And hello to you and welcome to the Friday bonus episode. Now, last month on the Patreon podcast,

I was talking about dreams, why we have them, what the brain is doing during sleep and whether

dreams actually mean anything or if they're just the brain sorting through information from

the day.

And I wanted to add a little bit extra for you today,

because if dreams really are just the brain processing information,

you might expect them to look a bit like normal life.

A conversation here, a memory there,

maybe replaying something that happened during the day.

And although there is a lot of that, if you wake someone up during REM sleep and ask them about their dream,

they often say, I was just at work at my desk.

And you think, ugh, you did the worst part of your day again.

And actually, yeah, we do that a lot.

But that's not what we remember about our dreams, is it?

Instead, you might be in your childhood home,

talking to someone you work with while your old school teacher walks past,

holding a penguin for some reason.

And nobody in the dream thinks that's strange,

even you, until you wake up and realize how ridiculous it was. And the ridiculousness of it

means you're more likely to remember it, just like you would in the waking world. Now, part of the

reason for this is the way the brain behaves during REM sleep.

The emotional centres of the brain are highly active, particularly the amygdala, which deals with fear and emotional reactions.

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