Why do we dream? What do our dreams say?

Did you dream last night about your work, your other half, or travel? Dreamed that you were experiencing a great love affair with someone who was not your spouse? That you were a superhero saving the world, or that you were chased by giant spiders in the streets of Buenos Aires? Ultimately, why do we dream? Could we do without dreams? What lessons can we learn from them, even though they appear illogical and disjointed to us? Why are dreams powerful instruments of self-knowledge? And how can you interpret them yourself without using an interpretation dictionary?

We never really remember our dreams, however it is possible to learn to remember them and even, even, to guide them in some way, to change their story.

Dreams, a vital feature of our mind

Rahul Jandial is a neurosurgeon and neuroscience researcher, he first points out that the dream is not a supplement or decoration of sleep, it is a vital characteristic of our mind: “If you explore your dreams which are a fundamental aspect of the human mind, you understand why we devote so much metabolic energy to them. During sleep, the brain is not asleep, it uses enormous amounts of glucose, and it appears awake. This is not something that happens by chance, or by accident. When we look closer, we sleep because we need to dream.“The researcher goes even further, for him, we do not sleep to rest our organs, but to allow the brain to dream, to be active and to think about the big challenges that are coming. He also emphasizes that if we do not sleep one night, we will dream much sooner when falling asleep the following night.

How to catch up on your dreams?

We create a lot of dreams, but all of them disappear. “The central element of our dream is that we want to avoid mixing waking life and dream life.“It is the autobiographical memory that makes the difference between the two, but the fact of having forgotten does not mean that it is impossible to remember. In both cases, the brain functions with the same energy, whether we remember it or not.
Neuroscience Doctor Perrine Ruby adds that it is very rare that we confuse a dream memory with that of a moment of the day which preceded it, “we don’t really understand why yet, the brain is very good at dissociating these two very close memories“. The important thing about dreams is their function: one of the hypotheses would be the regulation of emotions, via the fragmentation of memories, and the change of perspectives.

“All our concerns are in our dreams” tells us Guillaume Jacquemont. How do we remember them? By writing them down every morning, we realize that after a few weeks, we remember them better and better, provided that it is the first thing when we get up .Don’t talk, don’t drink coffee, note!

If the dream is useful and constructive, what about the nightmare?

Is the nightmare a mistake or something as useful as a dream? We can distinguish two types of nightmares:one that can be a traumatic memory, a warning sign, and children’s nightmares. Their brains are being cultivated and all the little ones have nightmares“, stories that leave an impression on the brain until the age of 6 or 7. At that age, explains Rahul Jandial, the theory of mind is created.”and I wonder if the arrival of the nightmares does not help train the brain of adolescents, just as erotic dreams prepare them for sexuality. (…) Nightmares perhaps serve this purpose, to create a feeling of self in relation to others, and to give a sense of identity.“.

At the end of our dreams, where reason ends

“Dreams always contain a mystery”: Perrine Ruby tells us that it is very difficult to study “a dreaming brain”. Despite progress and advances in science, we cannot distinguish if we observe an active brain whether it is dreaming or not. “On the other hand, given the extremely rich experience experienced when we are dreaming, we observe that the majority of the brain is functioning.it would therefore be interesting to study the differences between day and night.

90% of our dreams concern us: we mainly represent ourselves although we think that one of the roles of dreams is to simulate our social actions, with perhaps four or five people identified, no more. Another mystery: it happens that you have an erotic dream with a person you don’t necessarily like during the day, with your brain awake.

Is the dream “me” the waking “me”? Good question.

Listen to the rest here…

Guest for this show about dreams:

• Rahul JandialAmerican neurosurgeon, researcher in neuroscience, researcher at the Jandial Lab, he also teaches around the world via the INCA, International Neurosurgical Childen’s Association. He is the author of Why we dream, the neuroscience revolution serving our health (Leduc editions, 2024)
• Perrine Ruby, doctor at the Lyon neuroscience research center (Inserm, CNRS, Claude Bernard University), she co-directs the Perception Attention Memory team, and focuses her research on dreams and sleep. She is the author of Dreaming during confinement, what dreams teach us about the experiences of French people (editions EDP Sciences, 2021)
• Guillaume Jacquemontscientific journalist at Cerveau et Psycho, author of The Science of Dreams: remembering them, interpreting them, controlling them (Flammarion editions, 2020)

Chronicles:
Things seen from Christophe Andréand the ever-relevant questions of Marie-Laure Zonszain