In the search for the significance of our dreams, we should perhaps start with the basics of neurotransmission, neurochemicals, and neurochemoreceptors.
As our brain progresses after birth, and sometimes prior, we have reactions we learn from various stimuli, and automatic reactions from the nervous system we formed during embryonic development, known as the autonomic nervous. The reaction of muscle or the cognition of a situation or event is accomplished by the transmission of a neurochemical via neurotransmitters and the effect on neuroreceptors which then fire a response to the appropriate site.
All of this starts with recognition, via one or more of our senses, and ends with a specific or group of related reactions in response to this stimulus. After a certain point in our development, we have repetitive actions that no matter how redundant, are still based on neurochemicals and action on their specific neuroreceptor. Many reactions from these neurochemicals are completed before the neurochemical has completed it’s process. Akin to the drop down menu on a search field after the entry of only a few letters of the search object has been entered. Got it ?
What we have left over at the end of the day is brain full of partial neurochemical sequences .
Now combine these with our fears, hopes, dreams, a touch of indigestion, a full bladder and a few gas pains. Allow these to come together slowly and gently with a loss of consciousness, and the madness begins. Throw in a bit of external stimuli and the coupling of these unprocessed neurochemicals can produce amazing dreams.
For instance, the pressure on the prostate of younger men from a full bladder can result in “wet dreams” or more articulately “Nocturnal Emissions”. The body recognizes a stimulation and responds accordingly. I remember having a dream of being shot in the back repeatedly every few minutes by an intruder in our house. On awakening I discovered my brother was poking me in the back trying to wake me.
It is said in the field of electronics that, if you can detect it you can amplify it, and if you can amplify it, you can discriminate it. Today we can quantitate accurately many chemicals in parts per billion. Tomorrow perhaps neurochemicals.
Until the day Hell freezes over, and Politicians are truthful, most of us will try to make something else of it all.
It is said that neurotics build sand castles in the sky, psychotics live in these sand castles and, Psychiatrists collect the rent.
