Ever wondered why we dream?

Sleep is super important for our brains, helping us remember things, learn, and function well. The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis (OBH) is a cool idea that suggests dreams, which happen during different parts of our sleep, play a key role in making our brains work better. Dreams do this by providing unique and unusual experiences that help our brains become more flexible and adaptable.

When we sleep, our brains go through different stages, and one of these stages, called slow wave sleep (SWS), is important for cleaning up waste and balancing our brain connections. The OBH focuses on the purpose of dreams, which have special features like being very imaginative, feeling very real, and telling a story. Some people think dreams help us handle our emotions or solidify memories, but the evidence isn't super clear and doesn't explain all the cool things dreams do.

The OBH suggests that dreams are like adding a pinch of randomness to our brains to help them work better. Dreams are thought to be created by random signals traveling through different layers of our brains and activating certain networks. Because dreams are so different from what we experience during the day, they help our brains avoid getting stuck in a rut.

There's evidence from both brain science and computer learning that supports the OBH. In brain science, studies have found that dreaming about tasks can make us better at them and that sleep affects how well we can generalize and abstract information. In computer learning, techniques that add randomness to artificial brains (like the ones used in self-driving cars) are similar to how dreams work in our brains. This suggests that dreams might be a mix of these techniques.

The OBH offers some interesting ideas that researchers can test, like whether giving artificial brains dream-like experiences helps them learn better, or whether making people practice something too much without enough variety can cause problems. The OBH also suggests that things like movies and books might work like "artificial dreams," helping our brains stay flexible and adaptable. This could explain why humans are so drawn to stories and art - maybe they're not just for fun, but they actually help our brains work better!