Dreams and facts about them

With age, we dream less

Dreams are most often associated with the future, "explains psychologist at the University of North Carolina Peter Delaney. Among young men, for example, the fantasies in which they represent are very common, as they will one day become superheroes. With the passage of time, the future is getting shorter and time is being given less and less to dreams.

Dreams make you forget about what a person was busy before starting to fantasize

During one of the experiments, people performing a specific task were asked to recall the home of their childhood. The older the person, the more information about the current task he forgot. This means that the more our thoughts are carried away in the more distant past, the stronger the "forgetting effect" of the present.

And this effect applies not only to time gaps but also spatial ones: if you dream of a vacation, then you are more likely to forget about current affairs if you intend to spend it abroad than just on a country cottage outside the city. Psychologists believe that this is due to the fact that a trip to another country is outside the usual context of our life. "You seem to be making a long journey in your mind," Delaney says.

Delaney believes that this feature of our consciousness needs to be taken into account by people who, by occupation, need to rely on their memory - physicians, for example. If a doctor who is in charge of determining the dosage of drugs interrupt in the middle of this process the issue of his recent trip to an exotic country, important information may fade from his head.

When we dream, part of our brain "turns off"

In the brain there are two key systems: analytical, which helps to make right decisions, and empathic - which allows empathy and understanding of each other's feelings.

When we face a task that requires analytical thinking, the part of the brain that is responsible for emotions is turned off, "explains cognitive psychologist from the University of Ohio, Anthony Jack. In other words, "if you are absorbed in solving a mathematical problem, there simply is not room for emotion."

And when you surrender to dreams, your brain naturally changes several patterns of thinking, and at this time the analytical and empathic parts of the brain alternately "turn off" each other.

The process of dreams is controlled by the brain, not by consciousness

The brain and consciousness can be considered as different aspects of the same phenomenon - just like the software and hardware of a computer.

"We used to think that consciousness is" on the driver's seat, "and the processes that take place in our brain perform an official function."

[caption id="attachment_4258" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Dreams[/caption]

In fact, there is mutual dependence. On the one hand, our dreams and fantasies are determined by the structure of the brain. On the other hand, this structure itself is gradually changing. When we learn something new, new connections are established between nerve cells.

"Our brain naturally changes, and its structure, in turn, determines our dreams," says Jack.

Dreams awaken creative abilities

Very often, when we fantasize, our brains switch from one department to another, and we get access to those back streets of our subconscious that we did not even know existed, "explained Eugenio Roth, a psychologist at the University of Florida. Also, dreaming consciousness can find associative links between things that seemingly do not have the slightest relationship to each other.

"This awakens creative thinking, leads to unexpected insights. Often the solutions to the most difficult problems come precisely during periods of free wandering of our thoughts "