Mahmood Jawaid
Abstract
Every day we spent about four to six hours in sleep, a part of which is spent in dreams. It is a series of thoughts, images, or emotions and consists of stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. The object of this paper was to explore what is happening to our brain when we are dreaming and what can we learn from the Quran and Sunnah about it. The analysis suggests the following: • Most of the dream occur during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. In this state the brain becomes highly active while the body's muscles are paralyzed, and breathing and heart rate become erratic. In this state we are unconscious of the world around us, but we do receive stimuli from our memory. • REM sleep are ‘literally ‘switched on’ by a small group of cells situated deep within the pons, which excrete a chemical called ‘acetylcholine’. This chemical activates the higher parts of the brain, which are thereby prompted to generate conscious images. REM activity is ‘switched off’ by another group of cells, also situated in the pons, which excrete two other chemicals: noradrenaline and serotonin. • Just like our observations during waking hours is a brain activity, so is dreaming. Most dreams incorporate autobiographical memory features. The left hemisphere seems to provide dream origin while the right hemisphere provides dream vividness, figurativeness and affective activation level. • Functional neuroimaging of the brain suggests that hippocampus fetches images and characters from the memory, amygdala imparts emotions to those characters, occipital cortex adds visual component to those characters and motor cortex impart movements to those characters’ bodies. However, the dreams are mainly experienced in the egocentric coordinates of the first-person due to decreased activity in temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and the dreamer has no control over his dream due to decreased activity in in lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) since it is responsible for “executive functions” in the brain. • Due to absence of executive control, the brain has no control over how to manage these thoughts during dream. According to the Prophet(SAW), these thoughts can be initiated by Allah(ST), by Shaytan or could be impacted by one's thoughts and experiences during wakefulness. • The dreams initiated by Allah(ST) could be shown as true reality to the Prophets(AS) or as a transposed reality to others. Bad dreams initiated by Shaytan appear in the form of nightmares and create fear. The dreams initiated by one’s thoughts during wakefulness could be random or could also be inspirational resulting in creative and scientific discoveries.
