The neuroscience of dreaming
Dreaming is perhaps the greatest shared “unshared” human experience. From disjointed anecdotes and blissful experiences one may be disappointed to awaken from, to fear-inducing nightmares and complex real-life-related sequences that play out in distorted dreamscapes, humans experience a vast number of dreams throughout their lives. Yet since these dream experiences manifest exclusively in an individual’s mind and are highly subjective, often fragmented and non-linear narratives which cannot be shared other than by personal waking recount, it is impossible to ever truly share the experience of dreams.
So what ties all dreams together? What role do dreams really have in our lives? Why does the brain crave dreaming? What is happening at a neurological level when the mind rolls the dream projector each night? Contemporary neuroscience and psychology is elucidating more concrete answers to these seemingly elusive questions.
A brief history of dreaming
A common thread that runs through many ancient societies is the belief that dreams were a source of divination (a way to predict the future) or that they could reveal the meaning of the past and present, including seriously guiding real-life situations.
Interpreting dreams was regarded as an art form and science in the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome that required intelligence and often a spiritual connection.
In these past civilisations, meanings and messages in dreams were often believed to be encoded in symbolism. In ancient
