I don't know if you've ever thought about dreaming up a surreal experience. Our brain literally creates a video. It invents the script itself, creates scenarios, mixes characters and tells a story 100% original.
And it's not just in the imagination, you actually see everything happening and even hear the dialogues. It's a real mental performance, a fantastic theater that takes place inside your own head. head.
And all this while we're sleeping. And to make this trip even more incredible, at the same time that our mind is elaborating these images, it is also surprised by what is happening. After all, we don't know what's going to happen in the next scene.
There are no spoilers in a dream. It's as if one part of the brain is telling a story while the other part is telling a story. of our brain is watching that story.
And that means that we are the actors, directors and spectators of a never-before-seen movie. be seen by anyone else in the history of mankind. Please, someone get our brains an Oscar.
But how is that possible? The explanation is called REM. Sorry, I really needed to do that.
REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. And it's one of the two main phases of our sleep. The other is NREM, non-rapid eye movement, or slow wave sleep.
Very creative. Sleep as a whole has more stages, but they won't be so relevant to dreams. But REM and NREM cycles alternate throughout the night.
A complete REM and NREM sleep cycle can last between one and a half and two hours. But non-REM sleep consumes most of this cycle. And to understand how these phases work, let's have a quick tutorial on how to sleep.
First we lie down. And then, to get to sleep, you literally have to pretend to be asleep. You close your eyes, sit still, stay still and then, out of nowhere, sleep comes.
The NREM phase begins with drowsiness. Little by little, the heart rate decreases, the muscles relax, until our body goes into a deep sleep. The REM phase is the most agitated time of sleep.
As the name implies, our eyes are moving frantically under our eyelids. And at this time our brain activity is almost as intense as during the day when we're awake. And I said almost.
That's because, for example, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for our critical sense, is still asleep. And that's why you can see in a dream your grandmother riding a flying dinosaur playing Quidditch in the middle of the pyramids of Egypt and think, oh yes, normal. I don't need to tell you, but this kind of dream obviously doesn't make any sense.
And it's not even about the flying dinosaur and the pyramids, no grandmother plays Quidditch. But it turns out that we dream in both phases of sleep. In NREM dreams are usually closer to the reality we know.
But it's in the REM phase that the magic happens. Sorry, back. At this point the dreams are creative and intense.
And even though they last a few minutes, this is when you meet new people, talk to people who have already died, become invisible, fly around the world, try to transport to the future, relive some traumatic moment from the past, like tomorrow, Monday's heavy rain, 20 years ago when you were at school, you accidentally called the teacher mother and the the whole class laughed at you. I still remember that. And speaking of school, how about learning a new skill today?
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Now let's go back to the world of dreams. All this is possible when we're in the arms of Morpheus, who is the Greek God of the dreams. It turns out that we only remember our dreams when we wake up in the middle of them, or at least a few minutes after they end.
Which means that every day you experience incredible stories that you'll never remember. You take part in epic adventures and you have no idea. It's like there are several movies you watch every night, but you'll never know it what happened in them.
Moral of the story, nobody told you to sleep in the middle of the session. Even so, the dreams we remember already give us some helpful clues to explain why they happen. You, for example, may have noticed that we dream about things that occupy our minds.
our minds during the day. That's why it's so common to have banal dreams, as if you were at school, at work, or, I don't know, just fiddling with your cell phone. TikTok tirade.
Or you have nightmares about an exam coming up and you haven't studied, or a task your boss asked you to do, or a horror movie you watched before going to sleep. If you managed to fall asleep afterwards. But what about those totally random dreams?
The impression is that our brain draws lots on a roulette wheel as to who will appear where, doing what. But there are all sorts of explanations for this one. Historically, some people even attributed superstitious meanings to dreams.
Some records say that Calpurnia, wife of Julius Caesar, yes, that Julius Caesar, reported that she dreamt that he would be assassinated the night before the crime actually took place. And even with his wife's warning, Júlio César would have gone ahead and responded, You should only fear fear. And died.
In Ancient Greece, the father of medicine Hippocrates believed that dreams could bring clues of an illness. For the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, dreams reflect impulses linked to conflicts that are rejected by consciousness. And his colleague, Carl Jung, believed that dreams are an attempt to establish a psychological scale and balance in our minds the situations we experience in the world real.
The fact is that it's impossible to completely decipher the meaning of each dream. But for some other mysteries, science already has slightly more objective answers. For example, you've probably wondered whether spiders dream.
Okay, maybe you haven't asked yourself that. But in any case, know that you did. A recent German study showed that they sleep just like us.
And at these times, their abdomen begins to tremble and their paws curl and uncurl. But what does a spider dream about? And laboratory rats also seem to relive the memories of the labyrinths that they went through during the day while they slept.
Not least because they don't have many other things to dream about. And here's an important reflection. Our dreams are based on our experiences.
And that goes for any animal that dreams. Even our pets. A study has shown that during king sleep, dogs can even move around as if they were hunting, fighting, jumping and doing dog things.
Guy dreaming of establishing the new world order through canine domination. Right, Planquinho? But back to the dreams of human beings, there are people who dream in black and white.
It's vintage, isn't it? And this happens mainly among older people who used to watch television without colors in the past. Younger people, like babies, they dream too.
And the answer is yes. And that's even one of the reasons why they can cry at dawn. And you can understand that, right?
After all, they close their eyes and are teleported out of nowhere to another situation entirely without having any idea what's going on is really frightening. Especially when you think that dreaming is like training for death. But the most curious thing is that even before they are born, babies are already capable of dreaming inside their mother's belly.
Just don't ask me with what. And another common question is whether blind people also dream. And again the answer is yes.
Even those who have never seen can dream, but in this case the dreams are usually like life is when they're awake. In other words, again, the dream is based on your experiences and your perception of reality. But perhaps one of the greatest mysteries about the world of dreams is another.
Is it possible to choose what you dream about? Or is it possible to control what happens during our dream? There are those who say yes.
These are the scholars of so-called lucid dreams. Perhaps the most famous of them is Stephen Laborde, PhD in psychophysiology from the University of Lisbon. Stanford University.
He is the author of several books on this subject and he is the founder of the Institute of Lucidity, an organization dedicated to researching lucid dreams and helping people who want to control themselves while they're asleep. He even developed a mask, which at the time was called the Nova Dramer, which promised to help users realize they were dreaming. The mask detects rapid eye movement and emits flashing lights as strong that they appear in people's dreams.
And that would be the cue for the user to realize, ah, it's that light from that mask, so I'm dreaming. So, how can this person do whatever they want in the dream world? Unfortunately the mask is no longer for sale, but lucid dream scholars have a technique to help you become an onironaut.
Yes, that's the name given to those who can navigate their own dreams. Here's how it works: you have to ask yourself various questions throughout the day. times, am I dreaming?
And then look for signs around you that indicate that you are or are not in a dream. Observe if the objects seem real, if everything is right with your body, if the laws of physics are correct. are working and keep doing it day after day until it becomes a habit.
And then, because it's a habit, one day you might do this reality check during a dream and then you'll discover that yes, you are in a dream. If you've ever seen the movie Inception, which in Brazil has the uncreative name of The Origin, you know what I'm talking about. The character, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, has the ability to enter dreams of people.
And to find out for himself whether he's in the real world or the dream world, he spins a little top toy. When the spinning top stops spinning at some point, it's a sign that physics is working normally. After all, spinning tops stop spinning in real life.
But when the spinning top keeps spinning forever, dream world. The universe of dreams inspires artists in the most diverse ways. Director James Cameron had the idea that led him to Terminator in a dream.
Writer Mary Shelley dreamt of the monster that would become Frankenstein. And Paul McCartney says that the melody for Yesterday came to him ready-made during a dream. And these are just a few examples of how, even when it seems like we're resting, the fantastic machine of the human body continues to work.
This is a strong indication that our brain is capable of things that not even it could do itself imagine possible. And that we can be brilliant even when we're asleep. And that's why I hope you have a good night's sleep.
If you're not already asleep. . .
Wake up.
