Oneirology

Many people have opinions about the relevance and meaning of dreaming. These folks are trying to pin down the actual mechanisms.

"The study of oneirology can be distinguished from dream analysis in that the aim is to quantitatively study the process of dreams instead of analyzing the meaning behind them."

This article doesn't deal directly with the implications of the research, but my personal opinion is that it casts a lot of doubt on common mystical notions of what we 'see' when we are asleep. Some of the data on the differences between dreams at different parts of the night is fascinating.