep, it is actually re-awakened once we enter dream sleep. There's a significant difference between the sleeping and awake brain however. Only specific areas of the brain are woken and are needed in the dreaming process.

Scientists also now realize that dreaming primarily takes place in the limbic region of the brain or the area that deals with emotion.As a result we seem to have an explanation for the highly emotional nature of dreams.

with the formulation of these new developments recent research has formulated a number of hypotheses that try to answer the question regarding Dream Meanings.

Modern Theories on Dream Meanings

1. Continual-activation theory
This theory proposes that dreaming is a result of brain activity and synthesis and that dreaming and REM sleep are not one in the same but are controlled by different regions of the brain.

2. Researcher Eugen Tarnow considers that dreams are excitations of long term memory and that dreams take on the bizarre nature on account of the structure of long term memory.

3. A study in 2001 indicated that dreaming is associated with strengthening semantic memories.

4. A research psychologist Joe Griffin in the UK has postulated the expectation fulfillment theory of dreaming.
In respect to this concept there are three ideas of dreaming.

i) dreams are metaphorical interpretations of waking objectives.

ii) Expectations that produce emotional responses that aren't acted upon through the day become dreams during sleep.

iii) Dreaming is a way of dealing with emotional arousal by finishing the expectations in our dreams that people couldn't complete when awake and thereby freeing our brain to respond afresh to every new day.

These are a number of of the vast number of hypotheses that endeavor to answer the question of Dream Meanings and no theory has even now been proven or dis-proven.

For more interesting stories, Dream dictionaries and Analysis visit Dream Meanings at Dream2live.com