Dreaming as a experience-sorting mechanism

"We think of our Mind as being ours, but the brain has a set of rules of its own for picking out memory traces to reactivate and bring into our conscious Mind, and in studies like this, we’re tricking the brain into showing us some of those rules,” Stickgold says. “Memory is stored in different ways throughout the cortex, and during sleep the brain is literally acting like a computer’s Web browser, incorporating new experience by sorting through different memory systems to form associations and connections that help us make sense of the world.”