Dreams often seem to play out like a low-budget arthouse film — bewildering plotlines; the same actor playing several roles; an abrupt end before a satisfying conclusion can be reached. Yet, according to one neuroscientist, the very absurdity of dreams might actually help us think more efficiently.
Whenever we learn something, the brain experiences a tug-of-war between memorization and generalization. We often need to retain the details of explicit facts, but if we over-memorize we lose the ability to apply the knowledge to other scenarios. “It’s like you’ve learned all of the specific answers for a test but none of the gist,” says Erik Hoel, a neuroscientist at Tufts University.
