Why do we dream???

One day I had a discussion out of nothing with one of my friends on DREAMS. Why do we actually dream while sleeping? What makes us dream? It is something that we all experience but I have never given it a hard thought.

She said that "I have heard someone say, Brain is like a computer, during the day our brain opens up all the windows and at the end of the day closes it down. Sometimes it so happens that we don't manage to close all the windows and the ones stored in long term memory popup and close while you are sleeping." 

Some dreams do represent the images that we saw in the past. Something that we have witness before. I saw a funny thing happen on my cell phone (Sony p990i), the feature in this phone is that it has a qwerty keypad on the handset and the numpad is on a flap. Now open the flap, open a application say Contacts, now close the flap. The application disappears and you will get a blank screen. Now open the flap again run other application. Now press the back key and suddenly in a second you would see the previous application which had disappeared, flashing on the screen and disappearing. The fact is that this application was not closed and remained running in the phone's memory, it flashes in attempt to close the application.  If this can happen on gadget's memory then our brain is way too complex and the above statement made by my friends holds ground.

Then dreams are just the representation of your thoughts. The things you constantly think about and the things that are there in your memory. They flash up. I know some would associate the word Rapid Eye Movement to dreams, but i know little about it to actually type it down. But I do know that while sleeping our conscious mind goes to sleep and the sub-conscious remains awake.

Children versus Adults

Ever thought of it, how many dreams we use to see in the childhood and how many we see now. I don't get why children dream more than adults. Is it that our brain is able to handle memory more efficently when we grow up? Or the learnin power of the brain is more in children that thier curiosity keeps the sub-conscious mind flashing images to them.

Bad Dreams (Nightmares)

A study says that dreams are the brain's reflexes to a certain sound or surrounding when we are sleeping.  If this is true then I propose a solution for the people who constantly get bad dreams. Bad dreams maybe bad experience or your brain is making up images that you haven't seen before. Then for few days change the room and the bed in which you sleep. Change the environment and you will notice a difference. I talk this from the experiences I have heard in the past. Change the work routine for a day or two, have fun, explore your craziness and sleep in some other room or some other bed. Notice the difference, if it works then let me know :)

Dreaming something you haven't seen before

Everyone knows our brain is far more creative than what we actually think. In our dreams we try to visualise things that we haven't seen before. Now how does this come up in our brain. Now we talking about your right side of the brain contributing to the imagination. So we end up seeing things that we haven't imagined or thought about before. Be it flying or be it a murder or be it some beautiful person :)

Deja vu

Now this is something interesting that happens to almost all of us. We often see a situation or a setup in our dreams. Let some time pass by, we again witness the same situation in real life. We have a 'deja vu'. How does our mind gives us the power to go beyond the limits of time and actually create a picture of the future. It is something that fascinates me because I have experience it a number of times. 

Then I come down to the same question that I asked in the start "Why do we dream while asleep." Is our brain trying to communicate something to us? The power of the human brain is not fully understood.  Dreaming is good (sometimes provides entertainment while sleeping :) ) But is it true that our dreams connect to something meaning ful. Is it a cipher that we are not yet not able to decipher.