There is a proverb in our daily life: "the day thinks, the night dreams.". It should be said that part of it is empirical, and part of it is scientific. There are many interpretations of dreams, ancient and modern, at home and abroad. For example, Zhou Gong interprets dreams in China. For example, the most influential one in Europe is Freud, who is a doctor in Austria. After dealing with neurosis, Freud wrote a book called "dream analysis". His basic theoretical view is that people have conscious activities and unconscious activities. When they are awake in the daytime, conscious activities control such unconscious activities. Therefore, some desires can not be realized and can not be vented. Then when we go to bed at night, we have no conscious control. At this time, the unconscious desire is vented in the form of dreams, and is satisfied in the form of dreams. This is a theory called psychoanalysis. At that time, he not only explained the sleep of normal people, but also hypnotized some people. For example, this picture is Freud's hypnosis.
Let such a subject sit in a reclining chair, he uses very slow, very low tone to induce, make him produce hypnotic state. In the following photo, we can see that a woman is in a hypnotic state and her body is very stiff. If her head and feet are cushioned with two chairs, her body may be very straight, which is caused by the so-called hypnotic effect. It is because Freud can explain some dreams of normal people, also can explain the dreams of some patients, as well as some hypnotic techniques, so his theory has a very wide influence in Europe and China, which is called psychoanalytic theory. Generally speaking, our sleep cycle is four to six, so the dreams of sleep in the first half of the night are generally related to the events of the day and some recent days, that is, memory of recent events. Sleep in the second half of the night, this dream is related to distant memory, some experiences in early life. But before dawn is about to get up, at this time, the dream is irrelevant, there are a lot of strange, some of his unexpected perceptual components. And it is this part of the dream that people remember most clearly. Because it is just before getting up, the memory of the last dream is clearer. In addition to knowing the general rules of this dream, there are many sleep and dream disorders. The first most common is sleepwalking. Some people get up from bed unconsciously and can do a lot of things. After that, they lie in bed and go to sleep again. For example, when we didn't have tap water in the past, many families had tanks. In rural areas, we had to go to wells to carry water in buckets.
Then he can complete such delicate movements. He filled the jar with water and went to bed. When he got up the next morning, he said that he had filled the tank with water. In fact, he made it himself. Some housewives get up in the middle of the night and wash their clothes. Then the next day, they ask who washed my clothes so clean. Actually, she did it herself. This is sleepwalking. It can be seen that he completed a lot of automatic and delicate daily life movements, which he could complete, but still unconscious, and did not project into consciousness, and did not form a real memory. That is to say, he is not a behavioral response under the control of consciousness, so this is called sleepwalking. There is also a kind of narcolepsy called narcolepsy. This kind of narcolepsy is under the condition of emotional excitement and stimulation, and then there is a monotonous environment. At this time, he is doing things in the daytime. Suddenly, he falls into deep sleep. All of a sudden, no matter what the environment is, he lies down on the ground. Some people do not lie down, but also stand there with their heads down. Their bodies snore and sleep very heavily. This is called paroxysmal Narcolepsy, then 10 minutes, 20 minutes later, will also naturally wake up, this is also a sleep disorder. Besides, almost all of us have nightmares. At this time, when you wake up, when you are pushed to wake up, you may remember what you dream, which is not very accurate, but you generally know what kind of nightmare it is. Like this, there are some sleep disorders, we should have a correct understanding of these problems. But why do people want to sleep and dream, that is to say, what function does sleep and dream have? There are several functions in general.
On one hand, it is necessary to relieve fatigue and recuperate the body. What does it mean to relieve fatigue and recuperate the body? What is fatigue? Fatigue refers to the exhaustion of energy after physical and mental activities. We say that the energy of the brain is mainly the blood supply of glucose, which is energy exhaustion. Physical and mental activities need a lot of glucose, if the blood supply of glucose can not meet its needs, at this time it will use muscle glycogen in the muscle, liver glycogen in the liver, using the body's reserves. In the process of using the body's reserves, a kind of lactic acid is produced. This lactic acid, as the name suggests, is acidic. So there are many acidic things. For example, when we climb mountains, we feel that our legs and stomachs are sour and hard. If you put an egg in vinegar, you can see whether the egg is hard, and the protein of the egg must be hard. The accumulation of lactic acid is a physiological and biochemical manifestation of fatigue. Then sleep can relieve this fatigue. In the same way, we can supplement liver glycogen and muscle glycogen, which is physiological. At the same time, in order to relieve this fatigue, people fall asleep, all activities stop, muscle consumption is also reduced, this time in order to save energy, body temperature is also reduced. Therefore, we need to cover our sleep. Some people sleep better, the more they need to be covered, even in summer. Because when he was resting, he really took a rest, and his temperature dropped, which was lower than normal. So he would feel cold. At this time, there is another function, that is, to synthesize new proteins. We adults also have, for example, our red blood cells. Our blood components need to be replaced with new ones at intervals, so we need to synthesize new proteins. Most of them are synthesized at night when we sleep. When children grow up, they synthesize a lot of protein during their sleep at night and grow up. Therefore, this sleep is essential to relieve fatigue and recuperate the body.
Therefore, human beings should spend one third of their time to rest and relieve fatigue. Well, in addition to the physical, physiological, growth of knowledge is also necessary. We know that we experience a lot of things during the day, and our brains need to record, monitor, and record what's going on around you from time to time. Whether you are conscious or unconscious, as long as you scan your eyes, all the stimulation will go to your brain. In this way, especially the visual information is huge, so much information, it is according to the time during the day, from morning to night, all your information is stored in the brain. When you sleep, the brain will play back, while playing back, while sorting, and then according to different content, respectively put it in different functional circuits of the brain. In addition, that is to say, it can also have the function of learning at night, which has been studied by many scientists in the last 20 years. For example, learning English at night and learning some music at night have different opinions on this issue. For some people, the facts of the experiment prove that some people have the ability to learn, while others can't. For example, nature and science, an international well-known magazine, have been discussing this issue in recent years, that is, can we learn at night? How about the learning effect? This is a problem worthy of further study. In addition to this, in February this year, nature published an article on insight and innovation in sleep. On the left side of this picture, it gives scientific insight. It refers to the inventor of a sewing machine. When he sleeps at night, he solves how to rotate the wheels and how to connect the wheels, so that the sewing machine can work well. And the picture on the right shows some artistic innovations. For example, a well-known case in the west is called a strange case. The detective can't figure out how the case happened. During the day, he can't figure out how the case happened. As a result, when he dreams at night, what's the matter with the dream, the next day, according to his dream, he solved the case and solved it.
Like this, in the sleep at night, this dream sometimes brings insight, sometimes it brings innovation. Now let's look at maintaining a good attitude, which is also very important. Well, we say that after sleeping, we feel energetic and in a good mood the next day. If you have some nightmares, there are many nightmares. The next day, you will feel unhappy, and you will not sleep well. If sleep is not enough, the next day will be anxious, irritable, irritable, do not calm down. It can be seen that dreaming is an essential link to maintain a good attitude. The above is why people dream. As for the scientific theory of dreams, we say that although Freud, the psychoanalysis we just mentioned was more than 100 years ago, the real scientific interpretation of dreams was still in the 1920s and 1930s. The first scientific theory was the great Russian physiologist named Pavlov, who used dogs to do conditioned reflex experiments, which was the first and earliest. He clearly pointed out what the essence of dream is? The essence of dream is the inhibition of brain activity, and also revealed that there are many hypnotic phases from waking state to sleep, which explains the problem of dream and sleep disorder. This is the first scientific theory. This is Pavlov, and this is his student on the left. He's experimenting with a dog, which is doing conditioning training on a shelf. Pavlov's theory has three main points: first, he said that the essence of sleep is diffuse inhibition of the brain.
The brain can be excited or inhibited. It is two basic neural processes. Then the brain is the diffuse inhibition of the whole brain, will enter the sleep state. And what is this dream? It is the local excitatory activity of some warning points on the background of widespread brain diffuse inhibition, which is the dream. Why is there no logic in dreams? This is the warning point, the warning point of general inhibition, constantly moving. Why do you have to keep the alert point, because it is with the warning point, so you can always wake up when someone calls you at any time. If it's completely suppressed, I can't wake up. It's too dangerous. Therefore, the activity of this warning point is a basis of dreams. The third contribution, he said, is to go through the low normal phase, abnormal phase and super abnormal phase from normal state to awake state and to sleep state. And the process of waking up in sleep happens to be from super abnormal phase, abnormal phase, low normal phase and then to awake state of sleep phase, which explains many diseases and sleep disorders.
For example, in the low normal phase, when we say normal, for