Dreams mirror personal concerns, providing a platform to explore and process everyday worries and thoughts.
Dreams activate areas of the brain associated with imagination, resulting in vividness, physical sensations, and emotional impact.
Dreams can vary based on individual differences, reflecting interests, emotional experiences, and neurodiversity.
Deep dives
Dreams reflect personal concerns
Dreams are primarily about our personal concerns, with about 70-75% of dreams revolving around these matters. Whether it's worries about our children's schooling, work-related stress, or attire for an upcoming event, our dreams often mirror our waking reflections and thoughts. Dreams provide a platform for us to explore and process these personal concerns in a more imaginative and uninhibited manner, unconstrained by the executive and attention networks that govern our waking thoughts.
Embodied simulation in dreams
Dreams involve an intensified form of mind wandering called embodied simulation. During dreaming, areas of the brain associated with imagination, secondary visual cortex, auditory cortex, and motor cortex are activated. This activation can lead to dreams feeling incredibly realistic while we are experiencing them. The vividness of dreams can be so overwhelming that they can simulate physical sensations and provoke emotional responses comparable to those in waking life. Embodied simulation helps explain why dreams can evoke a powerful sense of presence and emotional impact.
Dreams of deceased loved ones
Although rare, dreams of deceased loved ones can be profoundly meaningful and emotionally impactful. In these dreams, individuals may encounter deceased loved ones who appear alive and engage in conversations or interactions. These dreams can feel extraordinarily real, leading individuals to share their experiences with others and even shape certain mythologies and cultural beliefs. The extraordinary nature of these dreams of deceased loved ones contributes to their profound emotional significance.
Dreams: Individual Differences and Neurodiversity
Dreams can vary greatly based on individual differences and neurodiversity. For example, individuals with a strong interest in music generally dream about music more frequently. People who self-identify as artists or creative tend to have creative dreams. A study on children with ADHD found that while dream recall frequency and general dream characteristics were similar to children without ADHD, the dreams of children with ADHD tended to be more negatively toned and included more misfortunes and threats. Moreover, medication can affect dream recall, with some individuals experiencing fewer dreams but potentially sleeping more soundly.
Dreams as Reflections of Personal Concerns
Dreams provide a window into an individual's personal concerns and how they view the world. Dream content often reflects a person's interests, such as dreams about TV characters and movie stars for individuals who enjoy horror films or have crushes on celebrities. Dreams can also serve as a way to navigate emotional experiences, such as dreams of deceased loved ones providing reassurance. However, dreams are not a direct representation of waking life, as they lack certain cognitive abilities, such as emotional intensity, symbolism, and specific episodic memories.
WHY do we dream? What do dreams mean? What parts of our brain are working after-hours? We sought out UC Santa Cruz researcher and professor Dr. G. William Domhoff, a world expert on the topic, for this dream-come-true episode. Learn about historical dream research, dream researchers collect dream reports, how neurodivergence affects dreaming, why you should set an alarm to go to bed, how remembering dreams can help solve problems, and more about REM myths! We’ll be back next week to answer all your questions and dig even deeper. Also teeth dreams: WHY.
