Last night I experienced a myriad of dreams (most of which I have already forgotten) and a sudden stroke of genius.

We drive the storyline of our own dreams through our emotions. While we sleep, there is no visual stimulus from the external world. Our frontal lobes "shut down" or at least adopt an ancillary role. The more primitive regions of the brain that are involved with emotion take the reins. The remarkable fact is that these "emotions" must somehow be translated into images by the occipital lobe. The dream's "plot" is driven by how we interpret these images, which I suspect might use a mechanism that is similar to the "left brain interpreter:"

Split Brain Experiment

^The above is a landmark experiment in psychology. It confirmed that the hemispheres of the brain are specialized. Take a moment to try and understand what it is being demonstrated. Realize that instead of the more parsimonious explanation that a shovel be used to shovel snow, split brain patients "concocted" a more elaborate story that connects the chicken and the shovel.

The implication is that our "left brain interpreter" (which is probably more of a concept than a distinct region of the brain) tries to make sense of the world even if its conclusions are not based on reality.

I believe this same phenomenon is at work in dreams. Our brain automatically creates a seemingly reasonable story that links unrelated images. This is why most of us are incapable (most of the time) of even being aware that we are dreaming.

Another sweet implication is that our interpretations can feed back into the images! If our interpreter perceives an image or scenario as threatening, this will activate a fear response which will then be translated into more threatening images. Taken to an extreme, I believe this may account for phenomena such as "throat paralysis." The opposite is also probably true--if we perceive a scenario calmly or pleasurably, these signals will be translated into more images of this sort.

While this might be blatantly obvious upon further thought, I never made the connection explicitly until now.

The other observation that I have noticed before (and experienced last night) is "mini-dreaming." As the night progresses, the length of REM sleep increases. Consequently, it is rather common to experience intense, vivid dreams in rapid succession in the morning. The emotion stimulus of the dreams will wake you up, but since you are still weary, it is easy to fall back asleep and reenter REM right away. I'm sure many of you have experienced this firsthand. It is very fun.