When your are sleeping, is your brain also asleep?
440933
You are your brain, but your brain is doing a huge number of things at once.  So while it has entered an altered state called "sleep", it's still quite busy, and not completely unresponsive.  It's not just dreaming, but still maintaining your body and processing incoming signals: you can ignore a loud truck on the freeway but still wake up when your child calls your name from the other room.  Or if your bladder commands you to......
930502
I also used to dream a lot, its all because i think too much. So i will no sleep if i dont feel like to, trying to make myself tired(watch tv, play games etc) then go to bed. So that i got no time to think about other stuff.
532132
Our cells do not sleep.  The function of cognizance shifts from the real world to the dream world.  Yes, as we expand our knowledge our capacity to learn increases.  It is a false notion that there is only so much "space" in the brain\nWe all function far below or mental capacities.
146466
Dreams are you subconcious mind "playing" while you sleep. You dream about what is troubling you, you dream about things that you have seen or heard, you dream about what it is that you want or need in life, and dreams seem to be a bit off or goofy, BUT they can help you and answer your questions . THink about dreams that you have had, write them down if you can remember them,what did you see, how did you feel, who was in the dream. And then write down everything that goes on in your life, your needs, your desires, your goals and those dreams will start making sense and MAYBE they have answered your questions.
960449
I eat lots of different foods at all hours of the day and  night (including cheese) and can honestly say that i sleep so heavy that it is very rare i am aware of dreaming at all (although my wife says i talk a lot in my sleep) - so do i dream or not? and as for the cheese it made no difference to my dreaming or lack of at all.
969294
sometimes my mind would be on over drive, always thinking and never stopping, which keeps me from falling asleep often.  my mind is always thinking and theres no way i can seem to controle it!  kinda ticks me off!!
301337
oth, however, agree that we dream during the REM, or rapid eye movement, phase of sleep. During this phase of sleep, our closed eyes dart rapidly about, our brain activity peaks, and our muscles suffer temporary paralysis.\n\nThe physiological theory centers upon how our body, specifically our brains, function during the REM phase of sleep. Proponents of this theory believe that we dream to exercise the synapses, or pathways, between brain cells, and that dreaming takes over where the active and awake brain leaves off. When awake, our brains constantly transmit and receive messages, which course through our billions of brain cells to their appropriate destinations, and keep our bodies in perpetual motion. Dreams replace this function.\n\nTwo underpinning physiological facts go towards supporting this theory of dreams. The first lies in the fact that the first two or so years of ones life, the most formative ones for learning, are also the ones in which the most REM sleep occurs. It follows that during this time of the greatest REM sleep, we experience the greatest number of dreams. The second physiological fact that lends credence to this theory is that our brain waves during REM sleep, as recorded by machines measuring the brain's electrical activity, are almost identical in nature to the brain waves during the hours we spend awake. This is not the case during the other phases of sleep.\n\nPsychological theorists of dreams focus upon our thoughts and emotions, and speculate that dreams deal with immediate concerns in our lives, such as unfinished business from the day, or concerns we are incapable of handling during the course of the day. Dreams can, in fact, teach us things about ourselves that we are unaware of.\n\nConnections between dreams that the human psyche have been made by many people over thousands of years. The famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle wrote in his "Parva Naturalia," over 2,200 years ago, of a connection between dreams, waking experiences, and emotional needs.\n\nOthers have delved into more complicated explanations for dreams, such as the prophetic nature of dreams written of in the Bible, which was and is a belief held by many cultures. Sigmund Freud, one of the fathers of modern psychology, believed dreams to be symbolic of any number of things buried deep within our minds and our memories.\n\nUntil someone proves or disproves one of these theories, or poses an alternate one, we are left at square one. Our knowledge as to what causes us to dream is limited to the fact that we do dream, and that dreams occur during the REM phase of sleep. Sweet dreams!
13394
The Mind Controls the Body. When you sleep, your mind falls into an altered state of operation, and such follows the body.  Sleep is the time your body repairs and "recharges" itself from the trauma that the previous "awake time" has brought upon it.\nEver had the experience of seeing someone sleepwalk??  It is obvious in seeing such a spectacle that the mind doesn't shut off, but does operate under less than full capacity.
861701
The truth is that you see with your brain, not with your eyes.  The eyes are simply cameras relaying meaningless information to the brain.  It is the brain which makes sense of the information.  Dreaming is thought to be a time when the things you have perceived during the day are sorted out.  Rubbish is disposed of and the good stuff is kept.  REM is when you dream.  The hippocampus comunicates with the cortex allowing consolidation of memory.
47091
No, and you're not unconscious either. There's a difference in the level of consciousness (how your brain is working) between when you're asleep, or if you've passed out and are actually unconscious. The simplest way of explaining it is that when you are asleep, you can still be easily awakened, for example, by a loud noise or being shaken. When you are unconscious, your brain is no longer processing external information - that is, it's still working, but wont respond to external stimulus.\n\nOh, and you don't dream while your unconscious - you do when you sleep.
955995
Something is missing. Your brain maybe?
255131
Not much really! :-) Just that you are keep thinking about the same things! You'll probably have some people wanting to give you Freudian interpretations, i.e. that you are repressed, fixated, etc. Dreams are just your brain continuing to be active when your body is asleep!
66503
"They" say dreaming is a way your brain works things out subconsciously.  If I'm really in a quandry about something and it is stressing me out, I find that I'll either dream about it or dream about something else that gives that same feeling.  Either way, its like a computer defragments I think, getting things orderly.
40733
If you mean how do we wake up.\n Before we go to sleep, we tell ourselves, consciously or not when we need to wake up, added to the usal or needed amount of sleep, plus the condition in which we are sleeping (eg intermittent loud noise, moving surface, soft-comfortable, hard surface, cold or hot environment...), how tired we are...all that is computed by the brain and we automaticlally wake up when the 'due' (computed total) time arrives.\n    Note that it has nothing to do with quality of sleep!
1116501
Yes. deep sleep ! LOL
181609
It is your minds way of releasing excess energy and recooperating while you sleep
194101
You have your conscience and subconcience in your brain. Your subconscience gets millions of different sensory input every day (things you don't notice but are there as an example). Your subconscience doesn't sleep like our conscience mind does and while your conscience is sleeping, you're subconscience is still awake and probably quite bored. The only thing it has to do it to play with itself and that's what causes dreams, it generally uses information it's stored, and sometimes created on it's own.