Know Yourself and Others from the Heart - Psychological Chats

Author: Zhang Ming
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Publish Date: 2006-12-01
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Dreams are not always necessary. Dream deprivation experiments
Everyone has experienced dreams. A study shows that in our lives, a significant amount of time is actually spent in dreams. Moreover, among our bizarre dreams, pleasant dreams seem to be fewer than nightmares. Have you ever felt the urge to say, "I don't want to dream anymore"? To answer your question, some researchers conducted "dream deprivation" experiments. Using certain instruments, they would wake participants up as soon as they detected that the participants were about to enter a dream, preventing them from continuing. The results showed that people who underwent this "dream deprivation" exhibited clear signs of nervous exhaustion, mental confusion, lack of concentration during the day, and abnormal movements. Afterward, when they were allowed to sleep undisturbed, it was found that their dream time was longer than usual, as if they were trying to make up for the dreams they had lost. Through this compensation, their mental activities returned to normal.
Sometimes people claim they didn't dream last night. In reality, they did dream, but simply forgot. Once they encounter a situation related to their dreams, they may quickly remember. So, what exactly are dreams? Dreams are purposeless mental activities. They occur because the conscious mind is suppressed during dreaming, but the content of dreams ultimately originates from the objective world! The scenes in dreams are either things we have frequently seen before or reassembled versions of things we have encountered. However, due to the obstruction of conscious thought, dreams often turn out to be bizarre and strange.
We've all experienced the saying, "What you think during the day, you dream about at night." This is actually a verification of the idea that dreams come from the objective world. Famous physicist Niels Bohr dreamed that he was standing on the sun, with planets tied to the sun by thin threads and orbiting around it. Upon waking, Bohr thought of the atomic model: electrons orbiting the nucleus! Bohr's dream was not out of thin air; it actually stemmed from his everyday thoughts and accumulated knowledge. So, keep thinking diligently—perhaps the next such dream will visit you!
Sleep also occurs in stages
Have you ever considered that sleep occurs in stages? In fact, sleep is divided into stages, and there are five stages. Before studying sleep, it is necessary to have instruments for sleep research—electroencephalographs. These instruments simply place small electrodes on the subject's head to record changes in brainwave activity throughout the sleep process. Combined with other physiological indicators, such as breathing and blood pressure, we can study the stages of sleep well.
Stage 1: Light Sleep. In this stage, brainwave frequency and amplitude are both low; the body relaxes, and breathing slows down. However, it is easy to be awakened by external stimuli, and the duration is relatively short, about 10 minutes.
Stage 2: Difficulty Waking. In this stage, occasional short bursts of high-frequency, high-amplitude brainwaves may occur; it is harder to wake up. The duration is about 20 minutes.
Stage 3: Brainwave frequency is lower, amplitude is higher, and sometimes brainwaves from Stage 2 may also appear. The duration is about 40 minutes.
Stage 4: Deep Sleep. Muscle