Have you ever been in an extremely deep sleep, the softness of your mattress feeling as comfy as a cloud while the most random, incomprehensible dream fills your mind uncontrollably? But next thing you know, it’s a few days later and you’re forcing a dream about an event that occurred during the day – it no longer being a subconscious one. Well, I’m sure you have experienced this at least a few times in your life because I most certainly have. But the question that made me the most curious was: ‘why do we only dream subconsciously at certain times?’. This question popped up in my head, funnily enough, during my attempt at sleeping during the sweltering, hot UK weather. Because it seems odd that one night you’ll have such a mixed, unfathomable and sometimes quite abnormal dream and the next night your mind is blank, and no dreams fill your brain but instead are filled with forced thoughts.
So, enough contemplating and questioning, and now time for answering.
Dreams are mystifying, unique and so complex to fully comprehend. Since Sigmund Freud (an Austrian neurologist) helped draw lots of attention to the pertinence of dreams in the late 19th century, considerable research has worked to unravel both the neuroscience and psychology of dreams. Even one of the most fundamental questions ‘why do we dream at all?’ is still up for significant debate. While everyone dreams, the content of those dreams can vary dramatically from person to person. Even though at the moment there is a simple explanation for the meaning and true purpose of dreams, it is very helpful to understand the basics of dreams as well as the potential impact of nightmares.
But what actually are dreams, I hear you say (you probably didn’t say this, but let’s pretend you did). By definition, dreams are ‘a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep’. While visual imagery is most common, dreams can also involve all of the senses. Some people dream in colour, but some dream in black and white (which I didn’t know was even possible!). Typical characteristics of a dream are: it has a first-person narrative, it’s involuntary, the content may be illogical or even incoherent, the content includes others who interact with the dreamer and one another, it provokes strong emotions, and elements of waking life are incorporated into the content of it.
Ok, now the definitions and foundations are laid out, let’s get into the nucleus (gotta love a bit of Biology) of the question. From researching through several sources I found online, it has come to my attention that there are still continuous debates among sleep experts as to why we dream, but here are the main ones that stood out the most:
- To build memory – dreaming has been associated with consolidation of memory, which suggests that dreaming acts as a crucial cognitive function of strengthening memory and informational recall.
- Processing emotion – the ability to engage feelings in different imagined contexts that may be part of the brain’s method for managing emotions (tends to be when you have a high number of emotions, I assume).
- Mental housekeeping – periods of dreaming could be the brain’s way of ‘straightening up’, clearing away partial or unnecessary information.
- Instant replay – dream content may be a form of distorted instant replay in which recent events are reviewed and analysed.
- And last but not least, incidental brain activity – this view holds that dreaming is just a by-product of sleep that has no essential purpose or meaning.
Finally, let’s talk about when we dream. On average, most people tend to dream for around two hours per night, but it honestly feels like we dream for the whole night. Dreaming can actually happen during any stage of sleep, but dreams are the most intense during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage. This is because during this stage, brain activity ramps up considerably compared to the non-REM stages, which helps to explain the distinct types of dreaming.
So, there you are, a question answered (hopefully) and more knowledge to add to your already intelligent brains. I hope you learnt a lot in this article and make sure to stay tuned each week for a new question and a new answer in my series of ‘Questions that need answers.’
Thank you for reading!
