What Stuff Dreams Are Made Of
It increasingly appears that it's memories, in large part anyway. That's always kind of made sense to me: a sorting out of the day's events for merging and storage in the archives.
Makes sense to me anyway.
My wife calls them "defrag" dreams.
It's surprising to me how long our picture of dreaming, and intelligence in general, is taking to develop. Neurologists as a group are incredibly cautious, it would seem. Most of what's being published lately has been in support of a model that has long been viewed as likely being the correct, and hence presumeably the most highly explored, theory of how the brain works.
This new study isn't at all ground-breaking as far as providng any new understanding of brain functioning. What it does is help confirm the hypothesis that has prevailed for years. Not to detract from the researchers. This first-class work.
What are "stuff dreams"?
(sorry...)
Dean, it makes sense to me too. Though if that's the case, then I must have some pretty weird memories to sort out.
There was a dream I had with the nasty little killing demons from Stephen King's "The Mist." We fought them off and took refuge in a room where the Backstreet Boys were practicing, so I decided to go back out and fight the monsters... :)
Just typed out my last vivid dream to post here and then thought . . . much better not. All I can say is that if my dreams are composed of memories, my waking life must be a lot stranger than I know.