Sleep and Dreams

Sleep When we first fall asleep. First house is the deepest period of sleep. Blood pressure, heart rate and breathing fall

REM Sleep Brain begins to fire furiously Blood pressure zooms up Eyes move rapidly from side to side and up and down Breathing and heart rate are very rapid The body is paralyzed This happens every night, four or five times !

REM Sleep Rapid Eye Movement Dogs and cats have this after about 30 minutes after falling asleep and it is easy to see them. You can see the eyeball rolling in the socket Humans have REM about 90 minutes from falling asleep and happens every 90 min until morning.

REM Sleep Dreams happen during REM Dreams last between 5 to 40 minutes Each REM cycle lasts longer than the previous per night.

Sleep Cycle Stage 1 – relaxed – Alpha Brain Waves Stage 2 – Twilight Stage – alpha waves go away Stage 3 – Drift into deeper sleep – beginning delta waves Stage 4 – Deepest Sleep – Delta Waves – it is now about 1 hour into your sleep. Now you go in reverse back to stage 1….

The Sleep Cycle Before the second hour, you will arrive back at stage 1 but you go into REM sleep. This is when your first dream of the night will happen. (you don’t actually enter the real stage 1, relaxed, until you wake up in the morning. For the rest of the night you go from Stage 1 REM to Stage 4 and back again. Your last dream towards the morning will be close to 30 minutes long and you will be more likely to remember that dream than the earlier ones.

NREM Sleep Non-rapid eye movement Night terrors Sleepwalking and talking in sleep Less essential part of sleep If you are not in REM you are in NREM Vague, partial images and stories, doesn’t make sense. The body may be resting (?) For teens, this is when growth hormone is secreted, this is why teens need more sleep than adults! Where Is my chocolate bunny? Why am I wearing a dress? Is my name molly? I am a ninja.

3 Hypotheses about why we dream… 1.Dreams are used to get the brain reorganized after a day of work 2.Dreams are used to help work out unsolved problems left over from the day 3.Dreams result from electrical realignments, revising and updating going on in the brain. The brain is trying to make sense of all the information, so it makes up a “story” (dream) to fit them.

Psychology of Dreams Do you remember what psychologist analyzed dreams to find clues to his patients inner thoughts? Sigmund Freud He believed dreams were symbolic expression sof our unconscious conflicts For Example: If we dream of a fortress, this may really represent a strong-willed father. If we are trying to knock down the fortress in our dreams, then maybe things are not going so well with Dad!

Nightmares InfrequentREM Night Terrors More vivid and real During NREM Because the body isn’t prepared it goes into physical overload, breathing rate increases, the person feels chocked, heart rate extremely high Causes panic and fear of dying. Sweeting, nausea,