active, which then causes REM (Lowe 94). The brain will also produce fast frequency, low amplitude beta that is normally produced when a person is awake. Since the waves produced during sleep are identical to those while you are fully awake, you heart rate, oxygen consumption, breathing and eye movement are also identical. The only thing affected is the muscle tension in the neck and limbs. Throughout and eight hour night, the mind will cycle through the five stages between five and six times. The pattern would look like this: Stage 1...Stage 2...Stage 3...Stage 4...Stage3...Stage 2...Stage 5 (REM)...Stage 2...Stage 3...Stage 4...Stage 3...Stage 2...Stage 5 (REM)...etc. It has been reported in sleep studies that 80% of people awakened from REM sleep were dreaming (Lowe 118).
             Now that you understand what takes place during sleep we can look into what affects dreams. Gender affects many things, including the way we dream. Men typically dream about fighting, protecting, or compelling in an outside environment; women are more likely to dream about relationships and loss in an outside environment (Segell 42). Men are usually brought up with the notion that they should be aggressive. Because of this they will either dream about how aggressive they are or their lack of aggression. Women, however, are brought up thinking that they should and/or more emotional then men. Therefore, women are more likely to dig into their interior life wheth
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