According to neurologists and psychologists, crazy dreams have a perfectly sensible explanation

Many people experience wild and hallucinating dreams that seem to come out of nowhere and make absolutely no sense. however, NBC News BETTER reported that dreaming might not be as strange a phenomenon as some people think. They spoke with Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry at the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School, about the role of dreams in sleep.

"The brain thinks, makes memories and solves problems. He is observing new information. It processes this information by determining what is important, what is not, and what is related to something you already know. And then the brain stores this information or empties that which is not useful. You can not both think of something and listen to people at the same time, "says Stickgold.

In this sense, the brain essentially continues to treat and solve problems that we have not completed during our waking hours. In addition, Stickgold emphasizes that our brains are more effective at building stories while we sleep than when we are awake.

"There are certain questions that arise for which we place a potential action plan or think about a future scenario to be solved. This is what our brains can not do in the background when we are awake. But this type of narrative construction (building a story) always requires us to be conscious – which is a hallmark of dreams. We know that they happen. "

Many studies have shown that our awakened experiences manifest in our dreams and that dreaming can really help us solve problems.

Dr. Stickgold and her colleague Erin Wamsley, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, conducted a series of experiments examining how the dream improves problem solving. . The participants had the task of figuring out how to get through a complex labyrinth, then spent five hours sleeping or staying awake before being retested. Those who slept most improved performance, especially when they dreamed of the labyrinth, as opposed to those who remained awake.

Stickgold explains how the results of studies like this can help us understand why we have such dreams.

"Even really strange dreams can be part of the process of eliminating problem solving by the brain. Your brain is looking for memories associated with recent events.

In addition, much of the memory processing takes place during sleep, during which the brain essentially passes through new memories and decides to store them or not. The emotional centers of our brains are also more active during REM sleep, which may explain why our dreams seem to be more emotionally charged and tend not to make much sense in a logical framework.

"The brain acts like a venture capitalist," says Stickgold. "We intentionally throw a lot of spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, knowing that some will not happen."