Dreams and Dream Research

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer discusses what exactly a dream is. The writer ask whether it is a story that evolves in the mind in a single flash of inspiration, moving from beginning to end in a few seconds, or if is there more to it than mere fantasy. The writer discusses the sleep cycle and the act of dreaming and notes that many researchers, both past and present, have given numerous definitions for what dreams are and how they can be interpreted.

Outline:
The Mechanics of Dreaming
The Sleep Cycle
Body Dynamics
The Healing Power of Dreams
Dream Deprivation
The Meaning of Dreams

From the Paper:

"A 2000 study at the University of Michigan found that the human body's dreaming condition is much like the fight or flight response in waking life, which gears the body up to confront a threatening situation. Yet the brain simultaneously signals the spinal cord to hold the body completely rigid. Science is still attempting to exactly determine what
physical function dreaming has for humans, but since the 1950's, researchers have made remarkable advances in the study of sleep and dreams.
"The cycles of sleep are a fairly new discovery, but in the years since researchers finally cracked the code of sleep, much has been learned about how the human body reacts when one dreams."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Gillespie, George. (December 2002). "Dreams and Dreamless Sleep." Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol. 12 no. 4: 199-207.
• Hobson, Alan J. (1999). Dreaming Brain: How the Brain Creates The Sense and Nonsense of Dreams. New York: Viking Press.
• Nielson, Tore A. & Anne Germain. (June 1998). "Publication Patterns in Dream Research: Trends in the Medical and Psychological Literatures." Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol. 8 no. 2: 47-58.
• Rupprecht, Carol. (March 1999). "Dreaming and the Impossible Art of Translation." Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol. 9 no. 1: 71-99.
• States, Bert. (2000). Seeing in the Dark: Recollections on Dreams and Dreaming. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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