• Question: why do we have deams?

    Asked by IM SO WAVEY to Kylie, Matt, Bex, RobB, Sam on 14 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Natasha F.
    • Photo: Rebecca Thompson

      Rebecca Thompson answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      No one is really sure! Its one of the great things about science, there are lots of unanswered questions! Most theories about dreams revolve around it being ‘processing time’ for the brain to take in everything that happened in the day. Hope that helps 🙂

    • Photo: Matt Dunn

      Matt Dunn answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Sleep science is a fascinating subject involving the brain 😀 There are two main forms of sleep, one is called ‘slow wave’ named after the type of brainwaves you have, and the other is called REM, which means ‘rapid eye movement’, where your eyes move and your body is mostly paralysed.

      We dream during REM sleep, when our brain is active. Our dreams can be of anything, and with training it is possible to control your dreams and change what you dream about (sometimes called ‘lucid dreaming’), but the connection between what you see during the day and what you dream about at night isn’t well known, but essentially your dreams are brain activity without much form or shape, which is why things happen in dreams that would usually be impossible (dreams of flying are very popular)!

    • Photo: Kylie Belchamber

      Kylie Belchamber answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      I agree with the others. We arn’t really sure why but it might be to do with processing the days events, but we don’t know!

      There are lots of scientists working on sleep and dreaming to find out why. There are lots of theories about what we dream of and what that means, but nothing has been proven. We think we can remember our dreams when we get woken up during REM sleep, but again we arn’t really sure. It is still a bit of a mystery!

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