Where do dreams come from? Memories? Subconscious desires? Or are they just a bunch of meaningless brain signals?

Throughout the years, scientists have come up with a multitude of theories. Some believe that dreams don’t serve any purpose, whereas others believe that dreaming could be hinting at subconscious thoughts and feelings.

Some of the most famous ideas come from Sigmund Freud, John Allan Hobson, and Robert McCarley.

Sigmund Freud was known as the father of psychoanalysis. He referred to dreaming as the “royal road to the unconscious.” He believed that dreams represent our unconscious thoughts, desires and motivations. Although our conscious minds tend to repress most of these thoughts, they have the ability to make themselves apparent in our dreams.

Freud also came up with the theory that there are two elements of dreams: manifest content (the actual images, thoughts and content one experiences in a dream) and latent content (the potential psychological meaning of the dream).

In 1977, John Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley introduced the activation-synthesis model of dreaming. They theorized that during REM sleep, certain circuits in the brain stem are stimulated, causing areas of the brain associated with emotions, memories, and sensations to activate. The brain’s attempt to create meaning from these signals results in the creation of dreams.

Even CAHS students have their own hypotheses about the origin of dreams. Some agree with the idea that they could potentially hold meaning within them from time to time. “I think that dreams come from your subconscious, and so they can either be complete gibberish, or they actually mean something,” senior Kara Campbell said.

Others think that our dreams are a result of our thoughts and experiences during the day. “I think a lot of what we dream about is what we thought about throughout the day,” junior Rebecca Rossi said. “I think it’s a lot of what we see and where we go and stuff like that.”

So are dreams just the mere result of brain signals, or could they possibly hold deeper meaning? Although there are many theories, the question still remains unanswered.