What brings on dreams?

[FreeDOOM]

Sometimes I'll sleep for 10 hours sleep like a log and not dream at all other times I'll take a 20 minute nap and have a long, intricate dream. So I was wondering what is the general cause of dreaming? Is it sheer randomness for the most part?

[BigFan]

Sometimes I'll sleep for 10 hours sleep like a log and not dream at all other times I'll take a 20 minute nap and have a long, intricate dream. So I was wondering what is the general cause of dreaming? Is it sheer randomness for the most part? When you sleep, you go through multiple stages. If I recall correctly, there are five of them, the first 4 are Non-REM and the last is REM. You dream in both states although I heard/read that REM dreams are more vivid and it takes you 1.5hours to get to the REM part. As the night continues, the REM part gets longer and longer. When you take a nap, you automatically go into REM and if you wake up from it, you'll remember the dream. You want to remember dreams? Keep a dream journal and write in it everyday. Use autosuggestion before sleeping by repeating "I want to remember my dream tonight" and make sure to put some feelings into it instead of blindly saying it. Finally, if you put your alarm to ring at 4.5h, 6h and 7.5h, you should be able to wake up for the dream and remember it, thus, you can write it down As for why we dream, the theory is that it prepares you for the next day. Did you know that your brain keeps working 24/7 even when you sleep?

[FreeDOOM]

Thank you for that mini tutorial on dreaming. I've been setting my alarm to wake me up in the middle of the night and that generally helps the dreaming process. Keeping a journal has never been my thing though. I thought that dreams are actually our brains reorganizing information from the previous day?

[ninja9578]

Most people believe that dreams are a way for the mind to sort and store memories. The reason your naps are long dreams are because they are entirely REM sleep, which is when you dream. During the night, you have a 3.5 hour cycles and you only dream for about 15 minutes at a time.

[panta-rei]

You can dream in NREM as well... Most often, it is in REM though.

[BigFan]

Thank you for that mini tutorial on dreaming. I've been setting my alarm to wake me up in the middle of the night and that generally helps the dreaming process. Keeping a journal has never been my thing though. I thought that dreams are actually our brains reorganizing information from the previous day? My pleasure and yes, I think it also has to do with reorganizing information from the previous day Most people believe that dreams are a way for the mind to sort and store memories. The reason your naps are long dreams are because they are entirely REM sleep, which is when you dream. During the night, you have a 3.5 hour cycles and you only dream for about 15 minutes at a time. Have to disagree, I think you dream much more than 15 minutes. The reason I say this is because there are some of here which have dreamt for 2-3 hours, so, unless they entered the dream sometime about the 1.75-2.75 hours mark, they would have dreamt more than 15 minutes. Besides, most of these people attempt WILDs and go through SP to get to the dreamscape which means that they are automatically lucid when the dream starts You can dream in NREM as well... Most often, it is in REM though. Yes, you can dream in both, but, there has been no evidence to suggest that more of your dreams are in REM in comparison to NREM from what I've seen Also, some people believe that when you take a nap, you still go through the normal sleep cycle(NREM first) until you were REM deprived in which case you go into REM sleep directly. If this is true, it means that people could be having dreams in NREM that are just as vivid as REM