What do we know about dreams?

Sweet dreams are made of... what?

For millennia, people have believed that our dreams connect us to the universe somehow, warn us about our future, or help us make a decision. As it usually happens with the incomprehensible and mysterious, nightly experiences have been overgrown with various magical legends. Whether you believe them or not is your choice, but let's see what science says about our dreams!

The difficulty in studying the topic is that scientists can only judge dreams from people's reports. Usually, research participants are asked either to describe their dreams in writing or to answer questions about them. The problem is that we remember selective elements of dreams, and sometimes we don't remember them at all. Therefore, technologies capable of scanning brain activity were connected to the study.

Thanks to this, we know that in the phase of sleep that is named REM (for the rapid eye movements), we have more bizarre and brighter dreams than in non-REM —when we see boring shots of our daily life. REM is influenced by genes, age, and many other factors. This explains why some people dream more often and others less often. Also, we know that the secondary visual areas and the parts of the brain that are responsible for movement and emotions are activated when we dream, while the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of planning and critical thinking, is not. That explains why our dreams are usually irrational and weird.

Many studies have proven that our dreams help to keep our memories. It works thanks to banal repetition, like when we repeat a new word to remember it. Our brains replay important events of our lives to better remember them.

Scientists can't come to an agreement on the meaning of dreams. For example, famous psychologist Sigmund Freud believed that there’s a metaphoric message in our nightly experiences, to understand which is useful to sort yourself out. Another theory claims that dreams are a tool for emotion regulation, especially fear. This idea explains why dream plots are so emotional. Another scientific hypothesis is that dreams are random. The Activation-Synthesis Model says that while we sleep, our brain takes signals from its different parts and comes up with chaotic images trying to interpret them.

Anyway, dreaming is a creative process that our brains are in charge of. The very phenomenon of dreams proves that each of us is able to conjure up extraordinary things. Much research has shown that people show a higher level of problem-solving skills after they take a nap. So, it’s no wonder that many famous scientists and artists had brilliant ideas while sleeping! This is due to the fact that our brain works differently when we dream and many memories can appear in our head at the same time.

So, next time you have a problem to solve, take a nap for an hour to help your brain come up with genius ideas. In other words, sleep on it!

Article by Viktoria Kogan,

Unarthodox Element Blog Contributor