Dreams

Before reading this mini essay on dreams, I would like to briefly remind you to sign up for my writing contest here. It took me less than thirty seconds to fill out the form, and you have two more weeks to put together a submission. Writers of all levels are welcome! Learn more here.
Also, a quick apology for the new header picture. It's been cut off, and I'm working on that.
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          Dreams. We’ve all experienced them when we lay down our head and say ‘Good Night.’ To Sigmund Freud, dreams were unconscious wishes. He thought that something was wrong if you had boring dreams or constant nightmares.
          Since Freund, many more theories as to why we dream have been drawn up. One possibility would be that we dream to practice responses to certain situations. Finnish Cognitive scientist Antti Revonsuo displayed that the amygdala (the fight or flight portion of our brain) is more at work during our dreams. Revonsuo and others believe that, because of the changes in the amygdala, we are practicing those reflexes.
          Some scientists see that dreams could be when our brain goes through and cleans off what we need to forget and saves what we need to remember. They reached this conclusion because the brain is much more random during this dreamy la-la land. This randomness could be our mind’s attempt to find old memories to clean out to make room for new information.
          Still other scientists believe that there is no meaning to our dreams. Maybe there is no conscious behind the film, maybe it is our consciousness that wants to see this unknown meaning.
          You, too, may have a theory on why we dream. There are so many; how will we ever know which one, if any, is the true reason? I’ll let you sleep- or, shall I say, dream- on that.

Ilana Simons. "What Do Dreams Do for Us?" Psychology Today. N.p., 11 Nov. 2009. Web.