Dreams, according to Carl Jung, reveal a certain amount of reality hidden during waking consciousness. In Jung’s philosophy, the conflict and chaos experienced in dreams finally bring order to our lives. While Jung’s mysterious theories are debatable, he was not mistaken about the importance of dreaming. A growing number of reports show that a continuous lack of dreaming is damaging our waking hours in many ways.
This trend is causing damage to our immune and metabolic (新陈代谢的) systems, let alone the electronic products that keep us up late at night. Devices like smart phones are ruining our sleep patterns, which has long-term consequences on our memory system. One study showed that not allowing mice to have adequate amounts of REM(Rapid Eye Movement)sleep, the stage in which we dream, the mice couldn’t strengthen memories.
You might think this is just a sleep problem, but dreaming is inseparable from our nighttime rest. We sleep in cycles (周期), each lasting about 90 minutes; in a sleep cycle, we go through non-REM sleep before hitting REM. The longer we sleep, the more time we spend in REM, which is why we are often dreaming when we wake up in the morning. If we sleep less than seven hours, however, it becomes harder to achieve this level of REM.
The combination of sleeping and dreaming acts as an emotional stabilizer. We recover from emotional hurt faster when we sleep and dream properly. However, we’re not getting enough sleep to cycle through the stages to take advantage of this natural antidepressant (抗抑郁剂)—dreams. Instead, we get depressed and turn to alcohol or medicines to get to sleep, which only makes things worse because even one drink leads to late REM while anti-depressants promote deep sleep at the expense of REM.
We’re paying for this lack of dreaming in many ways. Studies show that volunteers who experienced more REM sleep were better equipped for solving problems requiring creative solutions.
Rowan Hooper, the managing editor at New Scientist, writes that dreams that include an “emotional core” appear to be a main function of REM sleep and that we should look at sleep patterns as seriously as we do diet and exercise habits.
12. What’s Carl Jung’s view about dreams?
A.They cause chaos. | B.They mirror reality. |
C.They reveal secrets. | D.They damage immunity. |
13. What does “this trend” in Paragraph 2 refer to?
A.Lack of sleep. | B.A constant state of dreamlessness. - |
C.Addiction to electronic products. | D.More research on sleep and dreams. |
14. What can we learn about REM?
A.REM helps people fight depression. |
B.REM can be improved by anti-depressants. |
C.REM sleep occurs before non-REM sleep. |
D.The brain receives new information during REM sleep. |
15. What’s the main idea of the passage?
A.The importance of sleep lies in dreams. |
B.The absence of dreams is harmful to human beings. |
C.Dreaming patterns are more important than we realise. |
D.Dreaming has mystical power of strengthening memories. |