Thesis Statement: Understanding how dreams occur, how they affect our lives and what they mean help us grasp what dreams actually are.

Intro:
I. (Attention Getter) Have you ever dreamt that you were walking along the side of a road or along a cliff and suddenly you trip? You’re falling for what seems like forever, but before hitting the ground, you wake up? This is considered to be a falling dream, and ironically, falling dreams occur when you are falling asleep. They are usually accompanied by muscle spasms and twitches of the entire body. Although these dreams occur while we are falling asleep, they interpret a completely different meaning. Falling can mean you are insecure, you are losing grip, or you simply have fears that need to
c. The rest of our body is paralyzed until we leave REM sleep; which explains why were unable to react, preventing us from acting out our dreams.

B. Although dreams can occur in any of the stages of sleep, the most vivid and memorable dreams occur during REM sleep. But why? 1. During REM sleep, the brain is just as active as it is during waking.
a. It is the time when the areas of our brain that are associated with the functions of learning and memory are stimulated.
b. The dreams are the result of the work our brains are doing in segregating, analyzing, and filing the information absorbed during the day.
c. Our brain revisits certain past memories to use them as a type of reference point to simplify the filing process.
d. Which explains why past memories are sometimes mixed with more recent memories in random dreams. 2. While we are dreaming, these highly activated areas of the brain communicate in different ways than during waking consciousness, and allow for emotions to be processed differently. a. The limbic system speaks in the language of symbolic imagery; the symbols/images you see in your dreams can help change perceptions and resolve conflicts in waking state. b. The amygdala assigns emotional significance to information it receives, and has a pretty loose grip on reality.
c. For ex: Our reaction to a scary movie. The movie may not really be