Hannah Kahl Professor Presnell English 1103 3 November 2013 How Dreams Affect Our Reality Every night

people wake up from crazy dreams. They became a part of it, felt it, saw it, and experienced it. Dreams have caused people to wake up in tears and question life, but have you ever wondered if they affect how we live? Curiosity Ive always been curious about if dreams really affected who we are or how we live. Ever since I was a child I have had vivid dreams. When I was little I had one dream that I have had almost every year since I was in about the third grade. It was about my cousin and I. We would go on this adventure and find an amazing rock waterslide in the middle of this fairytale wilderness. When we reached the end we would find a mermaid with sparkling fins of blue and green and try to rescue her. So we set out on a mission; we met many mystical friends one being a princess and another a giant. The princess was trying to get out of a bad relationship and be with her prince. A war breaks out in the forest and many creatures from the kingdom are lost in battle. In the end we all end up living in her huge tree mansion with all the people who helped her find love. This dream was always of particular interest to me, because the cousin who was in the dream was a cousin who was brutally mean to me growing up. I started to think as I got older, and I kept having this same dream, that maybe it was myself longing for her love and a

relationship with her. I found that now we have a better relationship that dream has stopped. Dreams have always been powerful in my life, so I decided to pursue how or if dreams affect us as humans and our lives. How it Started When I began my research it was quite difficult starting out. I looked in databases through my school library, I searched google scholar, looked on government websites, and dug for information in books, but everything I found seemed to be irrelevant. I noticed by using the word dream in searches, my results were about aspirations, hopes, and desires. If I used the word reality with the word dream, my results would give me sources about physiological disorders and sleep diseases. I soon started to realize that I would have to use synonyms for the word reality. I began to search things like, dreams and behavior, dreams and affects, and dreams and sleep. These searches provided a more focused and credible type of source. I quickly found an abundance of sources on my questions. I wanted to know if recurrent dreams meant something, if nightmares reflected our true fears, if dreams affect how we think or feel, what the different stages of sleep were, if the amount of sleep we get a night affects our dreams, and what the symbols of dreams were. I shortly concurred that there were a few key words that I needed to know before I fully understand what I was reading in my articles. One of the words that popped up the most in all of the sources was REM sleep. REM Sleep REM sleep stands for Rapid Eye Movement sleep. Many things occur when our bodies experience this. REM sleep is a stage of sleep where our bodys breathing speeds up and becomes shallow, heart rate and blood pressure rises, our eyes jerk around rapidly in our skull,

and our bodys muscles become temporarily paralyzed (United States 1). Humans spend roughly twenty percent of their time dreaming in REM sleep and is when the most bizarre and illogical dreams occur. This makes a lot of since, because many people when referring to dreams recall peculiar events and confusing details. REM sleep begins precisely after seventy to ninety minutes after falling asleep and each cycle of REM sleep is completed in a course of ninety to one hundred minutes in which increases in length as sleep progresses. REM sleep is fatal in our sleep experience. Signals are given to different parts of the brain starting from the base of the brain, moving to the thalamus, and ending the cerebral cortex (United States 2). The cerebral cortex is ultimately where REM sleep takes place; this part of the brain is vital for learning, thinking and organizing information. It had been discovered that because of this babies need REM sleep more than grown adults and is actually crucial to development, and because of that reason they spend half of their sleep dreaming in REM sleep whereas adults spend twenty percent (United States 1). Not only is REM sleep important for intellectual development, it also the explanation for many violent acts during sleep. REM sleep is a very sensitive time of sleep. If anyone is disturbed during this particular stage people often begin to act out their dreams (United States 2). This causes sleep walking problems and violence during sleep. Nightmares and Affects In two different studies nightmares were studied. In one experiment children were tested for a relationship between frequency of nightmares and levels of anxiety (Mindell 2). This has never been studied amongst children before, however there have been studies completed on nightmares and levels of anxiety in adults, college students, and high school students (Mindell 3). Those studies showed that stress caused nightmares and in turn nightmares caused anxiety. *REM sleep is where most nightmares occur and because most nightmares occur from the age of

six to ten; it is for that reason J. A. Mindell and K. M. Barrett wanted to specifically study the correlation of nightmares to the effects of anxiety. Sixty elementary children and their parents were the given surveys to complete on the nightmares of the child. The child and parents would be asked the same questions, but the parents were asked to not influence the childs responses. The children were asked if they ever had nightmare, how often they had nightmares, and the intensity of the nightmares (Mindell 4). The same questions were asked for the parents about their children. Then the parents were asked to complete a State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. It was shown that children who had more frightening nightmares or more frequent nightmares and higher levels of anxiety than other children who reported having less severe and frequent nightmares (Mindell 6-7). Another study was conducted on sleep terrors and sleepwalking. Sleep terrors and sleepwalking are described as arousals from slow wave sleep with no or poor mental recollection (Oudiette 224). Slow wave sleep is categorized as stage three and four sleep where brain waves slow and there is no eye or muscle movement (United States 1). These stages of sleep are referred as deep sleep and are very difficult to wake people during. Sleepwalking is also caused by a REM sleep disorder called RBD where nocturnal epilepsy, sleep sex, and sleep-related eating disorders occur (Oudiette 226). Forty-three patients were studied during sleep for their sleep walking patterns and the events that occurred (Oudiette 224). As a control group twenty-five people were also studied during sleep under the same conditions. The sleepwalking events or reactions during sleep occurred during the first 2 hours of sleep in 88% of the patients (Oudiette 228), which ironically is when REM sleep begins to occur and completes its first cycle (United States 2). In one case a girl was observed in the video, of her recorded sleep, her getting up from bed, opening her eyes, and screaming (Oudiette 230). It was

reported that she has had similar events at home, due to dreams of being suffocated and being trapped in a box. The patients who have these experiences also have reported more severe cases of sleepiness during the day and interferes with daily functions. It is interesting how certain types of dreams can cause acting out in extreme ways. These events can event their well-being as far as being able to function properly during the day, it can affect people around them and their safety, and it could also cause anxiousness. In one analysis a father took his infant daughter out of her crib, took her to the attic, and tied her up (Oudiette 231). This does not only affect the person with sleepwalking, but also those around them. What People Think My Voice Direct Quotes Indirect Quotes Source Quote

Works Cited Freud, Sigmund. The Method of Dream Interpretation. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: The Modern Library, 1950. Print. Kahl, Hannah. How do Dreams Affect Our Reality? University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2013.Web. 24 Oct. 2013. Mindell, J.A., and K.M. Barrett. Nightmares and Anxiety in Elementary-Aged Children: Is There a Relationship? Child: Care, Health, and Development 28. 4 (2002): 317-322. J. Murrey Atkins Library Search. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. Oudiette, Delphine, Samarada Leu, Michel Pottier, Marie-Annick Buzar, Agnes Brion, and Isabelle Amulf. United States. "National Center for Biotechnology Information". Dreamlike Mentations during Sleepwalking and Sleep Terrors in Adults. 2009. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. United States. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. National Institutes of Health. Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep.2007. Web. 19 Oct. 2013.