Why do we dream at night?

Have you ever had an important meeting scheduled for the next day and you spent the night before dreaming anxious dreams. This happened to me a while back and it certainly isn't out of the ordinary (I hope). As the research below describes, we dream to process the events of our day and the day to follow. It is the brains way of sorting what should be kept and what should be gotten rid of. Read on for a great synopsis about our dream life.

clipped from scienceblogs.com While we're fast asleep, the mind is sifting through the helter-skelter of the day, trying to figure out what we need to remember and what we can afford to forget. Unfortunately for me, there's increasing evidence that our dreams are not neural babble, but are instead layered with significance and substance. The narratives that seem so incomprehensible -- why was I running through the airport in my underwear? -- are actually careful distillations of experience, a regurgitation of all the new ideas and insights we encounter during the day. the mind is sifting through the helter-skelter of the day, trying to figure out what we need to remember and what we can afford to forget. In recent years, scientists have discovered that R.E.M. sleep isn't just essential for the formation of long-term memories: it might also be an essential component of creativity.

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