The View From Carnegie 210

I really enjoyed our discussion about dreams from the Sunday Morning episode and hope that the reading on dreams and creativity helped deepen our understanding about dreams. I think there is a natural inclination to think of dreams as indicators of the subconscious (thanks, Freud!) and that we are extremely vulnerable to self-fulfilling prophecies when it comes to trying to interpret our dreams. However, I think research in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience has helped to reveal the very real impact that dreams can have on memory, learning, creativity, and problem solving. I think the biggest benefit to these processes is that, during dreaming, we don't (can't?) impose our normal, well-learned perspective on the world to what we are seeing and feeling. Perhaps this is why we are free to make connections in our dreams that we never would have seen (or allowed ourselves to see) in our waking lives.

While perusing for more information about dreams, I found this interesting Podcast from NPR on The Science Behind Dreams and Nightmares.