• Question: why do we dream?

    Asked by lolage20 to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      I don’t think there is actually a conclusive answer to this. People are still debating it but the basic theory in all of them is just that when we are sleeping some parts of the brain rest and some are active and this results in dreams.

      Some believe that dreams are there to help us work out problems, sort of extra thinking time while the other parts of the brain rest or that it is something to do with the process of commiting something to memory. Others think it serves no purpose at all and just happens.

      Freud (famous psychologists) believed that dreams were how we express our subconsious desires.

      So overall, we don’t know. But maybe one day we will.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 23 Jun 2013:

      To be honest, we dont understand it at all well at the moment – but hopefully that will change soon!

      The current best idea is (I believe) that during sleep neurons in our brain can fire off at random, and our sub-conscious interprets this as images and stories that become our dreams.

    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      The idea I favour the most is that dreaming helps us organise the events of the day and ‘compartmentalise’ our memories. I’ve arrived at this conclusion through a very non-scientific method: I always go to sleep with a problem to be solved and when I wake up can figure out the solution.

      The reality is that sleep and dreaming is still a bit of an unknown to us.

Comments