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What is happening in our brains when we are sleeping? Have you ever woken up and remembered strange thoughts and images that occurred during the night? You know that you actually never left your bed, however, you remember a whole activity filled with different people and places. Sometimes the things that you do and the things that you see in your dreams do not even exist in real life!

The events and images that you remember are often about good and happy things, but sometimes they are about bad things and can even be quite scary. But, don’t worry. You are experiencing what most every other human in the world also experiences.

These curious things that we sometimes remember are called dreams. The theory behind why we dream and the analysis of these dreams has fascinated people and intrigued scientists and psychologists for centuries.

Studies have shown that we experience and remember our most vivid dreams during a type of sleep called REM (Rapid Eye Movement). Our brains are very active during this type of sleep and our eyes move back and forth under our eyelids, although the rest of our body is generally motionless. REM sleep occurs about once every 100 minutes and lasts about 15-45 minutes. We generally have this REM sleep about 3-4 times a night

But what do our dreams mean? An Austrian psychiatrist named Sigmund Freud studied dreams and identified an area of our brains called the subconscious where the mind stores all of our memories and desires. Freud believed that dreams were the visuals of the subconscious. He thought that every symbol in our dreams originated from a thought or desire that we had buried in our subconscious mind.

Scientists today continue to debate the issue of the meaning behind dreams. Most people find that their dreams are meaningful to them. Sometimes we understand them and sometimes we don’t. They can be funny, scary, weird, or exciting. But don’t worry about them…enjoy them. They allow us to go to different places and to see amazing things that we don’t get to see in our everyday lives.