Dreams are stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. They can be entertaining, fun, romantic, disturbing, frightening and sometimes bizarre.
Why do dreams occur? Can we control them? What do they mean? Medical News Today investigates the current research on dreams and looks at possible explanations and theories as to why our minds invent these nightly musings.
The study of dreaming is called oneirology, and it's a field of inquiry that spans neuroscience, psychology, and even literature. Still, the plain fact is that the reasons why we dream are still mysterious. But that hasn't stopped scientists from coming up with some pretty fascinating hypotheses. Here are ten of them.
Ultimately, this hypothesis brings us back to the storytelling component of dreams. We seem to use these bizarre images and ideas to make sense of the day's events, to turn random neural firing into something coherent, and even to figure out how we should feel about what's happened to us. There is no doubt that dreams play a major role in our thought processes. The question remains, however: Are they an evolutionary adaptation, or just an uncanny accident?