Science · Everyday life explained

Why do we dream?

You spend about six years of your life dreaming. And you forget nearly all of it.

Brain & sleep3 min read5 partsQuiz of 8 questions
Read in the app Available in 30 languages
courtesy of Massachusetts General Hospital and Draper Labs · Neuronal activity DARPA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Part 1 of 5 · freeIntroduction

Every night you spend about two hours dreaming. Over a lifetime that adds up to nearly six years. Yet within seconds of waking, most of those stories vanish.

Scientists still disagree about the “why.” But they know more and more about when we dream, and what the brain is doing at the time: reorganizing memories, testing out scenarios and digesting emotions.

The rest is in the Sophia app.The remaining parts, the open-book quiz and the full glossary. Free to start; Premium unlocks everything.
  1. 2Sleep is not the lights going out
  2. 3What is dreaming for?
  3. 4Why we forget our dreams
  4. 5What about lucid dreams?
Open-book quiz8 questions whose answers are in the text.
Glossary11 terms explained in a tap.
30 languagesThe same course, from French to Japanese.

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