5.10 Dreams rarely make sense because they are usually more emotional  (Page 5/5)

Panksepp points out that when animals are in an appetitive state, anticipating a reward such as food or sex with a receptive mate, dopamine levels increase. But once an appetitive state turns into a consummatory state, dopamine levels immediately begin to decrease. So increasing levels of dopamine are not associated with consummatory, pleasurable activity. Rather the opposite is true. Pleasure is associated with decreasing dopamine levels. This does not mean that "reward" circuitry does not exist. Panksepp writes: "Temporal and frontal cortices contain an abundance of neurons that fire only in response to stimuli that have acquired meaning by being predictably associated with rewards."

That just means that once someone gets a reward they are satisfied. Most types of reward increase the level of dopamine in the brain, however pleasure apparently decreases dopamine levels.

Since humans think less when they are dreaming, it makes sense that dreams are emotional and not logical. I could say that they are driven by their 'reward system' when they are dreaming - the higher intellectual functions of their brain are shut off. They retreat into a more simplistic emotional state where they turn normal daily activity into some sort of silly movie.

During dreams, connection to your voluntary muscles is disabled. However, the person you are in your dream can move and it is as if then you can move your muscles in your mind. - REM sleep, the stage of sleep during which dreaming occurs, is characterized by paralysis of the voluntary muscles. Why? The phenomenon is known as REM atonia and prevents you from acting out your dreams while you're asleep. Basically, because motor neurons are not stimulated, your body does not move.

While dreams are often heavily influenced by our personal experiences, researchers have found that certain themes are very common across different cultures. For example, people from all over the world frequently dream about being chased, being attacked or falling.

So not only are dreams emotional, they also have a physical presence. - In your dreams you are really there and you can feel what is happening to you. That is why dreams of being chased, attacked or falling are fun, because you can 'feel' those sensations.

So in your dreams, not only are you using your imagination to run or move around, you are using your imagination to create worlds to run and move around in. Furthermore, these generated worlds are mostly from life events that are easily recalled in memory or simply more emotional.

So why does your mind make the dreams it makes? Does it select more emotional things to dream about or things that are simply more fun to dream about? (Apparently it does both)

So dreams are more emotional, and I think they also achieve stimulation from a more basic, reward based brain chemistry. The nature of emotion is reward based and simplistic, so it makes sense that dreams are that way since you aren't thinking.

Images in dreaming

How does the mind construct images in dreams? What do dream images look like? This is a much more complicated question than simply asking if someone dreams in color or black and white. The mind could reconstruct video - like if you watched a movie clip and then your mind replayed it in your dream. But how would your mind reconstruct the movie clip? It would surely alter it in a way similar to how dreams are different from ordinary experiences.

The above image represents what seems to me dream images are like. They are dulled down - since in dreams you are thinking less - but they are more emotionally potent. So the glowing colors make this image more emotional (similar to how gold is an emotional color), and they make it easy to see the image without thinking, as if seeing something glow in the dark.

My guess would be that when someone closes their eyes the patterns people can see on their eyelids (kind of like glowing outlines of abstract objects) help them to go to sleep because they are similar to dream images - it is dark because your eyes are closed and the faint lines or colors are very abstract so this low level of abstraction - similar to a dream - helps induce relaxation and sleep.

Dreaming and sleeping unlocks and uses the power of the unconscious mind. The unconscious is not as clear as things that are conscious, in order to think something and understand it it has to be clear, if it is more abstract or artistic the the thing could be described as being more unconscious.