To sleep, to dream - then to work out what it means

By REBECCA WALSH

Dreams provide hours of speculation and conversation.

While some believe dreams are the transfer of thoughts and information from the unconscious to the conscious mind, others see them as the brain processing what has happened during the day.

And there are those who believe sleep is a time to solve problems.

Eating strong cheese can cause some people to dream more than usual.

Sigmund Freud believed that looking at what people dream about can lead to an understanding of their unconscious wishes.

Glynn Owens, a professor of psychology at Auckland University's Tamaki campus, favours the view that dreams are a side effect of activity in the brain.

He is not totally convinced that dreams have such exotic functions as releasing and explaining unconscious conflicts or predicting the future.

Physiologically, dreaming seems to be a necessary part of sleep rhythms, says Dr Nick Argyle, the director of mental health services in central Auckland.

Dreams happen during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a mentally active period of the sleep cycle that occurs about every 90 minutes in adults.

Research suggests the period of REM sleep gets longer towards the end of the night.

During REM sleep, the eyes move and breathing becomes more active.

Anyone deprived of the dream component of their sleep will tend to make it up the next night.

But as people age, the percentage of time spent dreaming decreases.

Dr Carolyn Dakin, a respiratory paediatrician at Starship children's hospital, says dreaming accounts for about 50 per cent of sleep in the first few months of a baby's life compared with about 20 per cent in adults.

"The theory is that dream sleep helps you with your learning or helps hardwire the learning and neurological processes," Dr Dakin says.

Sometimes people have dreams with no visual content: these happen during non-REM sleep. Professor Owens says blind people who have never seen do not have visual dreams, whereas people who have lost their sight still have visual dreams.

Dreams occur in real time and can affect a person's waking mood.

"You may wake up and forget the content of your dream, but your body hasn't got back to its normal state. You may feel unsettled or anxious."

Symbolism in dreams can indicate things that are important to people, Professor Owens says.

Soon after one woman learned she had a serious illness and was going to die, she dreamed she was in an unfamiliar vehicle, then realised it was a plane and she was about to leap out of it without a parachute.

Professor Owens says the unfamiliar vehicle represents the woman's body, which is no longer the body she thought it was. Jumping out of the plane with no support is what happens when you "jump out of your body and die".

Dreams are forgotten easily, so Professor Owens suggests people put a notebook beside the bed and write down their dreams as soon as they wake up.

While everyone dreams, sleepwalking and sleeptalking are more common in young children.

Dr Dakin says intervention is recommended only if children are putting themselves or others at risk, for example, letting themselves out of the house.

Dream themes

Every night when you go to sleep you dream. Most of our dreams are unique, but dreams and nightmares do have some common threads.

Among them:

* Flying like a bird.

* Falling from a great height.

* Being chased by a monster or something scary.

* Having a conversation with someone who has died.

* Children being toilet-trained may dream they are looking for a toilet.