The New York Times reports on a new study that seems to indicate that dreaming may indicate that the brain is trying to continue learning while we sleep.  Further, it may help us learn:

"'It might be that sleep is the time when the brain is tuned to find those types of association you wouldn’t notice during waking,' Dr.Stickgold said. 'It does this by focusing on weak associations. If that’s the case, the dreams you have in REM sleep might be so bizarre for exactly the same reasons. It’s not that the dreams make no sense.They make wacky sense.'"

Read the rest here .