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How many people really do dream? Everyone dreams, whether the dream is remembered or not. Throughout the night, there are many stages of sleep that everyone goes through. These stages include light sleep, deep sleep, and dream sleep. Nightmares are also considered dreams, just caused by different emotions. Scientists also have many electrical appliances and have done many tests to study dreams.

Dreams are very complex things. Scientists have a hard time trying to understand why people dream. Although recently, neurosurgery’s precise methods of research and invention of sophisticated electrical appliances, have enabled the scientists to increase their knowledge of the human brain, nervous systems, and the body’s biochemistry (Strachey 20). The invention of the electroencephalograph, otherwise known as an EEG, has made it possible for a trained operator to read the brain’s reactions during wakefulness, rest, and sleep (Schneider). The machine detects and enormously amplifies the very faint electrical impulses produced by the brain; placing electrodes against subjects scalp (Freud). “Professor Nathanial Kleitman of Chicago university, discovered that babies have a sleep rhythm of fifty to sixty minutes after which they are inclined to wake up, although obviously they can’t always”(Freud). As children grow, the body begins to develop the ninety-minute cycle associated with adult sleepers. The pattern of sleep is acquired and controlled by environmental and social conditioning. However, as people grow older the body tends to revert to the naptime habits of babyhood (Freud). Yet, though people more or less choose when to sleep, the basic ninety-minute rhythm remains. It is biological and not controlled by consciousness, rather as a healthy person’s metabolism functions autonomously (Parker 93). “Eugene Aserinsky noticed that after an infant fell asleep it’s eyes moved beneath the closed lids. Also, at intervals during sleep and was the first movement when the baby began to wake”(Freud). Kleitman and Aserinsky decided to investigate whether such a pattern could be found in adult sleepers as well (Freud). By attaching extra electrodes from the EEG machine to areas around volunteer sleeper’s eyes, the two scientists were able to monitor brain impulses and movements, while measuring respiration and body movements (Freud). The scientists concluded that there were two types of eye movement. Slow as found in babies and very fast movements, this could last from a few minutes to over a half an hour (Freud). These rapid eye movements, which are commonly known as REMs appeared to occur at intervals throughout the night (Beare). The EEG tracings showed a definite alteration in brain impulses just before a sleeper began producing their REMs and at the same time there was an increase in impulse and respiration rates (Strachey 24). By waking the sleepers in an REM phase, Kleitman and Aserinsky discovered that Rams were associated with dreaming (Freud). This inference was supported by the fact that people woken during a period without REMs had no dreams to report (Fenwick 34). “Eyes apparently move behind a dreamer’s eyes because of what him or her could “see” in a dream”(Shulman 73). Tests carried out on people who claimed never to dream showed that REMs were still produced which proved, as always, that everyone dreams-although the dreams may not all possess good memories (Fenwick 31). From then on investigators had no need to rely on a subject’s recollection of whether or not dreams occurred (Parker 94). The EEG tracings and REMs were a more reliable guide, Parker also stated (Parker 94).

An associate of Professor Kleitman’s, Dr. Dement, found that the EEG showed four types of sleep ranging from light to deep (Freud). At the beginning of rest people sink into the deepest, sleep. After eighty to ninety minutes, the dreamer will rise to the lightest kind and at the same time, the REMs will begin (Fenwick 33). Then the process is repeated until the sleeper wakes up. During the REMs and light sleep phase, breathing is much more rapid, but with the heavy sleep and no REMs, respiration becomes slower (Beare). “External stimuli and the need to pass water etc., do not infact evoke special dreams”(Shulman 74). Oddly enough, waking someone up during the so-called light sleep, when the REMs are taking place, can be more difficult than waking someone from a “deep” sleep, without REMs (Schneider). Waking someone from a deep sleep does not create more dreams, when a dreamer awakes promptly after an REM period, the dream-if remembered, seems to have happened just before awakening (Parker 99). There are approximately three REM periods per night, and the intervals dividing them are more or less constant. The later the REMs commence the longer they will last (Fenwick 36). During those REMs the EEG shows that the brain wave patterns are very