BrainStuff Classics: Why Do Humans Dream?

The human brain is full of mysteries, and why we dream is a big one. Learn the leading theories about why we dream in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff Lauren Vogel bum here with another classic for
you today. Dreams can be pleasant, or painful or downright perplexing.
My least favorite ones are the mundane ones where I
do dishes or fold laundry and then wake up and
it's not done. But why do we have dreams at all?

(00:24):
And what do they mean? Welcome to brain Stuff from
How Stuff Works, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bam here,
the human brain is a mysterious little ball of gray matter.
After all these years, researchers are still baffled by many
aspects of how and why it operates like it does.
Scientists have been performing sleep and dream studies for decades now,

(00:47):
and we still aren't a hundred percent sure about the
function of sleep or exactly how and why we dream.
We do know that our dream cycle is typically most
abundant and best remembered during the R E M stage
of sleep. It's also pretty commonly up did among the
scientific community that we all dream, though the frequency in
which dreams are remembered varies from person to person. The
question of whether dreams actually have a physiological, biological, or

(01:10):
psychological function has yet to be answered, but that hasn't
stopped scientists from researching and speculating. There are several theories
as to why we dream. One is that dreams work
hand in hand with sleep to help the brain sort
through everything it collects during the waking hours. Your brain
is met with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of
inputs every day. Some are minor sensory details, like the

(01:32):
color of a passing car, while others are far more complex,
like the big presentation you're putting together for your job
or class. During sleep, the brain works to plow through
all of this information to decide what to hang onto
and what to forget. Some researchers think that dreams play
a role in this process. It's not just a stab
in the dark. Though. There is some research to back
up the ideas that dreams are tied to how we

(01:53):
form memories. Studies indicate that as we're learning new things
in our waking hours, our dreams increase while we sleep.
Participants in a dream study who are taking a language
course showed more dream activity than those who were not.
In light of such studies, the idea that we use
our dreams to sort through and convert short term memories
into long term memories has gained some momentum in recent years.

(02:14):
Another theory is that dreams typically reflect our emotions during
the day. Our brains are working hard to make connections
to achieve certain functions. When posed with a tough math problem,
your brain is incredibly focused on that one thing, and
the brain doesn't only serve mental functions. If you're building
a bench, your brain is focused on making the right
connections to allow your hands to work in concert with

(02:35):
the saw in the wood to make an exact cut.
The same goes for simple tasks like hitting a nail
with a hammer. Have you ever lost focus and smashed
your finger because your mind was elsewhere. Some researchers have
proposed that while sleeping, everything slows down. We aren't required
to focus on anything during sleep, so our brains make
very loose connections. It's during sleep that the emotions of

(02:56):
the day battle it out in our dream cycle. If
something is weighing heavily on your mind during the day,
chances are you might dream about it, either specifically or
through some kind of imagery. For instance, if you're worried
about losing your job due to company downsizing. You may
dream that you're a shrunken person living in a world
of giants, or that you're wandering aimlessly through a great
desert Abyss. There's also a theory, definitely the least intriguing

(03:18):
of the bunch, that dreams don't really serve any function
at all, that they're just a pointless byproduct of the
brain firing wallaby slumber. We know that the rear portion
of our brain gets pretty active during r M sleep,
when most dreaming occurs. Some think that it's just the
brain winding down for the night, and that dreams are
random and meaningless firings that we don't have when we're
awake at the end of the day. As long as

(03:40):
the brain remains such a mystery, we probably won't be
able to pinpoint with absolute certainty exactly why we dream.
Today's episode was written by Charles W. Bryant, Yes Chuck
and produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Playing. Or more
on this and lots of other dreamy topics at how
stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I

(04:02):
Heart Radio. Or more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,