“TO sleep, perchance to dream” are words spoken by Hamlet in the play of the same name by William Shakespeare.

I am sure that we are all aware of how important it is to get a good night’s sleep. But did you know that dreaming plays a bigger part in our sleep than has previously been thought?

Can you remember that last dream that you had? And did it make sense to you? I don’t remember my last dream, and when I do remember it doesn’t often make sense to me.

Dreams are by-products of the changes that go on in our brains every night, as the visual and imaginative parts of our brains become more active. People who are born blind can still dream by making up for the lack of visual content by experiencing more sound, taste, smell and touch than sighted people.

Scientists are not sure of the real reason why we dream. Some of the theories include keeping our minds nimble, giving us outlandish scenarios so we can better understand our day-to-day lives and acting as our own overnight therapist or rehearsing for future events. Rahul Jandial believes that all these reasons may be relevant to why we dream. He thinks that our brains have evolved to dream as we have evolved.

When we are dreaming the brain shuts down the body in a sort of chemical paralysis thereby freeing itself to be able to fully experience the dream without us getting injured while the dream is being acted out.

So it seems that dreaming is not an optional extra to the serious business of sleep. Apparently we do need to dream, because if we are deprived of sleep the first thing we do when we catch up with our missing sleep is to catch up with dreaming.

Perhaps , now we know what the benefits of dreaming are we will realise that it is just as important (even if we don’t remember our dreams) as getting a good night’s sleep.

Lesley Pallett, Zenara Therapeutics