Sleep Disorders and Dreams
Insomnia recurring difficulty to fall or remain asleep. Often with excessive daytime sleepiness and other
cognitive impairments while they are awake. Consider a chronic condition when patients exhibit
symptoms at least three times per week for at least three months. Up to one-third of adults live with some
form of insomnia
Sleep-onset insomnia occurs when people have difficulty falling asleep even when they are tired.
Sleep maintenance insomnia refers to difficulty staying asleep during the nights
Mixed insomnia is a hybrid condition characterized by sleep-onset and sleep maintenance insomnia
symptoms.
Narcolepsy – uncontrollable sleep attacks and chronic sleepiness
Effects 1 in 2000 people
They instantly fall into REM Sleep
Sleep Apnea temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings
Effects millions of people
Micro wakes up to 400 times a night
Night Terrors sudden high arousal and appearance of being terrified
Occurs during stage 4 sleep
Occurs mostly in children
Usually o memory of the episode the following morning
Dreams a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person;s mind
Almost always occurs during REM sleep
Known for
Strange, nonsensical imagery
Delusional acceptance of the content
Later difficulty in remembering
Top 10 most common recurring dreams
1. Falling
2. Being chased
3. Being back in school
4. Being unprepared for a test or important event
5. Flying
6. Having sex with someone you should not have
7. Encountering a person who has died in real life
8. Death
9. Having your teeth fall out
What do we dream?
8 in 10 dreams are marked by negative emotion or scenarios
-falling, caught naked, being chased, falling a task, school or tests, arriving late. Frozen with fright, teeth
falling out, being locked and being attacked.
Other common dreams
-flying, eating, finding money/ treasure, swimming, and sexual experience. (in men are 1 in 10, in women
1 in 30 dreams)
Most dreams incorporate things from our daily lives and recent events
Most people report having recurring dreams
Lucid Dreams- when we become aware of the fact that we are dreaming, we can sometimes control our
dream.
Why do we dream?
No one knows for sure, here are theories
Information Processing-dreams may helo sift, sort and fix the day’s experience into memory
1. Memory improves with REM sleep
2. Problems solved in dreams
3. Rats in a maze, tetris experimen
4. Get a good night’s rest during school week will improve your academic performance
Preserve Neural Pathways- dreams provide the brain with periodic stimulation
1. Stimulation strengthens neural connections
2. Infants with rapidly developing neural networks spend a lots time in REM sleep
To make sense of neural Static- the brain tries to make sense of random neural activity
1. Visual areas and emotional areas are most active
2. Frontal lobe in keast active
Cognitive development- a part of brain maturation and development
1. Children’s dream are more like a slideshow
2. Adult’s dreams are more like a story with actors
3. They feature coherent speech draw on personal experiences and knowledge
We dream to forget- we are not supposed to remember dreams
1. Our brain’s way of dumping useless memories ad information
2. Not a common theory
Freud- In his book the interpretation of dreams , Sigmund Freud suggested that the content of dreams is
related to with fulfillment. Freid believed that the manifest content of a dream or the actual imagery and
events of the dream, served to disguise the latent content or the unconscious wishes of the dreamer.
REM Rebound- the Tendency for REM Sleep to increase following REM SLeep deprivation
1. Other mammals experience REM sleep
2. REM sleep not found in primitive animals that do not rely as much on learning
