FREE ESSAY ON RAPID-EYE-MOVEMENT

RAPID-EYE-MOVEMENT

dream, mental activity associated with the rapid-eye-movement (REM) period of sleep. It
is commonly made up of a number of visual images, scenes or thoughts expressed in terms
of seeing rather than in those of the other senses or in words. Electroencephalograph
studies, measuring the electrical activity of the brain during REM sleep, have shown
that
young adults dream for 1 1/2 to 2 hours of every 8-hour period of sleep. Infants spend
an
average of 50% of their sleep in the REM phase (they are believed to dream more often
than adults) a figure which decreases steadily with age. During dreams, blood pressure
and
heart rate increase, and breathing is quickened, but the body is otherwise immobile.
Studies have shown that sleepers deprived of dream-sleep are likely to become irritable
and lose coordination skills. Unusually frightening dreams are called nightmares, and
daydreams are constructed fantasies that occur while the individual is awake. Studies
have
demonstrated the existence of lucid dreaming, where the individual is aware that he is
dreaming and has a degree of control over his dream. 
Sigmund , in his pioneering work The Interpretation of Dreams (1900, tr. 1913), was one
of the first to emphasize dreams as keys to the unconscious. He distinguished the
manifest
content of dreams—the dream as it is recalled by the individual—from the
latent content
or the meaning of the dream, which Freud saw in terms of wish fulfillment. C. G. held
that
dreams function to reveal the unconscious mind, anticipate future events, and give
expression to neglected areas of the dreamer's personality. Another theory, which PET
scan studies appear to support, suggests that dreams are a result of electrical energy
that
stimulates memories located in various regions of the brain.