Dreams

Dreams are the work of sleep, one of the important ways we integrate memory and emotion.

They occur when cortical inhibition is released enough to allow our subcortical limbic and brainstem regions to have a heyday with imagination and feeling.

The dream itself is an amalgam of memories in search of resolution, leftover elements of the day’s events, sensory inputs while we’re asleep, and simply random images generated by our brain’s wild activity during the rapid-eye-movement (REM) stages of sleep.

Mindsight, Daniel Siegel, 2010.