hmm…i often feel that my dreams are real…they seem so real that i have a hard time distinguishing dreams versus reality…
but what’s the use? sometimes i would wonder what are dreams about…are they messages i need to decipher or just something to wonder about?
i studied psychology and all i remember are theories by freud and jung…i couldn’t connect the lessons into one big “aha”
even though i can have lucid dreams…i don’t see what’s the use…am i just stoic or naive?
In my case, I think they’re entertainment. I get bored very easily, so my brain understands my needs when I’m asleep.
I’m not sure they’re messages as such - maybe, but it probably depends on the person. Mostly, they seem to incorporate past events - for instance, if I watch a Japanese movie before going to bed, there will probably be something Japanese in the dream that night. Or if I come across a new idea, it will most likely pop up in my dreams before long.
Mind you, I noticed that recently I’ve been doing a lot of inventing in my dreams, and if I was more of a hands-on, practical person with access to materials, I think I could make some of those things in real life, or at least imitate them to a realistic extent. So dreams can also give you plenty of ideas with which to be creative, too.
My guess is that dreams help keep the brain awake like a screensaver for your computer monitor. I think it could be unheathy if we didn’t have dreams just like a monitor displaying the same image too long gets wrecked
Dreams are (if i remember this right) kind of like a ‘processing programme’ which your brain undertakes every night. Indeed, people who have less REM sleep(because of sleep apnea, drugs, whatever) are less rested when they wake up.
Some people even consider dreams to be a ‘garbage disposal’ for the memories of the day, and that they ought not to be remembered 
Ofcourse some people also say dreams are messages to ourselves, which I don’t believe is true, mainly for two reasons. The first one is the way dreams unfold. If you read up on psychology, you’ll find that they can be very random and dependant upon things which you were thinking about earlier. You dream about whatever is ‘on top of the pile’. The second reason is that if we need to tell ourselves something, we don’t need to wait until we’re sleeping 
Dreams are also great to interperet. They are like our own personal ink-blot tests.
Hehe nice metaphore, a screensaver 
What exactly it is scienentifically can be found on the internet, but I don’t think they have any more use to mankind then itch has to mankind. ^___^
I like that 
I think dreams are like another level of wakefulness (Is that a word? 
) Sleeping causes the brain to work differently and so drems are created.
They can be very inspiring and occasionally seem meaningful. But i think that’s because they’re so personal - Everything in them comes from the mind alone. We have more outside distractions while we’re awake. I guess that’s why sometimes people remember forgotten things while dreaming. Our heads are clearer then.
In dreams we are often put in all kinds of situations.
It seems to me that such a simulation of possible (and impossible) events would be a helpful tool for early humans (and other animals too I guess) making them better at hunting and inventing and so forth and so on. Evolution would therefore favor dreamers, developing the dreaming into what it is today.
And of course, as previous posters have pointed out, REM sleep seems to be some kind of screensaver, or perhaps a hard drive defrag, sorting out information and making the brain run more smoothly.
Actually some scientists think mammals have evolved with mechanisms in their minds which make recalling dreams difficult. Stephen LaBerge writes about this in his latest book. Basically, an animal would remember it’s dream and think it was real, say a cat dreamed about the dog on the other side of the fence dying. It hops the fence thinking the dog is gone, but it is soon gobbled up 
Thus, not recalling dreams may actually prove to be a positive thing for some mammals.
Makes sense.
I used to wonder what dreams are for–still do–but, I just let them come and go as they do. I’m more interested in what happens in the dreams rather than what what it’s for, you know? But, I think they’re just a way of taking significant events, feelings, and thoughts from the day and putting them into story form (to explain something?). 
i kind of agree with hallstrom’s post, and that the dream may be the mind’s way to simulate possible future experiences so that the body will be able to act in instinct if such things arise.
one of the more interesting theories about dreams came from a computer scientist. he says that the mind creates a model of the world constantly. when we touch a piece of velvety fabric, we do not experience the fabric directly, but we experience the mind’s model of the fabric. the experience of fabric has to go through your fingertips, through your nerves, into your brain; it is translated countless times and runs through god knows how many filters before the mind recognizes ‘i am touching a piece of fabric’. and yet we experience this near instantly. his theory is that when you are asleep, the parts of your body which sense the ‘external world’ are offline, but the model-making part of the mind is continuously awake. so it does not have any external input and it begins to generate it’s own world based on previous experience.
Many scientists who study dreams share a similar hypothesis, most noteably, Stephen LaBerge
While i was reading your posts, my mind made a great idea, i think. I heard about experminent, in which volounteers were sleeeping and everytime they were close to REM, they were woke up. They had no dreams. Soon,they started to hallucinate and fall asleep very fast from being awake. Maybe, to have an easier WILD we can use an alarm clock to wake us every 60 minutes in the night? So the first night will be with no dreams and the second will have controlled lucid dreaming (thanks to usinging WILD technique). Hmmm… i’m not sure if its a good idea… comment it
There is nREM dreams too, and if I am correct REM occurs during a long time while asleep (also when not dreaming (?)…)
I doubt that none of them actually remembered a nREM dream
I know but if the person has no REM while night it has that results, as i said before. Non-rem, i think, doesnt matter in this experiment
Hmm I always thought we had dreams to “process” stuff. Like we have all these things in our minds, like worries, experiences, memories, plans and things like that, and every day we get more and more. So when we dream, it’s a way for our mind to “process” all these things and “get over them”.
I often notice that whatever bothers me IRL, or if I’ve seen something amazing lately that I can’t get out of my head, it always comes back to me in my dreams. Maybe, since my sense of logic seems to be turned off in my dreams, it’s a way for me to emotionally deal with all these new experiences.
Dream on. // Olesia
My experience is that there are many different types of dreams.
Some dreams have psychological meaning and reveal issues and problems you are struggling with.
Some dreams are about processing the days events and reorganizing your memorys (short term and long term).
Some dreams are precognitive. (No I can’t prove this, but when you have some you know what I mean. And no they don’t involve winning lottery numbers )
Some dreams are developmental, you get exposed to new experiences which help you grow.
I think the science of dreams needs to be more complex than having only one type of dream.