Many scientists all over the world have all attempted to explain the physiological and psychological effects of peoples sleep and dreams. In spite of this, up until this century and with few exceptions, everyone has always thought that while a person slept, their body and brain went into an inactive state. It wasn’t until 1928 when a German psychiatrist that goes by the name of Hans Berger discovered electrical activity inside of the human brain and distinguished differences in these rhythms when the patients were sleeping and when they were awake. It wasn’t until many years later that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, or dream sleep as some call it, was described. When the convincing evidence of this was provided from studies that the brain is very much active during REM sleep and while certain areas or parts of the…
Ever been all of a sudden awoken from your sleep and is completely paralyzed? That is, you can't move or even talk, regardless of the endeavors you make to do both. It's a serious frightening feeling that later leaves you asking yourself, "what in the hell happened?" Sleep paralysis is scary as hell!…
Dr. William Dement is recognized as one of the worlds leading authorities on the topic of sleep. In the article titled “Rem Madness, Dement has conducted experiments on patients regarding sleep deprivations. Using an EKG machine he was able to monitor patients in REM. However, when Dement gathered his patients for the experiment he made a mistake. First, he told the patients what they may experience during his experiment, as well as, told them about the probable outcomes of his experiment, which in turn, possibly affected the authenticity of his data.…
I saw a cross. A red cross amongst all the white. I started moving without my control. Being pulled towards the Red Cross. All went black.…
Akua has one of the saddest lives in the novel. Every night, Akua has a dream about a firewoman. This lady would haunt Akua in her dreams and cause her to wake up screaming every morning. Although it is never confirmed, I believe that she is having a form of sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis leaves the person who is dreaming paralyzed and unable to speak but completely conscious.…
Restoration theory’s suggest that the function of sleep is to repair the body and replenish the mind. While in the stages of slow wave sleep growth hormones are released into the body in particularly large doses. Growth hormones serve in important purpose in restoring bodily tissues. This suggests that sleep has a ‘restorative’ function (Psychology A2 for AQA A Fourth Edition Textbook). Oswald’s Restoration Theory of sleep aims to discover why people and/or animals sleep.…
With sleep being the one of the main causes of sleep paralysis, college students are already vulnerable to experiencing kanashibari. The survey demonstrated that the…
Before watching this documentary, I had never heard of any of these temporal lobe epilepsy facts. I think what really blew my mind was the part where the girl having night terrors was able to get rid of them after removing the alarm clock from her room. It made me wonder if people who suffer from sleep paralysis could benefit from this knowledge and obliterate or at least decrease the amount of nights they suffer from sleep paralysis simply by removing objects that could be overstimulating their temporal lobe. I personally have faith in a God but not in any particular religion.…
Surfacing from sleep in the early hours of the morning is an abrupt and unpalatable ordeal, for which I would rather not frequent. However, at 3:15 AM on a particularly sultry night I found myself revisiting the enervating affair of insomnia. A series of images darted before my eyelids like an intense slideshow, as a result unnerving…
During senior year, I have thoroughly enjoyed taking Psychology AP and delving into the many intriguing topics that make up the course. The subject matter of this course is very interesting to me compared to some of my other classes like biology. I also believe that your teaching style has helped me learn the content well due to the topical outlines and entertaining lectures. Compared to other courses in which the teacher merely lectures in an organized fashion, this class has been very user-friendly in terms of understanding content. Overall, the three most intriguing topics that we have covered throughout the school year have been improving the ability to learn, sleep, and defense mechanisms.…
Transformation is a change in form, appearance, nature, or character according to Dictionary.com. For many people tranformation is a scary word that people usually associate with fear. Transformation can be a very dramatic change that can affect everyone around it or it can be a change the only affects the person experiencing the change. They use transformation to scare us because as we are reading we become comfortable with the character being presented to us, but if the character changes then we aren’t. When the character changes it’s like we are introduced to a new person which is scary because you don’t know their personality or their behavior.…
Stories originate from the imaginative mind by taking what has been seen before, and has been stored in our subconscious as natural behaviour, and portraying them as mimic play or reciting them for others to engage in. Cultural and local inventions contribute to the origin of stories as there is an underlying commonality between humans which is reflected through stories regardless of the cultural and local differences. The origin of my term project is through an experience with sleep paralysis, one the aims of the narrative is to convey the experience of sleep paralysis to the audience so that the audience can receive a general understanding of sleep paralysis. Stories are told for entertainment, information and interaction. Stories also help us to persuade and motivate others as stories “appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy” (Hsu, 2008).…
Images of myself with what looked to be deceased family members began to flash in my head as my body jolted forward.…
I wake up suffocated by darkness, heart pounding, I gasp for breath that won't come. I don’t know what time it is and for a moment I don’t know where I am. I’m still trapped in whatever hellscape I was in. It takes me a minute to calm my racing heart and to stop hyperventilating. Deep breath in… deep breath out, in and out, in and out, over and over again until I’ve calmed down.…
Freud first published his theory on dreams in 1900, long before any knowledge of REM sleep was discovered, but his theory is still widely discussed and analyzed today. In a summary of Freud’s theory, Alperin (2004) wrote, “According to Freud, a dream is a visual hallucination (a transient psychosis) the major intent of which is to release internal tension and thus to preserve sleep. Rather than allowing this tension to wake us up during the night, we dream instead” (p. 452)…