Why do we have certain dreams? What is our brain doing?

Starting with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Western psychologists have had a lot to say about dreams. (The Interpretation of Dreams, by Freud: O’Neill BF1078 .F748 1999, Dreams by Carl Jung: online at bit.ly/jstor-jung-dreams). Of course, humans have been interpreting dreams for millennia. For a very different perspective, you might also be interested in Ancestral power: the Dreaming, consciousness and aboriginal Australians, by Lynne Hume (O’Neill BL2610 .H86 2002) Neurologists generally take a more functional view: the brain reshuffles neural connections from the recent past to cement memories. The brain also uses certain sleep cycles to rinse toxins out of the brain (bit.ly/science-brainwash) that otherwise might lead to conditions like Huntington’s Disease or Alzheimer’s. IOW your dreams are for brainwashing.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.