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I am a very pragmatic person.  If something exists, it must exist for a reason, it must be serving some purpose.  I can think of a reason for the existence of nearly everything.  The heart exists to pump blood throughout our bodies.  Boots exist so that our feet don’t freeze off when we trudge to class in through the snow.  Movies exist so that directors, actors, screen writers etc. can make a living (and as a side note, sometimes they are also entertaining). 

Dreams, however, seem to serve no necessary function.  Sure, they might be entertaining while we sleep, but many times we don’t even remember our dreams two minutes after we wake up.  There are theories that dreaming and REM is our brain’s way of sorting and storing the memories of the day.  I have a real problem with this theory because it seems way too abstract.  First of all, memories are not physical things that can be sorted, second of all, even if they could be sorted, why would doing so produce these images in our heads?  There is simple too much unknown and too much speculation for me to accept this theory. 

A theory of dreaming that I am more comfortable with is David Maurice’s REM sleep theory that suggests rapid eye movement supplies oxygen to the cornea of the eye.  Essentially, the rapid eye movements stir the aqueous humor behind the cornea which brings the oxygen to the cornea so that it does not suffocate while we sleep.  This makes sense because when we sleep, our eyes are sealed shut and deprived of oxygen which our corneas need to survive.  Our eyes are also sealed shut and experience REM when we are in the womb.  Why would a fetus need to process memories?  What memories could it possibly have?  Fetal REM does not make any sense under the first theory, but it is sensible to hypothesize that the sealed fetal eyes rapidly move to supply oxygen to the cornea.

Yet, while this theory does offer a convincing explanation for the function of REM, it lacks a solid justification for dreams.  Although I hate to admit it, I might just have to accept that dreams exist simply for our entertainment….at least for now.