This document discusses the chemicals that influence dreaming during sleep. It explains that dreams mainly occur during REM sleep when brain activity is high. Chemicals like acetylcholine, melatonin, oxytocin, and adenosine impact sleep cycles and dreams. Melatonin levels rise in the evening to induce sleepiness, while acetylcholine allows REM dreaming. Oxytocin affects social emotions in dreams. Adenosine accumulates during wakefulness and induces sleep. However, we often forget dreams due to lack of memory consolidation after waking.

1. Article written and published by
www.worldofchemicals.com

2. Introduction
 Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and
sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during
certain stages of sleep. The scientific study of dreams is
called oneirology. Scientists believe that, in addition to
humans, birds and other mammals also dream.
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 Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement
(REM)stage of sleep-when brain activity is high and
resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by
continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. Dreams
can last for a few seconds, or as long as twenty minutes.
Each of us averages four to seven a night. We spend 1.5
hours or more - about 20 per cent of our sleep time - in
dreaming.

3. Reasons getting dreams
 Now we came to know what are dreams and its duration,
 But ….
 Did anybody thought about chemistry behind the
dreams?
 How different kind of chemicals/hormones effect
dreams?
 All dreams, nightmares and night terrors are all caused by
different chemicals being released while you are sleeping.
The way you fall asleep is through the activation of the
neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).

4. Reasons getting dreams cont ..
 Sleeping is considered as a default state in us but you
can’t sleep when ever you required. There are two
reasons behind this is
 One reason is your body will not support when your
brain is active
 Second reason is secretion of Acetylcholine and other
chemicals in our body which will makes us awaken
throughout the day.

5. Dream chemicals details
 Acetylcholine
 Acetylcholine is released in high levels as a result of wakefulness and alertness.
But it is also found in high levels during REM sleep. Its lowest levels have been
found during delta sleep.

 Other chemicals which make us awaken during day time are
 Dopamine
 Glutamate
 Aspartate
 Histamine
 Serotonin
 Norepinephrine

At the end of the day Acetylcholine and other chemicals makes us tired and
from this time to until before you are going to sleep there is a raise in levels of
chemical called Melatonin.

6. Melatonin
 Melatonin is a natural hormone made by your body's pineal gland. Pineal gland
is located just above the middle of the brain. Melatonin levels in the blood stay
elevated for about 12 hours - all through the night - before the light of a new
day when they fall back to low daytime levels by about 9 am. Daytime levels of
melatonin are barely detectable.

 Melatonin is sometimes called "the hormone of the night."

 Melatonin might help shift workers on irregular shifts who need to adjust their
schedules. When taken in low doses at the appropriate time, melatonin can
help advance or delay the sleep-wake cycle. The effect can last for six hours.

 Some researchers have suggested that at certain doses, melatonin increases the
number of dreams a person remembers by artificially prolonging the amount of
time spent in REM sleep. Taking melatonin may also increase a person’s
chances of experiencing a lucid dream for a similar reason, by elevating them to
a more self-aware state while they are still in REM sleep.

7. Oxytocin
 Oxytocin is a mammalian neurohypophysial hormone that
acts primarily as a neuromodulator in the brain. It is once
released in the body, effects sleep processes. Levels of
oxytocin peak after 5 hours of sleep.

 Oxytocin levels are also correlated with stages of light sleep
(State II of sleeping). Dreams from State II are just as
filled with social interactions as dreams from REM sleep.

 According to scientists oxytocin affects our social emotions
in real life, and the same thing will continues in sleep.

8. Adenosine
 Adenosine is a purine nucleoside comprising a molecule of
adenine attached to a ribose sugar molecule (ribofuranose)
moiety via a β-N9-glycosidic bond.
 Adenosine appears to accumulate in your bloodstream
when you're awake and eventually makes you drowsy.
Inside your brain, your adenosine levels exert a major
influence on the regulation of non-REM sleep. This
regulating effect occurs when an enzyme called adenosine
deaminase breaks down, or metabolizes, adenosine
molecules.


9. Complete dream metabolism
 The rate of this metabolism has an effect on the intensity and duration of sleep when
slow brain waves are present. Metabolism also reduces your brain's adenosine supplies,
and your adenosine levels drop as sleep continues.
 Although so many chemicals will affect our sleep and dreams in spite of all these we may
forget many of our dreams! But how?
 We forget almost all dreams soon after waking up as dreams tend to burst apart quickly.
Dreams involve a low-grade type of mental activity, using brain mechanisms much like
those used by the drunk and drugged.
 Some of the research works states that delay in awakening a dreamer even just five
minutes after the end of the eye movements, the chances of dream recall are greatly
reduced. After other five or ten minutes, there's very little chance at all of recall.
 One of the unexplained theories says that lack of hormone called nor-epinephrine in the
cerebral cortex is responsible for forgetting dreams after awakening.

10. References
 1] http://dreamherbs.com/helpful-articles/melatonin
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lucid-dreams/
[2] http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleeptopics/melatonin-and-sleep
[3] http://web.arizona.edu/~vas/478/melatonin.pdf
[4] http://www.sleepdex.org/melatonin.htm
[5] http://www.unclesirbobby.org.uk/circadian.php