Maybe Freud Was Wrong

We've all had dreams that we try to decipher once we're awake. Personally, I frequently have crazy yet very interesting dreams and sometimes view sleep more as entertainment than rejuvenation. In any event, recent research may turn long held theories about the purpose of dreams on its head.

From the New York Times...

To Freud, dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes. Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations.

Yet what if the primary purpose of dreaming isn’t psychological at all?

In a paper published last month, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking. Dr. Hobson argues that dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but normally suppressed during waking.

In studies, scientists have found evidence that REM activity helps the brain build neural connections, particularly in its visual areas. The developing fetus may be “seeing” something, in terms of brain activity, long before the eyes ever open — the developing brain drawing on innate, biological models of space and time, like an internal virtual-reality machine.

Sweet dreams.