What I Learned About Sleep and Sleep Disorders in My Psychology Class

In the first day of class I learned in this class that "Psychology" is a scientific study of behavior and mental processes, and it is divided in different fields which will specialize in different studies. This class was my first Psychology class in my entire scholastic years, so everything I learn was a kind new to me. After taking this class my perception of some things that happens and why they happen, and how I handle issues in the real world changed. One of the most interesting things I learned in this class was the process of sleeping and how do we have dreams. While we are sleeping there are many things that go through out mind. The sleeping phenomenon can be processed differently between different people, and every single person has their own way of managing how they fall asleep. Me for instance I have a problem falling asleep sometimes, so I have to listen to music as a sleep stimulating.

One of the things I learn in this class that interested me is the sleeping status, and why do we have to sleep. As I learned in this class the reason we sleep is not known, however there is some evidence that the physical and mental restoration is restored while we are sleeping. For some people sleeping is a big issue because they have sleeping disorder. Sleeping disorder also known as Somnipathy is a medical disorder of sleep patterns of a person or animal. Some sleep disorders are very serious. There are some sleeping disorders known as Insomnia, Apnea, Narcolepsy, Nightmares, Night terrors and statistics. I will only refer to some of the disorder that interested me the most.

Insomnia is a sleep disorder which people have problem fall asleep or stay asleep for long period during the night, and it might be dangerous if its chronic insomnia. According to the study made by the University of Maryland Medical Center in August 2010, shows that around 9-12 percent of the American population report chronic insomnia. In severe cases, patients experience fatigue, sleepiness, difficulty concentrating and difficulty with thinking. Many sufferers feel that they have been robbed of the joy of life. Insomnia may be a symptom of breathing problems at night like sleep apnea, of medical illness like heart failure, a side effect of medications, or a symptom of severe anxiety or depression illness. I find the study of this disorder interesting because most of the time I will not fall asleep during the night or it takes me so long for me to fall asleep and most the time when I fall asleep will not stay asleep. Sometimes I stay awake for more than 30 hours without any sleep, although, sometimes I stay sleeping for so long.

Another sleeping disorder that interested me, is the nightmares which is defined by the scary dream that occurs in the rapid-eye movements stage and those dreams are remembered, conversely, to the night terrors which is the frightening dreams that we have that occurs during stage 4 of NREM. Both of them are disorder that can be experienced by everyone. For last I will talk about the Narcolepsy which is the most dangerous sleeping disorder. Narcolepsy is the sleeping disorder in which someone will fall asleep without a warning during the day and unexpected loss of muscle tone following moments of emotional excitement. This disorder can be very dangerous because people with this disorder might sleep while driving or any other activates that can have a dangerous result.

Another thing that I lean in this class, and I was interested in was the dream. The concept that I had about dreaming before taking this course was completely different from what I leaned. As I learned in this class the reason we dream is known but several theories have been proposed to the reason we dream. People often ask what do all these dreams mean? Whether dreams have a specific meaning and function is a question that has been considered an answer to it for many years, and they have developed three alternative theories to explain dreams. First theories describe dreams as unconscious wishes it was proposed by Freud. He proposed that dreams represented unconscious and desired wishes that dreamers have that will be expressed through dreams. The second theory proposed that dream is the time we process the information we learned during the day. According to the theory dream represents worries about our daily activities, demonstrating doubts, indecision, ideas, and desires. The last theory that was presented was dreams and neural activity in which states that parts of brain related to emotions, motivations, memories and they are very active during dream. It also explains how dreams are emotional but without much critical insight, so It focus on the random electrical energy that the brain produces during REM sleep, possible as a result of changes in the production of particular neurotransmitters. It doesn't have to do with something that we wished or something that happen in the day. All of this was new to me, but my preview knowledge was like Freud's theory because in my home country Cape Verde they believe that dream are things that we wish to happen. Other people say that dream is things that will happen and all of it has a specific meaning.

Finally with all the addition knowledge leaned in this class change my prospective I had before. Sometimes the culture and religious believes makes you think different about the real world. I learned a lot from this class, and what I learned made me change my few about inexplicable things like dream. Because of my back ground I use to think that the reasons we dream is based on something we wanted but know I know that it doesn’t have to that way. Another thing that I learn that may relate to me is the sleep disorder insomnia because it relates to me.