That dreams are like the garbage disposal for our minds. We take in so much sensory information as we go about our days, in addition to running our inner psychodramas, that I think our brains grind up all that sensory input to sort of rinse it away.
And there have been tons of studies about the critical importance of REM sleep for maintaining mental health. The idea that our bodies have to sort of go "off-line" for a few hours each day so our operating systems can run diagnostics and make a few repairs makes perfect sense to me.
A couple of months ago, my laptop was giving me a hard time and I kept getting "memory full" messages. But I didn't have any documents or game applications cluttering up the drive and was confused. Some knowledgeable acquaintances suggested it was because I had had my computer on for days at a time-- ironically, listening to relaxing music because I wasn't sleeping well--and that my computer's temporary stockpile of ROM or whatever needed to be emptied by shutting down my computer for a significant period of time. A quick restart wouldn't do the trick, apparently. Well, I did as instructed and my computer stopped with the annoying memory messages.
My only question now is why depression causes me to either sleep too much or too little.
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