How do you even start talking about dreams? Freud? A bit discredited. Following dreams? A bit trite.
For a universal experience that’s been integral to culture for millennia, it’s surprisingly hard. After all, we put on our special clothes and go into our special room and hallucinate for hours on end every day. It’s wild when you think about it.
So let’s go back to basics.
What is a dream?
In short, electrical impulses that cause a thought, emotion, image, or idea during sleep.
We mostly think about visual dreams, but they can encompass any and all senses. Some people dream in colour. Others in black and white. And waking experience has an impact—blind people are more likely to have dreams that focus on senses other than sight.
Why do we dream?
Unsurprisingly, there’s debate here. Some scientists think that dreams are entirely random. There’s no rhyme or reason to how the brain decodes the electrical impulses, and any meaning is added once we wake in order to make sense of what we’ve just experienced.
Others posit that we dream to simulate events that might happen in the future, preparing for potential threats.
What does dreaming do to the brain?
Most dreaming takes place during REM sleep, when there’s more brain activity, and while there are multiple opinions, it seems likely that dreaming plays an active role during this sleep stage.
Studies have linked dreaming with building memory, processing emotion, and even “cleaning” the brain—sorting through and clearing away random, unnecessary information that has built up over the day.
What do dreams mean?
Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid. People have been selling answers to this question for as long as dreams have existed. If you have a bulletproof formula, let me know.
