• Question: why do people dream?

    Asked by gstarraw to Carys, Chris, Jeremy, Katherine, Simone on 17 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by willandsasha35646.
    • Photo: Simone Bijvoet

      Simone Bijvoet answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Hi gstarraw,
      I don’t know too much about dreaming. It is a very difficult concept, and there is still a lot of things that we don’t understand about dreaming and why people have dreams. A lot of people think that dreaming is useful to process all the experiences we have during the day, but exactly how and why this is I don’t know.
      Sorry I can’t answer your question any better.

    • Photo: Jeremy Green

      Jeremy Green answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      I think the latest ideas are (a) it’s a way of reinforcing all the linkages in our brains that were made during the day and (b) it’s a way of rehearsing and imagining emotional situations so that we can deal with them better. Both or neither could be true. Simone is right: there is a lot we don’t know about dreaming. However, there are several new and improving techniques for measuring what is happening in the brain using special scanners and these are beginning to be used to detect patterns of brain activity (and have recently been used to help individuals with “locked in” syndrome (where you are aware but can’t move or speak) to communicate with their doctors.

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