94-454: A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Dream may also refer to: Dream A dream is a succession of images , ideas , emotions , and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep . Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5–20 minutes, although
188-494: A "quasi-therapeutic" function, enabling the dreamer to process trauma in a safe place. Revonsuo's 2000 threat simulation hypothesis, whose premise is that during much of human evolution, physical and interpersonal threats were serious, giving reproductive advantage to those who survived them. Dreaming aided survival by replicating these threats and providing the dreamer with practice in dealing with them. In 2015, Revonsuo proposed social simulation theory, which describes dreams as
282-411: A diary. This prevented the selective memory effect, and the dreams no longer seemed accurate about the future. Another experiment gave subjects a fake diary of a student with apparently precognitive dreams. This diary described events from the person's life, as well as some predictive dreams and some non-predictive dreams. When subjects were asked to recall the dreams they had read, they remembered more of
376-692: A divine revelation. For example, the Hebrew prophet Samuel would "lie down and sleep in the temple at Shiloh before the Ark and receive the word of the Lord", and Joseph interpreted a Pharaoh's dream of seven lean cows swallowing seven fat cows as meaning the subsequent seven years would be bountiful, followed by seven years of famine. Most of the dreams in the Bible are in the Book of Genesis . Christians mostly shared
470-427: A dream is one of three states that the soul experiences during its lifetime, the other two states being the waking state and the sleep state. The earliest Upanishads , written before 300 BCE, emphasize two meanings of dreams. The first says that dreams are merely expressions of inner desires. The second is the belief of the soul leaving the body and being guided until awakened. In Judaism, dreams are considered part of
564-421: A dream must first be reduced to a verbal report, which is an account of the subject's memory of the dream, not the subject's dream experience itself. So, dreaming by non-humans is currently unprovable, as is dreaming by human fetuses and pre-verbal infants. Preserved writings from early Mediterranean civilizations indicate a relatively abrupt change in subjective dream experience between Bronze Age antiquity and
658-514: A dream of a dim star high in the night sky indicated problems in the head region, while low in the night sky indicated bowel issues. Greek philosopher Plato (427-347) wrote that people harbor secret, repressed desires, such as incest, murder, adultery, and conquest, which build up during the day and run rampant during the night in dreams. Plato's student, Aristotle (384–322 BCE), believed dreams were caused by processing incomplete physiological activity during sleep, such as eyes trying to see while
752-717: A drop in their ordinary ability, whether physical or mental, due to that perceived stress. Competitive anxiety is caused by a range of internal factors including high expectations, outside pressure, lack of experience, and external factors like the location of a competition. It commonly occurs in those participating in high pressure activities like sports and debates. Some common symptoms of competitive anxiety include muscle tension, fatigue, weakness, sense of panic, apprehensiveness, and panic attacks. There are 4 major theories of how anxiety affects performance: Drive theory, Inverted U theory, Reversal theory, and The Zone of Optimal Functioning theory. Drive theory believes that anxiety
846-482: A fear of rejection and negative evaluation (being judged) by other people. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard , in The Concept of Anxiety (1844), described anxiety or dread associated with the "dizziness of freedom" and suggested the possibility for positive resolution of anxiety through the self-conscious exercise of responsibility and choosing. In Art and Artist (1932), the psychologist Otto Rank wrote that
940-420: A heart attack, when in reality all one is experiencing is mild chest pain, for example. The physiological symptoms of anxiety may include: There are various types of anxiety. Existential anxiety can occur when a person faces angst , an existential crisis , or nihilistic feelings. People can also face mathematical anxiety , somatic anxiety , stage fright , or test anxiety . Social anxiety refers to
1034-505: A large influence on anxiety, whereas shared environmental influences (environments that affect twins in the same way) operate during childhood but decline through adolescence. Specific measured 'environments' that have been associated with anxiety include child abuse , family history of mental health disorders, and poverty . Anxiety is also associated with drug use , including alcohol , caffeine , and benzodiazepines , which are often prescribed to treat anxiety. Neural circuitry involving
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#17327758927771128-399: A lead role in psychotherapy. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology . Most modern dream study focuses on the neurophysiology of dreams and on proposing and testing hypotheses regarding dream function. It is not known where in the brain dreams originate, if there is a single origin for dreams or if multiple regions of the brain are involved, or what the purpose of dreaming is for
1222-663: A long-term " trait ". Whereas trait anxiety represents worrying about future events, anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by feelings of anxiety and fears. In his book Anxious: The Modern Mind in the Age of Anxiety Joseph LeDoux examines four experiences of anxiety through a brain-based lens: Anxiety disorders often occur with other mental health disorders, particularly major depressive disorder , bipolar disorder , eating disorders , or certain personality disorders . It also commonly occurs with personality traits such as neuroticism. This observed co-occurrence
1316-479: A number of works by Philip K. Dick , such as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik . Similar themes were explored by Jorge Luis Borges , for instance in The Circular Ruins . Anxiety Anxiety is an emotion which is characterised by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear
1410-573: A physician from Hamburg, was the first who suggested that dreams are a need and that they have the function to erase (a) sensory impressions that were not fully worked up, and (b) ideas that were not fully developed during the day. In dreams, incomplete material is either removed (suppressed) or deepened and included into memory. Freud , whose dream studies focused on interpreting dreams, not explaining how or why humans dream, disputed Robert's hypothesis and proposed that dreams preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled those wishes that otherwise would awaken
1504-442: A positive dream about a friend to be meaningful than a positive dream about someone they disliked, for example, and were more likely to view a negative dream about a person they disliked as meaningful than a negative dream about a person they liked. According to surveys, it is common for people to feel their dreams are predicting subsequent life events. Psychologists have explained these experiences in terms of memory biases , namely
1598-656: A prominent forebear, commands the dreamer to take specific actions, and which may predict future events. Framing the dream experience varies across cultures as well as through time. Dreaming and sleep are intertwined. Dreams occur mainly in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep —when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. Because REM sleep is detectable in many species, and because research suggests that all mammals experience REM, linking dreams to REM sleep has led to conjectures that animals dream. However, humans dream during non-REM sleep, also, and not all REM awakenings elicit dream reports. To be studied,
1692-528: A result of observation of his dreams. Ignorant as he was, he could have come to no other conclusion but that, in dreams, he left his sleeping body in one universe and went wandering off into another. It is considered that, but for that savage, the idea of such a thing as a 'soul' would never have even occurred to mankind.... In the Mandukya Upanishad , part of the Veda scriptures of Indian Hinduism ,
1786-402: A reward. This suggests a link between circuits responsible for fear and also reward in anxious people. As researchers note, "a sense of 'responsibility', or self-agency, in a context of uncertainty (probabilistic outcomes) drives the neural system underlying appetitive motivation (i.e., nucleus accumbens) more strongly in temperamentally inhibited than noninhibited adolescents". The microbes of
1880-575: A rite of passage, fasting and praying until an anticipated guiding dream was received, to be shared with the rest of the tribe upon their return. Beginning in the late 19th century, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud , founder of psychoanalysis , theorized that dreams reflect the dreamer's unconscious mind and specifically that dream content is shaped by unconscious wish fulfillment. He argued that important unconscious desires often relate to early childhood memories and experiences. Carl Jung and others expanded on Freud's idea that dream content reflects
1974-465: A selective memory for accurate predictions and distorted memory so that dreams are retrospectively fitted onto life experiences. The multi-faceted nature of dreams makes it easy to find connections between dream content and real events. The term "veridical dream" has been used to indicate dreams that reveal or contain truths not yet known to the dreamer, whether future events or secrets. In one experiment, subjects were asked to write down their dreams in
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#17327758927772068-524: A simulation for training social skills and bonds. Eagleman's and Vaughn's 2021 defensive activation theory, which says that, given the brain's neuroplasticity , dreams evolved as a visual hallucinatory activity during sleep's extended periods of darkness, busying the occipital lobe and thereby protecting it from possible appropriation by other, non-vision, sense operations. Erik Hoel proposes, based on artificial neural networks, that dreams prevent overfitting to past experiences; that is, they enable
2162-400: A teacher; fear of alienation from parents or friends; time pressures; or feeling a loss of control. Sweating, dizziness, headaches, racing heartbeats, nausea, fidgeting, uncontrollable crying or laughing and drumming on a desk are all common. Because test anxiety hinges on fear of negative evaluation , debate exists as to whether test anxiety is itself a unique anxiety disorder or whether it
2256-440: A trait leading to anxiety and depression and their persistence. Through experience, many find it difficult to collect themselves due to their own personal nature. Anxiety induced by the need to choose between similar options is recognized as a problem for some individuals and for organizations. In 2004, Capgemini wrote: "Today we're all faced with greater choice, more competition and less time to consider our options or seek out
2350-423: Is a major component of behavioral treatments for anxiety conditions. Performance anxiety and competitive anxiety ( competitive trait anxiety, competitive state anxiety ) happen when an individual's performance is measured against others. An important distinction between competitive and non-competitive anxiety is that competitive anxiety makes people view their performance as a threat. As a result, they experience
2444-518: Is a specific type of social phobia . The DSM-IV classifies test anxiety as a type of social phobia. Research indicates that test anxiety among U.S. high-school and college students has been rising since the late 1950s. Test anxiety remains a challenge for students, regardless of age, and has considerable physiological and psychological impacts. Management of test anxiety focuses on achieving relaxation and developing mechanisms to manage anxiety. The routine practice of slow, Device-Guided Breathing (DGB)
2538-477: Is characterized by experiencing discomfort or awkwardness during physical social contact (e.g. embracing, shaking hands, etc.), while in other cases it can lead to a fear of interacting with unfamiliar people altogether. Those with this condition may restrict their lifestyles to accommodate the anxiety, minimizing social interaction whenever possible. Social anxiety also forms a core aspect of certain personality disorders, including avoidant personality disorder . To
2632-464: Is common among young people. It may persist into adulthood and become social anxiety or social phobia. " Stranger anxiety " in small children is not considered a phobia. In adults, an excessive fear of other people is not a developmentally common stage; it is called social anxiety . According to Cutting, social phobics do not fear the crowd but the fact that they may be judged negatively. Social anxiety varies in degree and severity. For some people, it
2726-511: Is defined as the emotional response to a present threat , whereas anxiety is the anticipation of a future one. It is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints , and rumination . Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry , usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue , inability to catch one's breath, tightness in
2820-457: Is distinguished from fear , which is an appropriate cognitive and emotional response to a perceived threat . Anxiety is related to the specific behaviors of fight-or-flight responses , defensive behavior or escape. There is a false presumption that often circulates that anxiety only occurs in situations perceived as uncontrollable or unavoidable, but this is not always so. David Barlow defines anxiety as "a future-oriented mood state in which one
2914-507: Is freed from the body during slumber to journey in a dream realm, while the other remained in the body. This belief and dream interpretation had been questioned since early times, such as by the philosopher Wang Chong (27–97 CE ). The Babylonians and Assyrians divided dreams into "good," which were sent by the gods, and "bad," sent by demons. A surviving collection of dream omens entitled Iškar Zaqīqu records various dream scenarios as well as prognostications of what will happen to
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3008-471: Is generally highly phantasmagoric; that is, different locations and objects continuously blend into each other. The visuals (including locations, people, and objects) are generally reflective of a person's memories and experiences, but conversation can take on highly exaggerated and bizarre forms. Some dreams may even tell elaborate stories wherein the dreamer enters entirely new, complex worlds and awakes with ideas, thoughts and feelings never experienced prior to
3102-459: Is necessary to best complete a task such as an exam, performance, or competitive event. However, when the anxiety or level of arousal exceeds that optimum, the result is a decline in performance. Test anxiety is the uneasiness, apprehension, or nervousness felt by students who have a fear of failing an exam . Students who have test anxiety may experience any of the following: the association of grades with personal worth ; fear of embarrassment by
3196-489: Is not built on the rock of reality ". According to Viktor Frankl , the author of Man's Search for Meaning , when a person is faced with extreme mortal dangers, the most basic of all human wishes is to find a meaning of life to combat the "trauma of nonbeing" as death is near. Depending on the source of the threat, psychoanalytic theory distinguishes three types of anxiety: realistic, neurotic and moral. According to Yerkes-Dodson law , an optimal level of arousal
3290-555: Is not ready or prepared to attempt to cope with upcoming negative events," and that it is a distinction between future and present dangers which divides anxiety and fear. Another description of anxiety is agony, dread, terror, or even apprehension. In positive psychology , anxiety is described as the mental state that results from a difficult challenge for which the subject has insufficient coping skills. Fear and anxiety can be differentiated into four domains: (1) duration of emotional experience, (2) temporal focus, (3) specificity of
3384-910: Is often called interracial or intergroup anxiety. As is the case with the more generalized forms of social anxiety , intergroup anxiety has behavioral, cognitive, and affective effects. For instance, increases in schematic processing and simplified information processing can occur when anxiety is high. Indeed, such is consistent with related work on attentional bias in implicit memory . Additionally recent research has found that implicit racial evaluations (i.e. automatic prejudiced attitudes) can be amplified during intergroup interaction. Negative experiences have been illustrated in producing not only negative expectations, but also avoidant, or antagonistic, behavior such as hostility. Furthermore, when compared to anxiety levels and cognitive effort (e.g., impression management and self-presentation) in intragroup contexts, levels and depletion of resources may be exacerbated in
3478-414: Is partly due to genetic and environmental influences shared between these traits and anxiety. It is common for those with obsessive–compulsive disorder to experience anxiety. Anxiety is also commonly found in those who experience panic disorders , phobic anxiety disorders , severe stress , dissociative disorders , somatoform disorders , and some neurotic disorders . Anxiety has also been linked to
3572-701: Is positive and performance improves proportionally to the level of anxiety. This theory is not well accepted. The Inverted U theory is based on the idea that performance peaks at a moderate stress level. It is called Inverted U theory because the graph that plots performance against anxiety looks like an inverted "U". Reversal theory suggests that performance increases in relation to the individual's interpretation of their arousal levels. If they believed their physical arousal level would help them, their performance would increase, if they didn't, their performance would decrease. For example: Athletes were shown to worry more when focusing on results and perfection rather than
3666-471: Is reported by the Cleveland Clinic that panic disorder affects 2 to 3 percent of adult Americans and can begin around the time of the teenage and early adult years. Some symptoms include: difficulty breathing, chest pain, dizziness, trembling or shaking, feeling faint, nausea, fear that you are losing control or are about to die. Even though they have these symptoms during an attack, the main symptom
3760-608: Is the persistent fear of having future panic attacks. Anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by exaggerated feelings of anxiety and fear responses. Anxiety is a worry about future events and fear is a reaction to current events. These feelings may cause physical symptoms, such as a fast heart rate and shakiness. There are a number of anxiety disorders: including generalized anxiety disorder , specific phobia , social anxiety disorder , separation anxiety disorder , agoraphobia , panic disorder , and selective mutism . The disorder differs by what results in
3854-464: Is the true dream (al-ru’ya), then the false dream, which may come from the devil ( shaytan ), and finally, the meaningless everyday dream (hulm). This last dream could be brought forth by the dreamer's ego or base appetite based on what they experienced in the real world. The true dream is often indicated by Islam's hadith tradition. In one narration by Aisha , the wife of the Prophet, it is said that
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3948-460: Is typically with a type of cognitive behavioral therapy . Medications, such as antidepressants or beta blockers , may improve symptoms. A 2023 review found that regular physical activity is effective for reducing anxiety. About 12% of people are affected by an anxiety disorder in a given year and between 12% and 30% are affected at some point in their life. They occur about twice as often in women than they do in men, and generally begin before
4042-570: The Society for Neuroscience , "Because no adequate alternatives exist, much of this research must [sic] be done on animal subjects." However, since animal dreaming can be only inferred, not confirmed, animal studies yield no hard facts to illuminate the neurophysiology of dreams. Examining human subjects with brain lesions can provide clues, but the lesion method cannot discriminate between the effects of destruction and disconnection and cannot target specific neuronal groups in heterogeneous regions like
4136-470: The amygdala , which regulates emotions like anxiety and fear, stimulating the HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system , and hippocampus , which is implicated in emotional memory along with the amygdala, is thought to underlie anxiety. People who have anxiety tend to show high activity in response to emotional stimuli in the amygdala. Some writers believe that excessive anxiety can lead to an overpotentiation of
4230-819: The battle of the Milvian Bridge if he adopted the Chi-Rho as his battle standard ." In Buddhism, ideas about dreams are similar to the classical and folk traditions in South Asia. The same dream is sometimes experienced by multiple people, as in the case of the Buddha-to-be , before he is leaving his home . It is described in the Mahāvastu that several of the Buddha's relatives had premonitory dreams preceding this. Some dreams are also seen to transcend time:
4324-399: The limbic system (which includes the amygdala and nucleus accumbens), giving increased future anxiety, but this does not appear to have been proven. Research upon adolescents who as infants had been highly apprehensive, vigilant, and fearful finds that their nucleus accumbens is more sensitive than that in other people when deciding to make an action that determined whether they received
4418-561: The psychological trauma of birth was the pre-eminent human symbol of existential anxiety and encompasses the creative person's simultaneous fear of – and desire for – separation, individuation, and differentiation. The theologian Paul Tillich characterized existential anxiety as "the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing" and he listed three categories for the nonbeing and resulting anxiety: ontic (fate and death), moral ( guilt and condemnation), and spiritual (emptiness and meaninglessness ). According to Tillich,
4512-661: The Buddha-to-be has certain dreams that are the same as those of previous Buddhas , the Lalitavistara states. In Buddhist literature, dreams often function as a "signpost" motif to mark certain stages in the life of the main character. Buddhist views about dreams are expressed in the Pāli Commentaries and the Milinda Pañhā . In Chinese history, people wrote of two vital aspects of the soul of which one
4606-673: The Hall study favorably. In the Hall study, the most common emotion experienced in dreams was anxiety . Other emotions included abandonment , anger , fear , joy , and happiness . Negative emotions were much more common than positive ones. The Hall data analysis showed that sexual dreams occur no more than 10% of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid-teens. Another study showed that 8% of both men's and women's dreams have sexual content. In some cases, sexual dreams may result in orgasms or nocturnal emissions . These are colloquially known as "wet dreams". The visual nature of dreams
4700-748: The Looking-Glass . Unlike many dream worlds, Carroll's logic is like that of actual dreams, with transitions and flexible causality. Other fictional dream worlds include the Dreamlands of H. P. Lovecraft 's Dream Cycle and The Neverending Story ' s world of Fantastica, which includes places like the Desert of Lost Dreams, the Sea of Possibilities and the Swamps of Sadness. Dreamworlds, shared hallucinations and other alternate realities feature in
4794-505: The Prophet's dreams would come true like the ocean's waves. Just as in its predecessors, the Quran also recounts the story of Joseph and his unique ability to interpret dreams. In both Christianity and Islam dreams feature in conversion stories. According to ancient authors, Constantine the Great started his conversion to Christianity because he had a dream which prophesied that he would win
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#17327758927774888-488: The Solms 2000 paper that certified the separability of REM sleep and dream phenomena, many studies purporting to uncover the function of dreams have in fact been studying not dreams but measurable REM sleep. Theories of dream function since the identification of REM sleep include: Hobson's and McCarley's 1977 activation-synthesis hypothesis , which proposed "a functional role for dreaming sleep in promoting some aspect of
4982-635: The United States, invasive brain procedures with a human subject are allowed only when these are deemed necessary in surgical treatment to address medical needs of the same human subject. Non-invasive measures of brain activity like electroencephalogram (EEG) voltage averaging or cerebral blood flow cannot identify small but influential neuronal populations. Also, fMRI signals are too slow to explain how brains compute in real time. Scientists researching some brain functions can work around current restrictions by examining animal subjects. As stated by
5076-504: The abdominal region, nausea, and problems in concentration. Anxiety is closely related to fear , which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat ( fight-or-flight response ); anxiety involves the expectation of a future threat including dread. People facing anxiety may withdraw from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past. The emotion of anxiety can persist beyond the developmentally appropriate time-periods in response to specific events, and thus turning into one of
5170-402: The age of 25. The most common anxiety disorders are specific phobias, which affect nearly 12% of people, and social anxiety disorder, which affects 10% of people at some point in their life. They affect those between the ages of 15 and 35 the most and become less common after the age of 55. Rates appear to be higher in the United States and Europe. Anxiety can be either a short-term "state" or
5264-473: The beginnings of the classical era . In visitation dreams reported in ancient writings, dreamers were largely passive in their dreams, and visual content served primarily to frame authoritative auditory messaging. Gudea , the king of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash (reigned c. 2144–2124 BCE), rebuilt the temple of Ningirsu as the result of a dream in which he was told to do so. After antiquity,
5358-597: The beliefs of the Hebrews and thought that dreams were of a supernatural character because the Old Testament includes frequent stories of dreams with divine inspiration. The most famous of these dream stories was Jacob's dream of a ladder that stretches from Earth to Heaven . Many Christians preach that God can speak to people through their dreams. The famous glossary, the Somniale Danielis , written in
5452-433: The best way to receive divine revelation, and thus they would induce (or "incubate") dreams. They went to sanctuaries and slept on special "dream beds" in hope of receiving advice, comfort, or healing from the gods. From a Darwinian perspective dreams would have to fulfill some kind of biological requirement, provide some benefit for natural selection to take place, or at least have no negative impact on fitness. Robert (1886),
5546-402: The body or mind. The human dream experience and what to make of it has undergone sizable shifts over the course of history. Long ago, according to writings from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt , dreams dictated post-dream behaviors to an extent that was sharply reduced in later millennia. These ancient writings about dreams highlight visitation dreams, where a dream figure, usually a deity or
5640-446: The brain involves significant neural activity downstream from eye intake, and it is theorized that "the visual imagery of dreams is produced by activation during sleep of the same structures that generate complex visual imagery in waking perception." Dreams present a running narrative rather than exclusively visual imagery. Following their work with split-brain subjects, Gazzaniga and LeDoux postulated, without attempting to specify
5734-467: The brain stem. Denied precision tools and obliged to depend on imaging, much dream research has succumbed to the law of the instrument . Studies detect an increase of blood flow in a specific brain region and then credit that region with a role in generating dreams. But pooling study results has led to the newer conclusion that dreaming involves large numbers of regions and pathways, which likely are different for different dream events. Image creation in
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#17327758927775828-647: The brain's effort to make sense of sparse and distorted information.... The cortex combines this haphazard input with whatever other activity was already occurring and does its best to synthesize a story that makes sense of the information." Neuroscientist Indre Viskontas is even more blunt, calling often bizarre dream content "just the result of your interpreter trying to create a story out of random neural signaling." For many humans across multiple eras and cultures, dreams are believed to have functioned as revealers of truths sourced during sleep from gods or other external entities. Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were
5922-508: The dream. People who are blind from birth do not have visual dreams. Their dream contents are related to other senses, such as hearing , touch , smell , and taste , whichever are present since birth. Dream study is popular with scientists exploring the mind–brain problem . Some "propose to reduce aspects of dream phenomenology to neurobiology." But current science cannot specify dream physiology in detail. Protocols in most nations restrict human brain research to non-invasive procedures. In
6016-471: The dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this. The content and function of dreams have been topics of scientific, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history . Dream interpretation , practiced by the Babylonians in the third millennium BCE and even earlier by the ancient Sumerians , figures prominently in religious texts in several traditions, and has played
6110-402: The dreamer to learn from novel situations. Dreams figure prominently in major world religions. The dream experience for early humans, according to one interpretation, gave rise to the notion of a human " soul ," a central element in much religious thought. J. W. Dunne wrote: But there can be no reasonable doubt that the idea of a soul must have first arisen in the mind of primitive man as
6204-501: The dreamer's unconscious desires. Dream interpretation can be a result of subjective ideas and experiences. One study found that most people believe that "their dreams reveal meaningful hidden truths". The researchers surveyed students in the United States, South Korea, and India, and found that 74% of Indians, 65% of South Koreans and 56% of Americans believed their dream content provided them with meaningful insight into their unconscious beliefs and desires. This Freudian view of dreaming
6298-530: The dreamer. Freud wrote that dreams "serve the purpose of prolonging sleep instead of waking up. Dreams are the GUARDIANS of sleep and not its disturbers. " A turning point in theorizing about dream function came in 1953, when Science published the Aserinsky and Kleitman paper establishing REM sleep as a distinct phase of sleep and linking dreams to REM sleep. Until and even after publication of
6392-436: The dreamers, where they entered through a keyhole, exiting the same way after the divine message was given. Antiphon wrote the first known Greek book on dreams in the 5th century BCE. In that century, other cultures influenced Greeks to develop the belief that souls left the sleeping body. The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates (460–375 BCE ), thought dreams could analyze illness and predict diseases. For instance,
6486-525: The effort and growth involved. The Zone of Optimal Functioning theory proposes that there is a zone where positive and negative emotions are in a balance which lead to feelings of dissociation and intense concentration, optimizing the individual's performance levels. Humans generally require social acceptance and thus sometimes dread the disapproval of others. Apprehension of being judged by others may cause anxiety in social environments. Anxiety during social interactions, particularly between strangers,
6580-529: The experience of intrusive thoughts . Studies have revealed that individuals who experience high levels of anxiety (also known as clinical anxiety) are highly vulnerable to the experience of intense intrusive thoughts or psychological disorders that are characterised by intrusive thoughts. Anxiety disorders are partly genetic, with twin studies suggesting 30-40% genetic influence on individual differences in anxiety. Environmental factors are also important. Twin studies show that individual-specific environments have
6674-552: The experience of the world that can be interpreted and from which lessons can be garnered. It is discussed in the Talmud, Tractate Berachot 55–60. The ancient Hebrews connected their dreams heavily with their religion, though the Hebrews were monotheistic and believed that dreams were the voice of one God alone. Hebrews also differentiated between good dreams (from God) and bad dreams (from evil spirits). The Hebrews, like many other ancient cultures, incubated dreams in order to receive
6768-486: The extent that a person is fearful of social encounters with unfamiliar others, some people may experience anxiety particularly during interactions with outgroup members, or people who share different group memberships (i.e., by race, ethnicity, class, gender, etc.). Depending on the nature of the antecedent relations, cognitions, and situational factors, intergroup contact may be stressful and lead to feelings of anxiety. This apprehension or fear of contact with outgroup members
6862-424: The gut can connect with the brain to affect anxiety. There are various pathways along which this communication can take place. One is through the major neurotransmitters . The gut microbes such as Bifidobacterium and Bacillus produce the neurotransmitters GABA and dopamine , respectively. The neurotransmitters signal to the nervous system of the gastrointestinal tract, and those signals will be carried to
6956-511: The intergroup situation. Anxiety can be either a short-term "state" or a long-term " personality trait". Trait anxiety reflects a stable tendency across the lifespan of responding with acute, state anxiety in the anticipation of threatening situations (whether they are actually deemed threatening or not). A meta-analysis showed that a high level of neuroticism is a risk factor for development of anxiety symptoms and disorders. Such anxiety may be conscious or unconscious. Personality can also be
7050-519: The last of these three types of existential anxiety, i.e. spiritual anxiety, is predominant in modern times while the others were predominant in earlier periods. Tillich argues that this anxiety can be accepted as part of the human condition or it can be resisted but with negative consequences. In its pathological form, spiritual anxiety may tend to "drive the person toward the creation of certitude in systems of meaning which are supported by tradition and authority " even though such "undoubted certitude
7144-439: The learning process...." In 2010 a Harvard study was published showing experimental evidence that dreams were correlated with improved learning. Crick's and Mitchison's 1983 " reverse learning " theory, which states that dreams are like the cleaning-up operations of computers when they are offline, removing (suppressing) parasitic nodes and other "junk" from the mind during sleep. Hartmann's 1995 proposal that dreams serve
7238-598: The multiple anxiety disorders (e.g. generalized anxiety disorder , panic disorder ). The difference between anxiety disorder (as mental disorder ) and anxiety (as normal emotion), is that people with an anxiety disorder experience anxiety excessively or persistently during approximately 6 months, or even during shorter time-periods in children. Anxiety disorders are among the most persistent mental problems and often last decades. Anxiety can also be experienced within other mental disorders , e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder , post-traumatic stress disorder . Anxiety
7332-518: The name of Daniel , attempted to teach Christian populations to interpret their dreams. Iain R. Edgar has researched the role of dreams in Islam . He has argued that dreams play an important role in the history of Islam and the lives of Muslims, since dream interpretation is the only way that Muslims can receive revelations from God since the death of the last prophet, Muhammad . According to Edgar, Islam classifies three types of dreams. Firstly, there
7426-594: The narrative; The Book of the Duchess and The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman are two such dream visions . Even before them, in antiquity, the same device had been used by Cicero and Lucian of Samosata . Dreams have also featured in fantasy and speculative fiction since the 19th century. One of the best-known dream worlds is Wonderland from Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , as well as Looking-Glass Land from its sequel, Through
7520-411: The neural mechanisms, a " left-brain interpreter " that seeks to create a plausible narrative from whatever electro-chemical signals reach the brain's left hemisphere. Sleep research has determined that some brain regions fully active during waking are, during REM sleep, activated only in a partial or fragmentary way. Drawing on this knowledge, textbook author James W. Kalat explains, "[A] dream represents
7614-433: The night before flying (while awake), and that they would be as likely to miss their flight if they dreamt of their plane crashing the night before their flight as if there was an actual plane crash on the route they intended to take. Participants in the study were more likely to perceive dreams to be meaningful when the content of dreams was in accordance with their beliefs and desires while awake. They were more likely to view
7708-500: The passive hearing of visitation dreams largely gave way to visualized narratives in which the dreamer becomes a character who actively participates. From the 1940s to 1985, Calvin S. Hall collected more than 50,000 dream reports at Western Reserve University . In 1966, Hall and Robert Van de Castle published The Content Analysis of Dreams , in which they outlined a coding system to study 1,000 dream reports from college students. Results indicated that participants from varying parts of
7802-632: The person who experiences each dream, apparently based on previous cases. Some list different possible outcomes, based on occasions in which people experienced similar dreams with different results. The Greeks shared their beliefs with the Egyptians on how to interpret good and bad dreams, and the idea of incubating dreams. Morpheus , the Greek god of dreams, also sent warnings and prophecies to those who slept at shrines and temples. The earliest Greek beliefs about dreams were that their gods physically visited
7896-650: The person. However, most people do not suffer from chronic anxiety. Anxiety can induce several psychological pains (e.g. depression ) or mental disorders , and may lead to self-harm or suicide . The behavioral effects of anxiety may include withdrawal from situations which have provoked anxiety or negative feelings in the past. Other effects may include changes in sleeping patterns, changes in habits, increase or decrease in food intake, and increased motor tension (such as foot tapping). The emotional effects of anxiety may include feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling tense or jumpy, anticipating
7990-428: The right advice." Overthinking a choice is called analysis paralysis . In a decision context, unpredictability or uncertainty may trigger emotional responses in anxious individuals that systematically alter decision-making. There are primarily two forms of this anxiety type. The first form refers to a choice in which there are multiple potential outcomes with known or calculable probabilities. The second form refers to
8084-519: The sleeper's eyelids were closed. Marcus Tullius Cicero , for his part, believed that all dreams are produced by thoughts and conversations a dreamer had during the preceding days. Cicero's Somnium Scipionis described a lengthy dream vision, which in turn was commented on by Macrobius in his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis . Herodotus in his The Histories , writes "The visions that occur to us in dreams are, more often than not,
8178-987: The successful predictions than unsuccessful ones. Graphic artists, writers and filmmakers all have found dreams to offer a rich vein for creative expression. In the West, artists' depictions of dreams in Renaissance and Baroque art often were related to Biblical narrative. Especially preferred by visual artists were the Jacob's Ladder dream in Genesis and St. Joseph's dreams in the Gospel according to Matthew . Many later graphic artists have depicted dreams, including Japanese woodblock artist Hokusai (1760–1849) and Western European painters Rousseau (1844–1910), Picasso (1881–1973), and Dalí (1904–1989). In literature, dream frames were frequently used in medieval allegory to justify
8272-689: The symptoms. People often have more than one anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders are caused by a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors. To be diagnosed, symptoms typically need to be present for at least six months, be more than would be expected for the situation, and decrease a person's ability to function in their daily lives. Other problems that may result in similar symptoms include hyperthyroidism , heart disease , caffeine , alcohol , or cannabis use, and withdrawal from certain drugs, among others. Without treatment, anxiety disorders tend to remain. Treatment may include lifestyle changes, counselling , and medications. Counselling
8366-504: The things we have been concerned about during the day." The Dreaming is a common term within the animist creation narrative of indigenous Australians for a personal, or group, creation and for what may be understood as the "timeless time" of formative creation and perpetual creating. Some Indigenous American tribes and Mexican populations believe that dreams are a way of visiting and having contact with their ancestors . Some Native American tribes have used vision quests as
8460-854: The threat, and (4) motivated direction. Fear is short-lived, present-focused, geared towards a specific threat, and facilitating escape from threat. On the other hand, anxiety is long-acting, future-focused, broadly focused towards a diffuse threat, and promoting excessive caution while approaching a potential threat and interferes with constructive coping. Joseph E. LeDoux and Lisa Feldman Barrett have both sought to separate automatic threat responses from additional associated cognitive activity within anxiety. Anxiety can be experienced with long, drawn-out daily symptoms that reduce quality of life, known as chronic (or generalized) anxiety, or it can be experienced in short spurts with sporadic, stressful panic attacks , known as acute anxiety. Symptoms of anxiety can range in number, intensity, and frequency, depending on
8554-649: The uncertainty and ambiguity related to a decision context in which there are multiple possible outcomes with unknown probabilities. Panic disorder may share symptoms of stress and anxiety, but it is actually very different. Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder that occurs without any triggers. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this disorder can be distinguished by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear. Someone with panic disorder will eventually develop constant fear of another attack and as this progresses it will begin to affect daily functioning and an individual's general quality of life. It
8648-431: The world demonstrated similarity in their dream content. The only residue of antiquity's authoritative dream figure in the Hall and Van de Castle listing of dream characters is the inclusion of God in the category of prominent persons. Hall's complete dream reports were made publicly available in the mid-1990s by his protégé William Domhoff . More recent studies of dream reports, while providing more detail, continue to cite
8742-442: The worst, irritability, restlessness, watching for signs of danger, and a feeling of empty mindedness. as well as "nightmares/bad dreams, obsessions about sensations, déjà vu , a trapped-in-your-mind feeling, and feeling like everything is scary." It may include a vague experience and feeling of helplessness. The cognitive effects of anxiety may include thoughts about suspected dangers, such as an irrational fear of dying or having
8836-486: Was believed significantly more than theories of dreaming that attribute dream content to memory consolidation, problem-solving, or as a byproduct of unrelated brain activity. The same study found that people attribute more importance to dream content than to similar thought content that occurs while they are awake. Americans were more likely to report that they would intentionally miss their flight if they dreamt of their plane crashing than if they thought of their plane crashing
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