The Science of Dreaming: Why We Dream, How It Affects Our Lives

Though centuries have gone by, yet the human mind fascinates itself with dreams—from the mystic interpretation of the ancient people to the modern scientist, the search for what are dreams and why they occur has been relentless. While often appearing as arbitrary successions of bizarre events, recent studies claim that these actually serve a number of purposes, ranging from memory consolidation to enhancing problem-solving skills. These pages review new information on why we dream, evolutionary origins of the capacity to dream, and how this complex phenomenon affects psychological processes.

1. The Discovery of Benzene: A Dream That Paved a Way Through Science

One of the most famous examples in history of how a dream influenced scientific discovery was that of the 19th-century German chemist August Kekulé. During 1862, Kekulé was trying to work out the molecular structure of benzene. He made his great discovery in the realm of dreams, he claimed. He said he dreamed of atoms and molecules writhing into snakes; one snake circled around and grasped its tail. Kekulé slept, woke up, and saw benzene as a ring of carbon atoms—thereby changing completely the face of organic chemistry.

The dream-driven discovery of the chemical structure of benzene underlines the potentiality of dreams to solve complex problems. A key question arises: Can dreaming unlock solutions to problems we can't resolve in our waking state?

2. The Function of Dreams: Memory, Problem-Solving, and Survival

Dreaming occupies quite a good length of time taken up by the human brain—two hours each night or an average of 60,000 hours throughout a lifetime. Scientifically, people have long theorized that such a great expenditure should have important functions. Let's go over some of the key benefits that experts in sleep think that dreams can offer.

Memory Consolidation

It is also believed that the dream is very important for memory consolidation. The brain replays the events of the day while one is sleeping; this way, all such events are stored in the long-term memory. That is probably the reason that many people dream about what they learned or went through during the day. For instance, one study found that people who spent several hours playing a skiing video game dreamt about it after sleeping. This would indicate that such dream scenarios rehearse, in some manner, newly learned skills and experiences to consolidate them into memory.

Problem-Solving

They represent the best foundation for creative problem-solving because dreams are unencumbered by chains of logical thought or reality of any kind. Many problems have been resolved in the dreams of artists, scientists, and thinkers. As novelist John Steinbeck once said: "It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."

It certainly suggests an argument that research reinforces: paying attention to particular problems in the pre-sleep period makes it more probable the person may dream about the subject matter and sometimes even solve the problem at hand. In one experiment, college students were asked to focus on a homework problem that was particularly challenging before retiring. Of those, one quarter reported that they dreamed about the problem and came up with a solution within a week.

Evolutionary Significance: Survival and Social Simulation

Perhaps through dreams, both humans and animals practice life or death scenarios in the mind. The Threat-Simulation Theory postulates that through dreams "the unconscious rehearses instant rehearsing of the real life threatening events, without the costs and risks associated with real life". Originally such "practice" would have been adaptive to our ancestors, for whom the survival depended upon acting fast and appropriately in threatening situations.

According to Social Simulation Theory, dreams provide a playground for rehearsing our social interactions. Since human survival has always been closely related to social cooperation and communication, these interaction dreams with friends, foes, or strangers might be helpful in solving our real-life complicated social situations.

3. The Sleeping Brain: The REM Stage and Dreaming

Most of our dreaming occurs during the REM stage of sleep. Our brain activity is intense during REM sleep, almost as though the brain were awake. Our breathing becomes shallow and irregular. Our eyes actually dart rapidly back and forth under our eyelids. Scientists feel that this heightened activity in the brain is associated with dream occurrences that are often bizarre and vivid.

Most animals—from cats and dogs to whales—enter REM sleep, which suggests that animals dream just like people do. Since we cannot ask them directly, your pet likely spends as much time dreaming about chasing a ball or chasing prey as it spends twitching and moving while it's asleep.

4. Historical and Cultural Significance of Dreams

The vast majority of recorded history has treated dreams as spiritual or prophetic experiences. The ancient Egyptians codified dream interpretation into a distinct profession, which extended to include volumes on what common dreams meant. The Egyptians treated the dream as a message from the gods, and their interpreters were often called in for professional consultation.

Interest in dreams as vehicles for hidden meanings continued well into the 20th century, especially with Sigmund Freud. In his seminal book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud viewed dreams as manifestations of unconscious wishes that couldn't be expressed in awake life. He felt these wishes were camouflaged in the dream through images—symbols that could only be deciphered by psychoanalysis. Then, Freud's student, Carl Jung, continued to evolve this theory by postulating that dreams contain universal symbols—such as the image of a wise old man or a trickster—that may give us insight into our psyche.

Although many modern individuals still accept the symbolism of dreams, modern science has generally moved toward pursuing the dream's biological and psychological functions.

5. Current Theories on Dreaming: More Than Just Noises

Earlier scientific theories postulated that dreams were mere random byproducts of the brain activity related to sleep. Accordingly, the "Activation-Synthesis" Theory stated that dreams are a result of completely random neural activity from which the brain tries to make some sense by creating it into some form of a coherent story. This later was refuted when evidence proved that dreams are not as random as once perceived.

Certain themes seem to occur across cultures, such as falling, being chased, or flying, and that suggests perhaps that dreams serve a more regular function. The content analysis of thousands of dreams has also revealed that the content of many dreams includes material from our personal waking backgrounds, and that supports the idea of the functionality of dreaming.

6. Nightmares: The Dark Side of the Dreams

While most dreams address mundane concerns or are even pleasant, some dreams become nightmares. Generally speaking, a nightmare is defined as an upsetting or frightening dream that awakens the sleeper. While nightmares are no fun, they may also serve an evolutionary function. According to the Threat-Simulation Theory, nightmares allow us to rehearse dangerous or anxiety-ridden situations in a way that prepares us for similar events in real life.

But chronic nightmares usually occurring with trauma or anxiety disorders have the opposite effect: they disturb sleep and cause discomfort. Researchers are working on dream shrinkage to diminish nightmares and, consequently, improve sleep quality among people who suffer from such disorders.

7. Creation and Dreams: Muses of Art and Invention

Such a huge amount of works of art, literature, and even scientific findings were inspired by dreams throughout history: the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, "Yesterday" by The Beatles, "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dalí—this is not an exhaustive list of the gifts from their authors' dreams.

Since dreams allow free associations and ideas that even surpass the limits perhaps set in reality, creativity is most likely to find a natural space. In that sense, this is an ideal environment for the solving of problems and creativity, thinking out of the box.

8. Dream incubation: Using your dreams to creatively overcome hurdles

Can you train yourself to dream about a particular subject? Some researchers are investigating what's called dream incubation: someone prepares their brain for sleep by focusing on a particular problem or idea with the expectation that, having primed the mind in that direction before sleep, the dreaming brain will continue to work on the problem at hand.

This is at a very experimental stage and might be employed to enhance creativity, solve complex problems, or even work through traumatic experiences.

9. The Evolutionary Functions of Dreaming

One of the interesting theories is that dream visualization evolved as a means to maintain activity within the visual cortex during sleep. The large part of the real estate occupied by the visual cortex within the brain would need to be reassigned if not utilized for an extended period of time, which would happen during prolonged darkness. Certainly, this theory supports a view that this basically visual process of dreaming served to prevent that—to keep the visual cortex active even when sleeping.

Conclusion: The Many Purposes of Dreams

Among the various interesting events happening within the human brain, few are as enigmatic as the nature of dreams. Whereas early theories seem to concern symbolic interpretations, modern science has progressively discovered a number of functions that may be served by dreams—from solidifying memories to problem-solving and rehearsing social interactions. Although the jigsaw puzzle is far from complete, it would seem self-evident that dreams do indeed serve to play an important role in keeping us sane.

Whether replaying the events of the daytime, rehearsing our survival scenarios, or seeking creative solutions to complex problems, the dream is one of the deep processes of life. The weirder the surprising reasons that could explain why we spend so much of our time in that mysteriously strange state of mind, the more the researchers delve into the science of dreaming.