Consciousness and Dreaming

Have you ever not gotten enough sleep, or cut your sleep short for a class? Show of hands? Alright, well today I will be speaking with you about a subject that is near and dear to all of our hearts. Today I will be talking about sleep, specifically about REM sleep. First off does anyone know what the initials REM even stand for? REM stands for rapid eye movement, and it is the stage of sleep in which most dreams occur. It gets its name from the way your eyes move back and forth in this stage. Though those movements are slower than how your eye would move when you are awake. During a typical night, you cycle between REM and non-REM sleep, but spend the majority of your time asleep in non-REM.

Circadian rhythms disorders is simply a disruption in one’s circadian rhythms which is a name given for one’s internal body clock that regulates ones 24 hour cycle of biological processes. There are patterns of brain wave activity, hormone production, cell regeneration and other biological things that go along with ones 24 hour cycle.()

Circadian rhythm refers to the twenty-four-hour cycle that results in physical, mental and behavioral changes in living things. Animals and plants respond differently to the lightness and darkness depending on the circadian rhythm or the internal biological clock. The body clock works responsibly in making sure that the pattern of mental alertness of a person is enhanced. A DNA molecule is transmitted to pass the message for opening up of the RNA, and the mRNA is transformed into a protein which takes some time for the DNA to be turned into a molecule. The time of conversion is determined and kept by the body’s biological clock (Alice, 2012). If the clock fails to work the level of alertness can be affected, and this can make a person to cause traffic accidents or even cause injuries at the place of work. Also, some people can suffer from chronic diseases if the biological clock is altered with.

This simply means that the body has a natural clock that runs it. The circadian timing system is no longer a twenty-four hour cycle, but it is just more of an individual timing system (Williams 111). As people have developed and changed, the system is no longer twenty-four hours, but it has become more personalized according to the individual. Circadian rhythms have a large impact on our sleeping patterns and if the system is changed, it can be the beginning cause of sleep deprivation.

This stage is believed to help people enter deeper stages of sleep (4). Stage 3 sleep consists of 20-50 percent delta activity and stage 4 sleep of more than 50 percents delta activity (4). Stages 3 and 4 are characterized as being slow wave sleep in addition to being the deepest levels of sleep. Approximately 90 minutes after being asleep, people enter rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep (4). REM sleep consists of rapid eye movements, a desynchronized EEG, sensitivity to external stimulation, muscle paralysis and dreaming (4).

The different stages are 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. The cycle goes in order during the night, from 1 to REM. After the cycle is done with the REM stage, it repeats and starts over at stage 1. Half of our time sleeping is spent in stage 2, one-fifth is spent in REM sleep, and the rest of the time is allocated to the other stages. However, for babies, half of the time is spent in REM sleep. This changes as as we age.

Each stage plays a different part in preparing you for the next day. There are two main types of sleep, Non-REM sleep and REM sleep. Non-REM sleep consists of three stages, each deeper than the last. These stages include transition to sleep being the first one, light sleep, and deep sleep being the last. REM sleep stands for rapid eye movement, in this sleep you do most active dreaming. The reason why it's called REM is because your eyes actually move back and forth during this

 REM Sleep (Rapid Eye-Movement Sleep): a stage of sleep associated with dreaming, and characterized by frequent eye movements, suppression of the muscles.

There are five stages of sleep: 1) light sleep, drowsy sleep, myoclonic jerks or sudden movements of muscle. 2) decreased muscle activity, no awareness of environment. 3 & 4) delta waves are the slowest with the highest amplitude. 5) REM sleep, rapid eye movements, dreaming occurs, fast wave activity. Stages one through four are non-REM and stage five is REM.

The Robert Berezin M.D. author of the article “Reflections On Dreaming and Consciousness” discusses what we are dreaming when we are sleeping and how they operate when we are sleeping. In the article, he claims that during sleep our muscle goes to rest and all the waste products of muscle activity eliminated. The author supports most dreams are emotional conflicts and in my dreams are emotional conflicts, when I dream about the pain, the dreams help me to settle down my emotion because I took an action against pain in my dream. The author describes that people address conflict through the dreams such as pain, hopes, sexual interest. I strongly agree with him because whenever I face conflicts, the dreams help me to settle down my emotion because I took an action against conflicts in my dream and this make me feel better. The authors mention that we do not fully remember our dreams. I think the reasons people do not remember their dreams because I believe a dream is a fantasy world, dreams are not turning out as an actual real-life event. Whatever we do throughout the day and whatever consequences we face throughout the day converted into a story and we saw that image in our dreams, in fact, the dreams do not solve problems in our life, when we dream about addressing the problem we wish we could solve the problem this way. So, the dreams are kind of useless in our life, therefore, most people forget about their dreams and they only remember tiny portions.

Consciousness is the most fundamental facts of existence, it is what is most intimate to us yet at the same time the most mysterious. Consciousness is what makes life worth living if we were not conscious nothing in our life would have meaning or value.

Non-REM sleep is a much deeper, more restful kind of sleep. In non-REM sleep, the person’s body is free to move around. Non-REM dreams are more likely to consist of brief, fragmentary impressions that are less emotional and less likely to involve visual images than REM sleep dreams and are more frequently forgotten. The period of Non-REM sleep is made up of four stages. Each stage can last from 5 to 15 minutes. A completed cycle of sleep consists of a progression from stages 1-4 before REM sleep is attained, then the cycle starts over again. People begin the sleep cycle with a period of non-REM sleep followed by a very short period of REM sleep (Chang, 2010).

The biological clock is also known as the circadian rhythm: circa means “around,” and dies means “day” in Latin. It’s defined as a “24-hour cycle and is usually understood as a sleep-wake cycle, which makes us feel sleepy when the sun sets and wakeful when the sun rises”. According to Ph.D. Jim Waterhouse at Liverpool John Moores University, “The body clock so precisely controls our body, disrupting which can have profound implications.” Furthermore, researchers substantiate that it’s also in charge of one’s sleep, hunger, thirst, mental alertness, mood swing, immunity, etc. The biological clock is just a dissimilar facet of time. While physical clocks literally depict the abstract ticking time, body clocks open to a distinct perception of inner-body time, which do not rely on Earth’s rotation but on the reactions among neurons

Consciousness is a complex theory of thought and/or state. Throughout the semester I altered my consciousness, or awareness of consciousness, by paying attention and changing certain “default” consciousness aspects. The semester projects and recordings allowed me to focus on different facets of my own consciousness day-to-day and throughout each day. By having different projects through the semester, I was able to restart my awareness of my “normal” consciousness and bring it to the forefront of my mind. I realized multiple things through this exercise, consciousness is largely based on perspective, consciousness is constantly flowing and moving, and consciousness is.… I will be discussing three key insights defining consciousness: as a state(s), phenomenon, and developmental processes.

The seminar that I attended was hosted by the biology department, with was Jennifer Hurley presenting from the Renesslaer Polytechnic Institute. The topic of the seminar was Circadian Biology: The complexities of keeping time. In this seminar, she went into depth about circadian rhythms and why they are important. Jennifer has done many experiments in regards circadian rhythms to learn more about them. One experiment she conducted consisted of the plant Daphnia. Jennifer and her research team discovered that the Daphnia has a molecular circadian rhythm. This illustrated that humans are not the only one with a molecular clock, but humans have the most advanced circadian clock currently known. Circadian rhythms are only one biological rhythm that the body undergoes. Some examples consist of ultradian rhythms which take less than 24 hours to complete, infrardian rhythms that take more than 24 hours to complete and then there’s circadian rhythms which is done at an estimation of 24 hours. Circadian rhythms are our biological way of keeping track of time. It was defined in the presentation as a daily repeating process with a period of 24 hours. There are certain criteria that are needed to establish what a rhythm is. Rhythms persist in the absence of external cues. In essence, this means that because of these rhythms, people are able to anticipate certain events that can occur. Rhythms must be trainable and resettable by exposure to external stimuli which comprises of light,