Neuroscientists posit an answer to the question of
why
do we dream? (via A&L)
But Flanagan says your brain's sleep-time work of storing important thoughts
into long-term memory, and discarding trivia, is the stuff dreams are made
of. Here's how it works: Part of the brain, the cerebral cortex, works
during waking hours to make sense of, and to form a narrative structure from,
the complex sensory data we experience. Again, this seems biologically
advantageous. The cortex doesn't shut down, though, when we go to sleep.
It keeps doing its job, trying to cobble together the most coherent narrative
it can from all those thoughts that are floating around.