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    • Mar 18, 2023
    • 3 min read

How Do We Dream? A Neuroscientific Analysis

Written by Bedirhan Atabay

Dreams are one of the most basic yet important feature of humans as every individual can dream, except on some occasions. However, there has always been one question here that existed for a long time: How are we able to see dreams? To explain this, understanding the concept of the dream itself is the first requirement.



The fact that many theories exist to explain why dreams happen brings various possibilities (2). These theories are different from each other in various ways, and acknowledging them is prevalent.


Freud’s Wish Fulfillment Theory:


Freud’s Wish Fulfillment Theory suggests that the desires of the dreaming people are simply being reflected in the dreams, and our brain gets rid of the problems while staying unconscious (3). Also, there are two concepts illustrated regarding our dream state: manifest and latent. Manifest content is what we remember from our dreams, and they are like straight lines in that complicated world of dreams, whereas latent content is the underlying meaning and is not consciously remembered. In recent research, however, the ideas of Freud were not supported by many researchers since many parts of our brain must be active in order to support this theory; however, this requirement is not met as the required parts of our brain are shut down during this process, hence making this theory invalid (2,3,4).

Carl Jung’s Direct Mental Expressions:

Carl Jung’s Direct Mental Expressions suggested that the way of communication was through symbols in unconsciousness, which is very different from how we communicate while we are conscious (3). The way Carl Jung explained dreams was contrary to the way Freud explained them. According to Allan Hobson, who was an important scientist of the 1900s, the ideas of Carl Jung were accurate in many aspects, and his research supported this statement (3, 6).

Cognitive Theory:

Calvin Hall’s Cognitive Theory was opposed to the ideas of Freud in many ways. According to him, dreams were conceptualizations of real events. In his theory, Hall focused on many concepts, such as "concepts of the self" and "concepts of the world" (5).



All of these theories were created in order to understand dreams. However, there has been one discovery that changed the way we thought about dreams: REM sleep, which is the phase when you see your most vivid dreams (2, 7). Threat Simulation Theory was one of the several following theories and was created by Antti Revonsuo. According to Antti, dreams exist to simply take precautions against bad things that can happen in the real world. This theory depends on research, where it was found that the "fight or flight mechanism" in the brain works the same way in REM sleep as it does in normal life (3). Another theory called the Activation-Synthesis Theory, which was first found in the 1970s by two Harvard Professors, Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, suggested the existence of dreams was due to an attempt to understand the stimulus and had nothing to do with a basic meaning (3). This theory is accepted as a modern attempt at understanding dreams and is still accepted as accurate by many scientists (2, 3). Although this was a big change in theory in order to understand dreams, many changes were made to it as time passed (5). Today, the generic explanation of the dream concept is accepted as happening when there is REM sleep, which is generated in the brainstem, and the dream itself is generated in the forebrain (1). If the brainstem gets damaged, then only dreams can be seen and no REM sleep can happen. Meanwhile, if the forebrain gets damaged, then REM sleep can happen; however, no such dream can be seen (1). In the end, all of those theories led to this point, and we are still learning new things about our minds.


References:

  1. Brain and Spine Team (2022, August 18). Why do we dream? Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-do-we-dream/.

  2. Leary, M. (2020, May 16). Why do we dream? from freud to activation-synthesis theory. Wondrium Daily. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.wondriumdaily.com/why-do-we-dream.

  3. Basu, L. (2022, May 21). 5 theories on why we dream. NewsBytes. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/lifestyle/dream-theories/story.

  4. Wade, N. (1998, January 6). Was freud wrong? are dreams the brain's start-up test? The New York Times. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/06/science/was-freud-wrong-are-dreams-the-brain-s-start-up-test.html.

  5. Chopra, M. (2022, November 16). The Psychology of Dreams. Times of India Blog. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/thinkitthrough/the-psychology-of-dreams-46695/.

  6. Lone, Z. (2018, September 26). Jung's Dream Theory and Modern Neuroscience: From Fallacies to facts. Psych Central. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://psychcentral.com/lib/jungs-dream-theory-and-modern-neuroscience-from-fallacies-to-facts#1.

  7. Marks, H. (2021, November 5). Dreams: Why we dream, nightmares, and lucid dreams. WebMD. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/dreaming-overview.


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