Question: Do you know anything about the understanding of dreams?

Alex Baxendale answered on 25 Mar 2021:

Hello!
I’m not an expert in the area, but I know a couple bits so I’ll see if I can help at all! When we are awake our brains are always doing things even though we don’t know it, we call this the ‘default mode’ because it’s how our brains are by default – this ‘default mode’ is also what causes us to daydream, to make our minds wander all over the place. When we look at the ‘default mode’ of the brain we see that it just picks bits of information from all over the place so that it can remind itself of them, this is because our ideas and memories need to be used every now and then to stop ourselves from forgetting them (we lose memories over time if we don’t use them), so by our brain randomly grabbing bits of information we can keep stuff in our heads for longer. This can get a bit more confusing because our dreams can also be effected by things we have stuck in our head, so when we dream about something we did earlier in the day it is our brain’s way of trying to make sure that your memory of that event stays for longer.
Some people like to say that our dreams have reasons, that they might be telling the future or be an alternate reality, but in all honesty our dreams are our brain randomly picking bits of information so that it can keep itself busy whilst also reminding itself of memories and making those memories stronger.