The study of dreaming, known as oneirology, encompasses neuroscience, psychology, and literature, exploring concepts such as wish fulfillment and memory processing. Dreams serve as a mechanism for mental garbage collection, allowing the brain to clear out unnecessary information and potentially aiding emotional regulation. Although dreams are recognized to have psychological significance, their precise purpose remains largely undefined within the scientific community.

1. In my dreams

2. The study of dreaming is called
oneirology, and it's a field of inquiry that
spans neuroscience, psychology, and even
literature.

3. pretty fascinating
hypotheses about dreams

4. dreams are wish-fulfillments.
Any dream, no matter how terrifying,
can be looked at as a way of getting
something that you want, either literally
or symbolically

5. dreams are actually just a kind of brain
fart, an accidental side-effect of
activated circuits in the brain stem and
stimulation of the limbic system that's
involved with emotions, sensations and
memories.

6. our brains are always storing memories
regardless of whether we're awake or
asleep. But dreams are a kind of "temporary
storage" area of consciousness, a spot where
we hold memories before we move them from
short-term to long-term storage. They flash
through our minds as dreams before we
secret them away in the files of our memory.

7. dreams are garbage collection mechanisms,
clearing our minds of useless thoughts and
making way for better ones. Essentially,
we dream in order to forget. Dreams help
us eliminate the information overload of
daily life and retain only the most
important data.

8. When you dream, your brain behaves much
the way it does when you're awake, with a
crucial difference: chemicals like dopamine
associated with movement and body
activation are completely shut down. This is
similar to what happens to animals who
undergo temporary paralysis to fool their
enemies into thinking they've died.

9. dreams are natural selection for ideas.
This can extend to the level of emotions,
too. One group of researchers suggest
that dreams are places where we run
through situations and try to select the
most useful emotional reactions to them.

10. Dreaming is a stream of random images,
some of which the brain selects and
saves to use in the future. Dreams are
composed of many variants of feelings,
emotions, thoughts, and some other
higher mental functions, some of which
undergo some kind of natural selection
and are deposited in the memory.

11. dreams are an evolutionary mechanism by
which the brain counterbalances negative
effects of psychological trauma,
presenting them to the person during
dreaming in the form of symbols and
associative images.

12. It's generally accepted that dreams
contain at least some psychological
meaning, but this doesn't necessarily
prove a purpose, such as problem solving.
Overall, our scientific understanding of
dreams is still quite vague.