Psychology 290 Signature Assignment
Why Do Infants Dream?
Dalton Muth
West Coast University
Abstract
Sleeping is a necessity for all humans and is especially essential during the time of infancy. These infants spend an average amount of eighteen hours a day sleeping in which half of these hours are spent in a specific sleep state known as REM, or rapid eye movement. We identify REM as the stage of sleep in older children and adults in which we begin to dream, however we usually sleep an average of eight hours a night in which 2 hours we spend in REM, that’s a major difference. There has been much speculation to why we dream in the first place, but infancy is a whole new set of curiosity, since it is still unknown for certain as to why they dream for so long or if they dream at all.
If you were to live up to seventy-five years of age and spent an average of 8 hours a night sleeping, how much time do you think that allots to? I’ll give you a guess, you could end up living a full century. You spend a total of 25 years in sleep hours alone, not including that you sleep more when you are an infant or stay up late and barely getting any rest, but one thing is still uncertain and that is why we dream. There have been many speculations about why infants dream because they spend half or more than half of their sleep in the dream state.
Dreaming is known as a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur during the stage of sleep known as REM or rapid eye movement. One thing all people have in common is that we all need sleep, it is a necessity. One particular and peculiar part of sleep has brought upon many questions that still to this day are being uncovered and baffling scientists as well as psychologists. One thing for certain is that we all have had dreams that are extremely vague or so clear it feels like real life; they can be happy or send such a fright that it can jolt you awake and cause you to think of why you had that dream because it was so confusing or understandable.
Since the beginning of psychology, many famous psychologists have been curious about dreams and why we perceive them and what purpose they serve. Still to this day, no one idea or conclusion has been verified and backed by evidence to support it above the others. There have been various ideas backed by many psychologists that each have a valid idea and conclusion that we can all agree to in part. These various ideas such as the psychoanalysis perspective, activation-synthesis model, and even the information-processing theory. The ideas portrayed either believe that they have an everlasting purpose on our cognitive, social, and psychoanalytical thinking and behavior or believe that there is no specific reason to why we dream. This translates to they believe dreaming has absolutely no purpose whereas others believe it is necessary to achieve homeostasis for the triangle of health including: mental, physical, and emotional health.
During the psychoanalytical reign with Sigmund Freud he believed that dreams were a representation of our wants and desires that usually people are able to control through their prefrontal cortex, however that is not the case when we sleep using mostly parts of the hippocampus. Within his book “The Interpretation of Dreams,” he describes two aspects of dreams that he called: manifest content and latent content. The manifest content was basically what you perceived during the dream, which was the actual dream made up of: images, thoughts, and the overall content; while the latent content basically was the hidden meaning that Freud believed to be our deepest thoughts that showed to be the deeper psychological meaning. (Cherry, 2017)
Within this reign, Freud working on his own analysis of his own personal slip-ups, dreams, and his everyday problems he was able to identify key ideas with how the mind works while dreaming. These ideas such as condensation, displacement, and consideration of representability. Condensation was first introduced into the deeper meaning that one idea could differentiate into several other ideas that can all come from a singular dream. Displacement was the idea that dreams could switch between the latent and manifest content having either an importance with little insignificant details. Lastly, the consideration of representability, where all the thoughts and meanings could be shown through these images. (Hoffman, 2017) Many other psychoanalytical works about dreams followed the basis of Freud, including Gestalt and Jungian analysis. Jungian believed that within our dreams there were symbols that represented hidden ideas, but unlike Freud he believed it was up to the dreamer to unlock these mysteries. He also believed that dreams were more of an effort to express and create rather than to repress and disguise ulterior motives. Gestalt used a form of therapy using the psychoanalytical theories in which he would have the dreamer write everything he experienced inside the dream and then had them act out their dreams with dialogue to see if they could find a deeper meaning within their dreams to uncover the mysteries. (“Dream Analysis”)
In 1977 years after the reign of Freud, the activation-synthesis model was created and idealized by J. Allan Hobson and Robert McClarley. They used more of science to understand dreams, in which they stated that because you are in REM sleep the hippocampus and amygdala become activated leading them to believe that emotions, sensations, and memories are activated as well. (Cherry, 2017) Although this theory is based upon the ideology that the brain is sending signals, Hobson believed that the dreams are still not meaningless.
Lastly, we have the information-processing theory in which dream specialists suggest only theoretical ideas of why we sleep, leading to dreaming. They believe that dreaming is just a product of the everyday life including problems, ideas, impressions, or even just to process what we have taken in. However, that brings the idea to why infants dream when they yet to understand complex ideas, problems, or even begin to process information. So, it has begged the question of why would infants have to spend so much time in REM.
In an article, by Natalie Wolchover, she cites a psychologist, David Foulkes who is one of the world’s leading experts on pediatric dreaming. In Foulkes article, “Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness” which was published at Harvard University Press in 2002, states that the main cause of so much REM sleep is due to the infants growing brain. He believes that infants are actually dreamless for the first few years of life due to the limit on the baby’s experiences and developing brain. Other psychologists along with Foulkes agree that they believe the unprecedented number of hours infants “dream” is so the infants brain can allow new neurological pathways to form while the brain grows helping to enable the infants to eventually be able to understand speech, body language, emotions and eventually be able to move. (Wolchover, 2012)
There is another theory however, written by Daniela Ginta and medically reviewed by Karen Richardson Gill, MD, FAAP. In this theory, Ginta explains that during the first two weeks of life is when infants spend half of their sleeping within the REM stage, but as they become older this stage starts to diminish. (Ginta, 2015) This leads to the theory that they are instead of dreaming, but learning. Using their experiences and weird, unnatural sounds “language”, and faces they begin to learn and are making connections as the brain grows causing pruning in certain areas, as other neural synapses begin to die out. However, they do believe that there is some sort of dream state in which they are in to make these connections and it isn’t just empty sleep.
It is believed that infants have to sleep so much due to their growing brains and much needed rest in a strange new world. Although, we have many hypotheses of why they dream, we can point at physiological nature to perhaps explain why they have REM or maybe what appears to be REM. Melatonin is a hormone used to help regulate circadian rhythms which tells us when it is time to wake up and sleep, but within the first 12 weeks of life there is no evidence of circadian rhythms explaining why babies are awake at all hours of the day and or night. In Ginta’s article, she states in her takeaway, “It’s true that you may not know what your little one is dreaming about as you hear
sighs and grunting or see their eyelids flutter, but now you know that their brain is anything but asleep. In fact, they are learning a lot, including the words that may later tell you all about those dreams you often wondered about.” (Ginta, 2015)
Overall, dreams are not just meaningless interpretations of the world around us, they have purpose whether it be to learn, entice, or even inspire. Dreams are what allow us to step into a realistic and imaginary world where we control what we do and what we want. The hypotheses given for infants are still to be proven one above the other. They do share the same common idea that infants are learning and becoming more adapted for their new environment. Whether it be them making new neurological pathways while “dreaming” or whether it’s them making connections about language, emotion, and more complex features of human characteristics through a series of images or ideas. We still have much to learn about the elusive nature of dreams both in infants and the time after into childhood and so on. For now, we will just have to take our glimpses of images and ideas into our world and find the key to unlocking the mysteries of the world of dreaming.
References
Cherry, K. (2017, May 12). Why Do We Dream? The Most Popular Theories. Retrieved October 02, 2017, from https://www.verywell.com/why-do-we-dream-top-dream-theories-2795931
Ginta, D. (2015, December 08). What Is My Baby Dreaming About? Retrieved September 27, 2017, from https://www.healthline.com/health/parenting/baby-dreaming#1
GoodTherapy.org. (2016, February 02). Dream Analysis. Retrieved October 03, 2017, from https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/dream-analysis
Hoffman, L., M.D. (n.d.). The Interpretation of Dreams. Retrieved October 01, 2017, from http://www.apsa.org/content/interpretation-dreams
Wolchover, N. (2012, February 08). What Do Babies Dream About? Retrieved September 30, 2017, from https://www.livescience.com/33702-babies-dream-sleep.html