Sleep and dreams
Sleep is a period of rest and recovery for the body. Human beings and many animals need periods of sleep or they will die.
When a person sleeps, his eyes close
and his muscles relax.He loses
conscious-ness of time and of most
events around him. But he is not
completely cut off from the world.
A loud sound, such as the ring-ing
of an alarm clock, will usually wake
him. And even a slight sound can
alert him in certain circumstances.
A mother, for example, often wakes
at the first sign of her baby stirring.
People's sleep habits vary greatly. Most
people sleep at night, when it is dark.
But night workers have to sleep during
the day. Seven or eight hours of sleep
a night is normal for many adults. Some
adults require much less and others re-
quire more. Infants and young children
spend a much greater part of their lives
asleep than adults do.
People also vary in how much they move
in their sleep. Some toss and turn. Others
move only a few times in the night. Some
people walk in their sleep. A sleep-walker's
mind is completely asleep,and in the morning
he may have no recollection of his nocturnal
wanderings Sleep is not an even process.
During night depth of sleep varies in fairly
regular cycles. Deep sleep alternates with
lighter sleep.
Dreaming is a period of mental activity during
sleep. During a dream, a person's mind creates
pictorial images. Usually, these images make up
a story of some kind. Some people dream in
colour, others only in black-and-white. Dreams
differ from ordinary waking thoughts. They are
generally less connected and coherent and a
much more fanciful.
In dreams, people allow themselves to have
thoughts they would not normally think.
For this reason psychologists believe dreams
indi-cate our deepest and most secret wishes
and fears. The psychologist Sigmund Freud
believed that dreams have a meaning which
is expressed in symbolic language.
In the past, many people thought that
dreams could foretell the future. In the
Bible, for example, the Pharaoh tells
Joseph a disturbing dream in which he
saw seven lean cows eating seven fat ones.
Joseph explained that the dream meant
Seven years of good harvests would be
followed by seven years of famine.
Researchers have discovered many in-
For teresting facts about dreaming.
example, they have shown that every-one
dreams every night- usually three or four
times. A typical dream lasts 15 to 20 minutes.
The dreamer may or may not remember
having dreamt. But any- body looking at him
can tell when he is dreaming by observing his
eyes. During dreaming a person s eyes make
many Small, quick movements,
called REMs (rapid-eye-movements).
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