Question: Why do we dream?

Sinead Balgobin answered on 8 Nov 2015:

That is a brilliant question. Mostly because we still have no idea! Loads of scientists study dreams, and we know that they have good effects (except nightmares, maybe) like making you better at talking to people, or sorting your memories to be sorted away- dreams mostly just show you things you saw or thought about that day.

Some people think that dreams are our brains showing us what we are thinking unconsciously, like things that scare us, that we might not realise (or maybe we do… the one about being at school in just your underwear… that is a real fear that I am well aware of). Other people think that different areas of your brain become randomly active in the night while you are sleeping, so just starts showing you images and sounds. My mum reckons you brain gets bored, so makes up stories to entertain itself!

If you have time, check out this SciShow video about dreams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB7HqZc2p2Y (it’s about 10 minutes)

An interesting thought is that all of these images that make up your dreams all have to be memories- things that you have seen or felt. So all those random faces of people you don’t know in your dream? You’ve seen them somewhere before…