How to explain our elusive dreams?

By: Abigail Hamilton

On average people can have up to 136,875 dreams in a lifetime. These dreams can differ, from pleasant, to confusing, funny, and even terrifying. Sleep occurs in five stages; wake, N1, N2, N3 and REM. Our dreams occur during the REM Stage. Throughout history some have thought dreams were to signs from gods but, as science has progressed, more explanations have begun to develop. One of these explanations is known as the activation-synthesis model. This explains the general idea that dreaming is a two step process. First, neural activity from the brainstems is randomly fed into the higher brain systems. Our brain then attempts to process this random information into a coherent story which becomes what we dream. Another theory suggests that dreaming is controlled by dopamine released in the frontal lobes. Dopamine is a complex hormone and neurotransmitter that affects emotion, behavior, and movement. This theory can be supported by the fact that dreams have been initiated by drugs similar to dopamine and stopped by drugs that block dopamine. Together these theories can only begin to try to explain the complex idea of dreams. After all, the brain is the most complex organ in the body, how it works with neurons, neurotransmitters and nerves are difficult to understand while people are awake and become even more complicated once asleep.