If put on the spot at a Hollywood pitch meeting, very few of us could instantly come up with a detailed plot for a highly compelling movie, with believable dialogue, scenes in places we may never have been, fantasy sequences, and rich symbolism.

And yet, we do something like this every time we fall asleep.

From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd.

Scientists say we all dream, even if we wake with no memory of it. Specific imagery and

events may vary, but we all have scary dreams, sex dreams, dreams of returning to school,

and dreams of trying over and over to do some simple thing. The way we make meaning of dreams

may vary by culture, but the essential content is remarkably similar across

cultures. So what does this tell us about our brains and do they somehow need to dream in order

to function? Dr. Rahul Jandyal is a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist. He oversees the Jondial

lab at City of Hope Cancer Center in Los Angeles, and through his

nonprofit organization, International Neurosurgical Children's Association, he performs and teaches

brain surgery in underserved hospitals in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe.

His book is called This Is Why You Dream, what your sleeping brain reveals about your waking life.

Rahul, welcome to think.

Oh, it's a pleasure to be on.

So you write that dreams are a different form of thinking.

Our brains might be more active when we're asleep than when we're awake.

Certain features of our minds and brains have a top speed only the dreaming brain can achieve.

So just to jump into that, the emotional systems and structures of our brain are called

limbic structures. It's not one spot in the brain. It's a collection. It's a symphony of different instruments, if you will. And the dreaming brain, this is a measurement, not my interpretation, can have more metabolic usage of glucose in those structures than the waking brain. So the top speed of our emotions, if you will, is higher, is faster than the top speed of our emotions during the day.

So I think those kind of insights give us a sense of why dreams feel so real and why they're so

often emotional and wild and passionate and awkward.

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