Dreaming

Dreaming is the perception of sensory images during sleep, in a sequence which the sleeper/dreamer usually perceives more as an apparent participant than an observer. Dreaming is stimulated by the pons and mostly occurs during the REM phase of sleep.

People have proposed many hypotheses about the functions of dreaming. Sigmund Freud postulated that dreams are the symbolic expression of frustrated desires that had been relegated to the subconscious, and he used dream interpretation in the form of psychoanalysis to uncover these desires. Scientists have become skeptical about the Freudian interpretation, and place more emphasis on dreaming as a requirement for organization and consolidation of recent memory and experience. See Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams