00:00Last night, your brain built an entire world, a world with characters, conflict,
00:04impossible physics, and a story that felt completely real while it was happening.
00:08And then the second you woke up, it started dissolving, like it was never there at all.
00:13We do this every single night, we just don't know why.
00:15Humans have been dreaming for as long as we have existed,
00:19and yet we still don't have one clean agreed upon answer for why it happens.
00:23Some scientists think dreams are your brain's way of processing emotions,
00:27others think they are rehearsal for danger.
00:28By the end of this video you will understand the leading choice researchers actively take seriously,
00:33and you will never look at your own dreams the same way again.
00:36There is one specific chemical your brain almost completely shuts over while you were dreaming,
00:41and that single switch might explain why brains felt so emotionally intense,
00:45and why some of your worst memories feel a little less painful after you sleep on them.
00:50We will come back to them.
00:51Understand dreaming you first need to understand that not all sleep is the same.
00:55Your brain cycles through different stages each night,
00:57moving from slight sleep into deep restorative sleep,
01:00and then into a stage of REM sleep rapid eye movement.
01:03During REM sleep your eyes dart back and forth under your closed eye day,
01:07and your brain becomes almost as active as when you unwind away.
01:10This is a stage where your most revert story-like dreams tend to happen.
01:14During REM sleep your body is essentially paralyzed,
01:17your brain is running a full simulation, but your arms and legs stay still,
01:21so you don't physically act out whatever happening in the dream.
01:24So what is actually going on in there?
01:26One of the leetic explanations is called the activation synthesis hypothesis.
01:30The idea is that during REM sleep,
01:32certain circuits deep in your brain's dream fire somewhat randomly,
01:35and your brain which seems loose and tries to make sense of all
01:38that random activity by waving it into a story.
01:41In other words, a dream might be your brain's attempt to narrate its noise,
01:44but that is not the only theory, and it might not be the whole figure.
01:48Researchers have also found that brain regions are tied to memory and emotion,
01:52like the hippocampus and the amygdala, light up heavily during REM sleep.
01:56That led some sleep scientists to propose that dreaming helps you process difficult
02:00memories and emotions overnight, almost like unpaired theory you get while unconscious.
02:05This is where tattoos from earlier comes back in.
02:07During REM sleep researchers have found that your brain is likely free of stress,
02:11chemical neural adrenaline, which your body normally chooses to trigger that sharp,
02:16anxious, fight-or-flight feeling.
02:17One theory from sleep researchers suggests that this chemical deep is exactly why REM
02:21dreaming can take some of the emotional strength out of painful memories.
02:25There is also a theory called Threat Simulation Theory,
02:27which suggests dreaming might be an ancient survival tool.
02:30The idea is that by dreaming of dangerous high-stakes scenarios,
02:34being chased falling for losing someone,
02:35your brain gets a kind of low-stakes practice run for real threats without any of the real-world risk.
02:40And then there is the theory for memory.
02:42Some research has linked REM sleep from memory consolidation,
02:45the process of solving and strengthening what you learn better.
02:48Under this idea, the screen jump hit imaginary in your dreams.
02:51Might be your brain pulling up stored memories,
02:53almost a random while it quickly flies them away for better.
02:57None of these stories fully explain everything.
02:59Scientists still don't know why some people daily remember their dreams,
03:02while others remember them in vivid detail.
03:04They still don't fully understand why animals experience REM sleep too.
03:08Even though we have no real way of knowing whether they dream the way we do,
03:12so that chemical switch we mention in the snow.
03:14The deep unknown adrenaline during REM sleep is not just a random battle to conclude.
03:18It may be one of the biggest clues we have for why dreaming exists at all.
03:22A likely window where your brain can revisit memory and emotion.
03:25If the volume turned down, process what the day left behind,
03:28and maybe even rehearse for what is take home.
03:30We don't have the full answer yet, but every theory is pointing toward the same idea.
03:35Dreaming is not random noise.
03:36It is your brain working even when you are doing nothing at all.
03:39Think back to your last time you can actually remember.
03:41Was it something stressful like being chased or unprepared for something?
03:45Drop it in the comments and I will let you with your review from this video it bells for you.
