Here's more evidence that sleep, including napping, can make you smarter.

Dreaming may improve memory, boost creativity, and help you better plan for the future, new research suggests.

In a recent study, people who took naps featuring REM sleep–in which dreams are most vivid–performed better on creativity-oriented word problems. That is, the REM, or rapid eye movement, sleep helped people combine ideas in new ways, according to psychiatrist Sara Mednick, who led the study.

Read more on NationalGeographic.com

Lauren Lawrence, dreams columnist for the New York Daily News, gave a little insight into what we really desire based on what we often dream of.

According to Lawrence, dreams are a way we handle conflict resolution. They are important to our daily lives because whatever we may be anxious about or might be stressing us out, we work out in our dreams.

If you remember a specific dream more than others, Lawrence says it is more important to you. If you have dreams about specific things such as teeth, it has a meaning that you may not expect.

Read more on CBSNews.com

Dream groups are cropping up all over the UK as people seek an alternative route to self-enlightenment. The quest to interpret nocturnal visions may not be new, but the global fascination with the dream industry certainly is.

Carole Murray, a dream therapist and hypnotherapist, said her clients often come because they want help analysing a dream that has affected them deeply. "Women come more than men. They come from all sectors and from all ages. Most people have a good degree of intelligence about them," she said. "The benefits are that you know yourself better; you can work things out – who you're angry at, for example."

Read more on Independent.co.uk

Nightmares resulting from traumatic events usually fade over time, as the haunting images and terrifying plots become less intense. The dreams may also naturally evolve into what some specialists call "mastery dreams," in which the dreamer has found a way to ease the pain or horror – say, confronting a rapist or saving someone from a fire.

But when that does not happen of its own accord, many therapists use behavioral interventions to reduce nightmares or guide the waking patient toward having a mastery dream – using the conscious mind to control the wild ways of the unconscious.

Some of these techniques have been in use for years. In one treatment, known as lucid dreaming, patients are taught to become aware that they are dreaming while the dream is in progress.

Read more on NYTimes.com

Also check out: Following a Script to Escape a Nightmare

Dream groups are similar to book groups, but the themes and plotlines discussed come not from 19th-century novels or the latest best seller but from the members' unconscious minds. Over wine and cheese or perhaps a potluck meal, individuals engage in the opposite of idle chitchat. By recounting their dreams, they expose their most vulnerable and uncensored selves — often discovering buried fears and desires in the process. The revelations, they hope, will help them live better waking lives.

"Messages in dreams come through disguised so cleverly and with so much meaning on many levels," said artist Joan Son, 61, who is known for intricate installations composed of hundreds of origami butterflies and cranes. "For me it's like opening a hidden well."

Read more on NYTimes.com

How many pet owners have gotten a chuckle out of watching their dog sleep while its paws race frenetically in place?

Many figured that Rover was romping somewhere in dreamland, and scientists say they were right: Pets do dream while sleeping. Read the rest of this article

The slumbering mind might not seem like an apt tool for any critical thinking, but humans can actually solve problems while asleep, researchers say. Not only that, but one purpose for dreaming itself may be to help us find solutions to puzzles that plague us during waking hours.

Dreams are highly visual and often illogical in nature, which makes them ripe for the type of "out-of-the-box" thinking that some problem-solving requires, said Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard University. Read the rest of this article

Question: I always face a problem of dreaming while sleeping at night. Thus, I cannot have a good quality of sleep, and I feel tired the next day. How can I stop dreaming?

Answer: Your question is unusual, because dreaming is an important part of good sleep and is also essential to good health. I discussed your situation with Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., a psychologist and author who specializes in integrative sleep and dream medicine, which he approaches from both a scientific and a spiritual perspective. He is on the faculty of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine. Read the rest of this entry »

"Am I awake or am I dreaming?" I ask myself for probably the hundredth time. I am fully awake, just like all the other times I asked, and to be honest I am beginning to feel a bit silly. All week I have been performing this "reality check" in the hope that it will become so ingrained in my mind that I will start asking it in my dreams too.

If I succeed, I will have a lucid dream – a thrilling state of consciousness somewhere between waking and sleeping in which, unlike conventional dreams, you are aware that you are dreaming and able to control your actions. Once you have figured this out, the dream world is theoretically your oyster, and you can act out your fantasies to your heart's content.

Journalistic interest notwithstanding, I am pursuing lucid dreaming for entertainment. To some neuroscientists, however, the phenomenon is of profound interest, and they are using lucid dreamers to explore some of the weirder aspects of the brain's behaviour during the dream state (see "Dream mysteries"). Their results are even shedding light on the way our brains produce our rich and complex conscious experience. Read the rest of this article

Are our dreams — those wild, fantastic and definitely uncensored jumbles of images that bombard us in our sleep — just a retweet of our day's events, or are they more?

And can you open your mind to the possibility that your dreams might actually come bearing gifts — valuable gifts that could help you gain guidance, solve problems and figure out your magic formula for meeting the man of your dreams or getting the raise you've been seeking? Read the rest of this article