The Wonders of Dreams Essay Example
Even though lots of people have dreams every night, why don’t people always remember them, and what causes them to happen? People have dreams every night, but typically they wake up, and are not aware if they had a dream, and they also don’t know why dreams are in their head. Dreams are something that everybody experiences almost every night, but a lot of people forget in the morning. Most people don’t even know why dreams happen, or how dreams occur. My topic, dreams, is important to me because it interests me that people have them every night.
Every dream has different people doing different things, and acting a different way. Even though people have these dreams they might not remember them when they wake up. People probably have thousands of dreams throughout their life, but they can’t recall half the dreams they had. This is why I picked dreams for my research topic. In my research I plan to figure out, “what causes dreams, and why people only remember some dreams and not others.” This question is my main focus question. Trying to find out what causes dreams, and figuring out why people only remember some dreams and not others.
While I am interested in my topic of dreams, there are a few things I think I know, or already know about this topic. Before researching dreams, some background information I believe to be 100% true is that everybody experiences dreams at least once in their life. I also believe that people can remember at least one dream within their lifetime. A few rumors I’ve heard about dreams is people have to be sleeping to experience a dream. This rumor might not be true, because I’ve heard of daydreams before. Another person said to me that people can sometimes control what happens in their dreams.This one sounds Interesting, but I’ve never had it happen to me. These are some of the things I have heard, or know about dreams before doing my research.
My Research
Well many people dream at night, people don’t know what actually causes dreams. Looking through the research, scientists today still cannot find an answer to why people have dreams. Dreams are images that appear in someone’s head at night, or in the daytime, that can mimic real life, or fantasy. Sadly Scientists “still have not reached a conclusion” why people dream (Why do we dream?). Even though scientists still do not know what actually causes dreams there are still quite a few theories on the subject. Some scientists say dreams are a “mechanism whereby the brain incorporates memories, solves problems and deals with problems” (Nichols).
This means that our brains try to mentally solve our problems in our head. People's brains take memories from that day, or even further, then they try to solve that person's problems within that dream. Other theories include that “there is no purpose for dreaming and that it is completely random”(reddick) . Then again, scientists today still haven’t found out the real reason why we dream, just some theory’s. Scientists still can’t figure out what causes dreams to happen, but after a dream people normally don’t remember the dream when they wake up in the morning.
While most people dream at night, normally people do not remember half, or more, of that dream when they wake up. When people wake up in the morning after a long sleep, people normally have no clue what their dream was, or even if they had a dream. Based on my research, scientists think that people don’t normally remember dreams. People normally forget them when they wake up, or they simply wake up at the wrong time. When someone wakes up in the morning they “manage to forget almost 50% of the dream” , then throughout the rest of the day they manage to forget the rest of the dream (Mulliken).
Throughout the day people pretty much just forget their dream, 50% when you wake up, then the other 50% throughout the day (Mulliken). There are also some other factors that affect whether or not someone will remember the dream or not. One of those factors is if someone is in “REM sleep” , (rapid eye movement) their brain shows more activity (Sosnowska). When the brain shows more activity, this means that they have a more likely chance to remember that dream. If someone is in REM sleep and then wakes up after a dream, they are almost guaranteed to remember that dream.
A few main factors to remember a dream include, getting into a deep sleep to get into REM. Also they need to wake up at the right time. When someone wakes up in the middle of a dream they are more likely to remember the dream other than the start of a dream. Sometimes though when you wake up at the right time, they can still forget it throughout the day, because you might not think about it. One last factor to remember a dream is to keep a notepad by the bed, so you can write it down when you wake up. These are the factors to remembering a dream, and also why we remember dreams. After all of the research there are a few main takeaways from doing the research.
My Reflection
When doing research on dreams, there are a lot of things to learn to research the correct way. I improved as a researcher by figuring out what the appropriate thing to search was. When researching dreams, I found out that if I put a very long question in the search bar, I was not going to get very good answers. When I searched for a big long answer that I had in my head, I definitely needed to shorten it down. When I shortened my question down, I got some decent responses for my question. When I searched a shortened version of my question, I got a good response that I could find a good answer for. Another thing I found out about my research skills was I didn’t always find the answer that I planned for.
When researching dreams, I wasn’t very satisfied with the responses they gave me. The websites almost always gave me the response that scientists haven’t figured out what actually causes dreams, or they just gave me a bunch of theory’s. I just learned to go with it, because I had to accept that scientists cannot find the real answer to why people dream at night. The answer kind of disappointed me, but I just learned to go on with it. One last thing that I took away from doing my research was, research sparks different questions about dreams. Researching my questions sparked many other questions about dreams that I had. When reading through the content I almost always thought about other questions I could ask.
When researching through different subjects I found lots of different things, not regarding my question too. I found different questions that were covered in sources I read through. Even though scientists don’t actually know what causes dreams, there are still so many other things to think about. At least they know what causes us to remember our dreams though. Researching reminded me about how many things are unsolved in the world. People certainly don't know everything that’s in the world, or what goes on in our heads. This research paper reminded me of that.
Works Cited
Mulliken, Gwyneth. “SiOWfa15: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy.” SiOWfa15
Science in Our World Certainty and Controversy, WordPress, 4 Sept. 2015,
sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/09/04/why-do-we-dream-why-do-we-only-remember-some-dreams/.
Nichols, Hannah. “Dreams: Why Do We Dream?” Medical News Today, MediLexicon
International, 28 June 2018, www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284378.php.
Petsko , Emily. “Dreaming .” MentalFloss, 15 Nov. 2018,
mentalfloss.com/article/558092/why-some-people-cant-remember-dreams.
Reddick , Mark. “Why Do People Dream At Night? - And How Does The Brain Do It?” The
Sleep Advisor, Sleep Advisor , 8 May 2018, www.sleepadvisor.org/why-do-we-dream/.
Sosnowska , Joanna. “Why You Remember Some Dreams but Forget Others.” Nightly,
DreamJay Inc., 19 Apr. 2018, nightly.co/why-you-remember-some-dreams-but-forget-others/.
“Why Do We Dream?” Wonderopolis, National Center for Families Learning, 2014,
wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-do-we-dream.
