Dreams elude explanation. Researchers spend countless hours analyzing brain activity data during sleep to try to pinpoint the purpose and mechanics of our usually fragmented, sometimes fantastical sleep stories. Psychologists pore over dream journals and discuss symbolism with patients, trying to coax meaning out of dreams' mish-mashed imagery.
Theories abound, all attempting to answer this question. On one side of the debate are those who think dreams are random images, and on the other are those who think there is deeper significance to what we see in our mind's eye. Sigmund Freud thought of dreams as wish fulfillment, stories with hidden meanings that could reveal much about a person's psyche. Others wondered if dreams help us to manage our moods, to organize our memories, or simply to create contexts for the random streams of consciousness that our brain receives as our bodies sleep.
While some have turned away from earlier Freud-like theories, Harvard researchers turned up a theory that bridges the gap between science and psychology. They found that when people were told to not think of something, those thoughts were more likely to pop up later in their dreams. This lends some scientific credence to the idea that we deal with things in our sleep that we'd rather forget about while we're awake. It also takes some steam away from those who figure dreams are just random streams of nerve signals.
As with most theories about dreams, though, this is also still unproven. For now, dreams remain a mostly unsolved mystery of sleep.
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