"EXPLORING THE SCIENCE OF DREAMS"
Dreams have fascinated humans for centuries, and while they are a universal human experience, the scientific study of dreams, known as oneirology, has been challenging due to the elusive nature of dreams. Dreams cannot be held, tasted, or seen by others, and asking people to recall their dreams often leads to unreliable results, with an estimated 95% of dreams being forgotten, especially within the first 10 minutes of having them. However, researchers at the University of Chicago made a groundbreaking discovery in 1952 when they identified a unique type of electrical activity that occurs during a certain stage of a person's sleep. This stage is known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, and when researchers awoke people during this stage, they almost always reported that they had been dreaming. Additionally, during REM sleep, people's eyeballs move rapidly, mimicking the way the brain acts when it's awake, but with the production of certain chemicals inside the brain mostly blocked. This causes the muscles to stop moving, which is why people can dream about flying, running around, or fighting ninjas, but their body doesn't move.