Throughout your entire lifetime, you will spend about six full years dreaming! If you do the math, that’s about two hours of dreaming every night. However, you may not always remember them, since most people forget 95% of their dreams shortly after waking up. So what exactly happens when we dream?

The limbic system in the center of the brain is in charge of emotion. When you are dreaming, a portion of the limbic system known as the amygdala causes you to feel different emotions such as anger, fear, and aggression. This is why you may still feel agitated after waking up from a nightmare.

Since humans are visual creatures, you are also able to “see” things when you dream, even if your eyes are closed! The visual cortex in the back of the brain is activated, allowing you to “see” things in the dream world.

The majority of dreams happen during a stage of sleep known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. In this stage, your eyes move quickly in different directions, similar to how they would move if you were awake and looking around. Brain activity is increased, while muscle activity is reduced. Your body may also experience temporary paralysis in order to prevent injury when acting out vivid dreams.

Usually, dreams do not make perfect sense. This is because the frontal lobe of your brain is inactive when you dream. Your frontal lobe is responsible for judgement and logic. As a result, you simply accept what is happening and you don’t even acknowledge the nonsense!
After reading all of this, you may be wondering exactly why you dream. In actuality, no one is certain about their purpose. Some researchers believe that they help us store memories and deal with emotions. Other theories suggest that they provide a form of therapy, or that they boost creativity. As of right now, there is no general agreement, but dreams are definitely something that generates a lot of curiosity!