The Strange Science of Why We Dream

Take the PBS Digital Studios audience survey: We’re on PATREON! Join the community ↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓ It would be a lot easier to study the science of dreaming if we weren’t asleep every time we did it. Why do we dream? What does dreaming do for our brains? How did dreaming evolve? Here’s a look at the current theories from psychology and neuroscience. References: Barrett, D. (2017), Dreams and creative problem-solving. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 1406: 64-67. Carlo Cipolli, Roberto Bolzani, Cesare Comoldi, Rossana De Beni, Iino Fagioli, Bizarreness Effect in Dream Recall, Sleep, Volume 16, Issue 2, March 1993, Pages 163–170, Eagleman DM, Vaughn DA (2021). The Defensive Activation Theory: REM Sleep as a Mechanism to Prevent Takeover of the Visual Cortex. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 15:632