Cognitive Psychology: Dreams

A few weeks ago I posted about the Jungian perspective of dreams. Today I will talk about the cognitive psychology of dreams and what happens while you are sleeping. We all know that we dream every night, no matter if you remember your dreams or not.

Here is the sleep cycle:

REM is Rapid Eye Movement and most of our vivid dreams happen during this stage of sleep.

In the image above, Stage 3 and 4 briefly mention delta waves. In these stages, your brain is getting rest, whereas in the alpha stages it's your body being rested.

Beta is when we're awake.



The three cognitive theories of why we dream:

1. Filtering
   This explains why other animals have a better memory compared to ours. Our brain trashes everything we don't need, which is why we can't remember what underwear we wore last Monday. Basically, it prunes the unessential.
2. Problem Solving
   Has anyone ever told you to just sleep on a problem? They were not too far off from the truth. While you are sleeping your brain is doing its job of problem solving. That explains the epiphanies in your morning shower. The unconscious mind picks up things beyond our perception, so while you are sleeping, it's putting things together. Instead of racking your brain on a problem, just think about it for a while before sleeping and then have a good night's rest.
3. Processing
   The third theory is that your brain is processing information from the day. It's organizing and filing all the information that was not filtered out.