HTML Assignment 5

Dreams are pretty weird. After colored TV was made, people began to dream in color rather than black and white. They are usually relevant to whatever is going on in your life at the moment and some people analyze them and take meaning from them. Some think that is why we dream and others think that it is a psychological reasons; to recap on the day's events, let out stress, and provide an outlet for pent up emotions.

Reasons Why We Dream

• Compensation People generally have dreams of flying or getting lost in a strange place but they are not as fantastical as one might think. Scientists believe that these dreams are used for compensation for what we deal with in our lives every day. For example, a person who experiences unhappiness in their waking hours may have pleasant dreams of flying or feeling invincible.
• Coping Mechanism When dealing with stress, your dreams drastically change and sometimes reflect inner feelings. By portraying symbolic things in the dream, your brain tries to establish relevance as an effort to cope with the turmoil. Varying emotions cause material to be 'weaved' into the memory of the dreamer in ways to help them cope with stress.
• Information Processing and Memory Research already supports the claim that sleep is fundamental to a well functioning mind and memory. Some suggest that the key to memory is not within the hours of sleep we get, but rather the dreams we have. Most dreams incorporate events and occurrences we have experienced. After your daily memories have been consolidated by your dreams, your brain gets the chance to refresh itself, in a sense. Dreams are a way of rebooting the system.
• Resolution If you're dealing with a particularly difficult problem in life, the last thing you want to do is lose sleep over it. In fact, you might want to sleep more. Your brain uses dreams to problem solve while you're resting and rebooting. When trying to resolve a problem, we typically pull from information we already know. Dreams are helpful because they organize and filter your thoughts, therefore helping you solve your problem.
• Wish Fulfillment Dreams always involve you. They are naturally egocentric because they usually reflect your desires and concerns. You subconsciously can uncover wishes that your conscious mind has learned to repress.

Different Stages of Sleep

There are 4 different stages of sleep the body goes through if you get the ~7-8 hours of sleep.

Stage 1:

Stage 1 is between being awake and falling asleep.

Stage 2:

Stage 2 is the onset of sleep. This is being disengaged from your surroundings. Your heart beat and breathing with regulate and your body temperature will drop.

Stage 3+4:

This is the deepest, most restoring part of sleeping. The blood pressure drops, breathing gets slower, muscles relax, blood supply to muscles increase, tissue regrowth occurs, and energy is restored.

REM:

REM stand for Rapid Eye Movement. This is when you are most likely to dream. For 25% of the night, about 90 minutes into sleep, you go into REM. This stage of sleep provides energy to the brain and body, supports daytime performance, dreams occur, and eyes rapidly move.