It’s not uncommon to dream when we are sleeping. I find that I dream less often but its not weird when I hear a friend or family member say, “wow I had the weirdest dream last night” But why do we have these dreams in the first place? And do these dreams mean anything?

According to the Sleep Foundation, it is unknown as to why we dream, but there are a couple of different theories presented as to why. One idea stated is that it’s because of “neuronal activity occurring while we sleep, especially in REM, and it has been suggested that dreams may just be a meaningless by-product of this biological function.” I think that we may be able to study this theory and have people observed and tested while they sleep. This could then monitor the brain functions that happen while a person is asleep to tell when the dreams occur.

The second theory presented is that dreams incorporate memories with problems that a person could be facing and that dreams deal with emotions. This theory is presented by Rosalind Cartwright, PhD. I think this theory would be harder to study because asking people what they were just dreaming about will not be 100% accurate. Forgetting what they were dreaming about could affect how the dream could be analyzed.

In another article I found, How Dreams Work, common dreams are presented and discussed as to what they might mean. I think that this article is more superficial than the last, and while interesting, should not be taken extremely seriously because it is extremely hard to have an observational or experimental study done for every dream someone has, unless the dream is reoccurring.

I think it will continue to be difficult to discover why we have dreams, but to get closer to our answer we must continue to run sleep studies and try to analyze what they mean for that individual person.

Resources:

http://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-news/your-dreams/page/0%2C1/

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/dream7.htm