Dreams
Why Do We Dream?
Experts are still trying to unravel this mystery
Who needs to stream the latest Hollywood flicks? When you sleep at night, your brain splices both strange and familiar scenarios together to create the weirdest midnight movies ever. In other words: dreams.
But why do we have dreams — and what do they all mean? Experts don't have a lot of concrete answers, but behavioral sleep medicine expert Michelle Drerup, PsyD, DBSM, explains what we do know about what's going on when you dream.
What causes dreams?
Why do people dream? It's a question for the ages.
There's a lot that experts don't know about why people dream and where dreams come from.
However, the prevailing theory is that dreaming helps you consolidate and analyze memories (like skills and habits) and likely serves as a "rehearsal" for various situations and challenges that one faces during the daytime.
We also know much — but not all — of what's going on physiologically during dreams. Most dreaming occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which we cycle through periodically during the night. Sleep studies show our brainwaves are almost as active during REM cycles as they are when we're awake.
Experts believe the brainstem generates REM sleep and the forebrain generates dreams. In fact, if the brainstem is injured, patients dream but don't go into REM sleep. And if the forebrain is injured, patients go into REM sleep but don't dream.
Article taken from health.clevelandclinic.org