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Dreams have a foresight function, enabling us to find a way out of an immediate conflict. [I 2] To reduce the polysemy of the term, Jung sometimes speaks of the "intuitive function" of dreams. [G 3] This prospective function is not in fact a premonitory dream, but teaches the dreamer a path to follow. [2]
Research into dreams includes exploration of the mechanisms of dreaming, the influences on dreaming, and disorders linked to dreaming. Work in oneirology overlaps with neurology and can vary from quantifying dreams to analyzing brain waves during dreaming, to studying the effects of drugs and neurotransmitters on sleeping or dreaming.
Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, [2] and each dream lasts around 5–20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer. [3] The content and function of dreams have been topics of scientific, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history.
Dreams and reports of dreams are produced in distinct states of consciousness resulting in a delay between the dream event and its recall while awake. During this time lag forgetting may occur resulting in an incomplete report. Forgetting is proportional to the amount of time elapsed between the experience and its recall. [2]
It uses electrical and chemical signals to send out responses to different parts of the body, and it is made up of nerve cells called neurons. Through the system, messages are transmitted to body tissues such as a muscle. There are two major subdivisions in the nervous system known as the central and peripheral nervous system. [5]
All this arousal has to be discharged in dreams. Dreaming takes up a large amount of the brain’s energy, as the PGO spikes are continually firing, so depressed people tend to wake early but exhausted and lacking in motivation, setting the scene for more worry and distress the following day. (This has been termed the cycle of depression. [12])
This was observed by two experiments: development of sleepiness after dopamine neuron destruction in substantia nigra in the midbrain, and discovery of the reticular activating system, which are visual cues received through our eyes and to our brain that begin the waking process, that waking consciousness depends sleep.
In dreams, there are two different types of content, the manifest and latent content. The latent content is the underlying, unconscious feelings and thoughts. The manifest content is made up of a combination of the latent thoughts and it is what is actually being seen in the dream.