Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff. From how stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Loring Vogel Bomb. Here the human brain is a mysterious
Speaker 1: little ball of gray matter. After all these years, researchers
Speaker 1: are still baffled by many aspects of how and why
Speaker 1: it operates like it does. Scientists have been performing sleep
Speaker 1: and dream studies for decades now, and we still aren't
Speaker 1: a hundred percent sure about the function of sleep or
Speaker 1: exactly how and why we dream. We do know that
Speaker 1: our dream cycle is typically most abundant and best remembered
Speaker 1: during the R E M stage of sleep. It's also
Speaker 1: pretty commonly accepted among the scientific community that we all dream,
Speaker 1: though the frequency in which dreams are remembered varies from
Speaker 1: person to person. The question of weather dreams actually have
Speaker 1: a physiological, biological, or psychological function has yet to be answered,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't stopped scientists from researching and speculating. There
Speaker 1: are several theories as to why we dream. One is
Speaker 1: that dreams work hand in hand with sleep to help
Speaker 1: the brain sort through everything it collects. During the waking hours.
Speaker 1: Your brain is met with hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
Speaker 1: of inputs every day. Some are minor sensory details like
Speaker 1: the color of a passing car, while others are far
Speaker 1: more complex, like the big presentation you're putting together for
Speaker 1: your job or class. During sleep, the brain works to
Speaker 1: plow through all of this information to decide what to
Speaker 1: hang onto and what to forget. Some researchers think that
Speaker 1: dreams play a role in this process. It's not just
Speaker 1: a stab in the dark, though. There is some research
Speaker 1: to back up the ideas that dreams are tied to
Speaker 1: how we form memories. Studies indicate that as we're learning
Speaker 1: new things in our waking hours, our dreams increase while
Speaker 1: we sleep. Participants in a dream study who are taking
Speaker 1: a language course showed more dream activity than those who
Speaker 1: were not. In light of such studies, the idea that
Speaker 1: we use our dreams to sort through and convert short
Speaker 1: term memories into long term memories has gained some momentum
Speaker 1: in recent years. Another theory is that dreams typically reflect
Speaker 1: our emotions during the day, our brains are working hard
Speaker 1: to make connections to achieve certain functions. When posed with
Speaker 1: a tough math problem, your brain is incredibly focused on
Speaker 1: one thing, and the brain doesn't only serve mental functions.
Speaker 1: If you're building a bench, your brain is focused on
Speaker 1: making the right connections to allow your hands to work
Speaker 1: in concert with the saw in the wood to make
Speaker 1: an exact cut. The same goes for simple tasks like
Speaker 1: hitting a nail with a hammer. Have you ever lost
Speaker 1: focus and smashed your finger because your mind was elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Some researchers have proposed that while sleeping, everything slows down.
Speaker 1: We aren't required to focus on anything during sleep, so
Speaker 1: our brains make very loose connections. It's during sleep that
Speaker 1: the emotions of the day battle it out in our
Speaker 1: dream cycle. If something is weighing heavily on your mind
Speaker 1: during the day, chances are you might dream about it,
Speaker 1: either specifically or through some kind of imagery. For instance,
Speaker 1: if you're worried about losing your job due to company downsizing,
Speaker 1: you may dream that you're a shrunken person living in
Speaker 1: a world of giants, or that you're wandering aimlessly through
Speaker 1: a great desert abyss. There's also a theory, definitely the
Speaker 1: least intriguing of the bunch, that dreams don't really serve
Speaker 1: any function at all, that they're just a pointless byproduct
Speaker 1: of the brain firing wallaby slumber. We know that a
Speaker 1: rear portion of our brain gets pretty active during r
Speaker 1: M sleep, when most dreaming occurs. Some think that it's
Speaker 1: just the brain winding down for the night, and that
Speaker 1: dreams are random and meaningless firings that we don't have
Speaker 1: when we're awake at the end of the day. As
Speaker 1: long as the brain remains such a mystery, we probably
Speaker 1: won't be able to pinpoint with absolute certainty exactly why
Speaker 1: we dream. Today's episode was written by Charles W. Bryant
Speaker 1: and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other dreamy topics, visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com.