that your dog had turned into a ghost or
that you were walking through a city on
Saturn or maybe you were even writing an
alpaca to Florida while we sleep our
dreams are our brains create these vivid
and abstract storylines that tend to be
a little confusing so why do we dream
well we’ve been dreaming for a long time
the first one and we’ve also been
looking at what our dreams mean the
first written account of dream
interpretation can be dated back to 1350
BC in ancient Egypt now the ancient
Egyptians had some pretty interesting
ideas on what dreaming was the they
believe that their dreams came from
their God best they look to dreams from
they look to dreams for signs of advice
warnings and even prophecies certain
people were even trained in this thing
called conscious dream travel where they
could take control of their dreams and
explore the afterlife
now that was 3000 years ago the idea
that our brains are our dreams are
coming from gods has changed quite a bit
today more people look to symbolism to
figure out what their dreams mean this
comes from Sigmund Freud’s idea that we
could find certain internal problems by
looking at what we dreamed about for
example he thought that if you dreamed
about an octopus it meant that you were
entangled in some kind of situation that
you felt like you couldn’t get out of or
that if you dreamed you were falling it
meant that you felt like you would lost
control of some aspect of your life for
I believe that you could pinpoint these
certain symbols in your dreams to figure
out what to figure out internal problems
and then you could use those dreams to
solve those problems so that was 100
years ago and in that 100 years we’ve
learned a lot about what our dreams mean
one main way was through an EEG now EEG
stands for electroencephalogram and
basically what it does is measured
brainwaves so we used to think that
because our bodies were at West while we
slept our minds would also be at rest
but in 1953 we measured the brainwaves
of somebody who was sleeping and then
seen instead of seeing those low levels
of activation like we thought we would
we actually saw the exact opposite our
brain was going through stages of high
and low levels or high
levels of activity so even though we
know that people still look to symbolism
and figure out what their dreams mean
because we don’t have a definite answer
to why we dream there are websites like
dream Lutz calm where you can find the
meaning to almost anything that occurs
in your dream from seeing an old friend
to eating M&Ms but something else so
when we’re dreaming our entire brain is
activated during its but it’s really the
limbic system now the limbic system it
has many parts to it but two main parts
of the amygdala and the hippocampus
amygdala deals with emotion while the
hippocampus deals with memory this
explains why our dreams can reflect our
so this explains why our dreams can show
this explains why our dreams
this explains why our dreams I tend to
tend to show our everyday lives and
express our emotions so we can use these
dreams to solve problems one main way is
through a lucid dream
now lucid dreaming is when we become
aware that were sleeping or aware that
we’re dreaming and we’ve been doing it
for a while the ancient Egyptians used
so one interesting thing that happens
when we sleep is that we can actually
enter a state of lucidity where we
become aware that we’re dreaming and
then we can take control of our dreams
and use those dreams to solve problems
and overcome our biggest fears lucid
dreaming has even been beneficial in the
treatment of PTSD when somebody
suffering from PTSD enters a nightmare
of a traumatic event they can practice
lucid dreaming to take control of their
dreams and overcome their biggest fears
in one case a 12 year old girl who had
been attacked by dogs kept having this
dream where she could see somebody else
being attacked by dogs and she would
always try to help but the dog would end
up attacking her until one night she was
able to enter a lucid dream and change
the ending of that dream and because but
because she changed the ending of her
dream she was able to overcome her fear
of dogs now dreams can help anybody
solve problems
dreaming helped me through a friendship
ending see I kept having these dreams
made for me and this person who had been
my best friend kept we go to these
coffee shops and we would just talk and
through having these dreams I was able
to figure out what I was feeling and
cope with the friendship ending but you
can use your dreams to solve your
problems to come on easy way that you
can start to loose a dream is to think
about a problem you have right before
you fall asleep and tell yourself that
you want to dream about it chances are
you’ll have a dream and you might just
be able to enter that lucid state and
control how that dream ends so the next
time that you the next time that you
can’t solve a problem just think about
it right before you go to bed you might
end up dreaming the solution thank you [Applause]