Nightmares

Cause behind normal dreams vs nightmares

Your eyes open, heart racing, and goosebumps layer your arms. After just waking up from a nightmare, have you ever wondered why you experienced that scary dream instead of a ‘normal’ one? The causes of nightmares vs normal dreams vary.

Everyone dreams, yet not all people remember them. “An average person has over 1,460 dreams a year, which is about [four] dreams every night,” according to Winston Medical Center.

The same article mentions how “when we go to sleep and enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement), our bodies become completely paralyzed as areas of the brain that control movement are deactivated.”

The National Cancer Institute defines REM as “the phase of sleep in which most dreams occur. During rapid eye movement sleep, a person’s brain activity, breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure increase, and the eyes move rapidly while closed. The muscles in the arms and legs become temporarily unable to move. Rapid eye movement sleep is thought to play an important role in memory and learning. The muscles in the arms and legs become temporarily unable to move.

Source: hopknismeicine.org

Rapid eye movement sleep is thought to play an important role in memory and learning. During normal sleep, a person goes through four to five sleep cycles that last about 90 minutes each and include both rapid eye movement sleep and non-rapid eye movement sleep (light to deep sleep). Also called REM

During the sleeping period, “REM sleep is triggered by a specialized set of neurons that pump activity straight into the brain’s visual cortex, causing us to experience vision even though our eyes are closed. This activity in the visual cortex is presumably why dreams are pictorial and filmic,” describes an article on TIME.

Sophomore Lena Rockhill explains how she remembers her dreams, “most of the time.” Rockhill mentions what influences having a dream versus a nightmare. “[It] may be just what you’ve done throughout your day, or what you think about before bed.” “Not often” does Rockhill experience nightmares. She suggests that the reason why a person dreams may be because of “built up brain activity that has nowhere to go.” And that nightmares may happen due to “stressing about something or scared about something that’s going on in [someone’s] life, or just having a rough day.” After a nightmare, Rockhill explains that she’ll probably just go on [her] phone” to calm down.