Sweet dreams are made of this

In his time, Artemidorus Daldianus was a highly regarded man. He was a dream doctor, and in the second century A.D. his fellow Greeks considered dreams to be encoded messages from the gods. Deciphering them required an expert, with Artemidorus chief among them.

Artemidorus declared that all dreams were not created equal, however. If the nocturnal visions could be explained from past events in the sleeper's life, the good doctor wrote them off as meaningless constructions of the individual's experiences and mental orientation; these dreams were not secrets of the gods. Artemidorus himself would never have imagined that, with this idea, he had anticipated a core debate that would arise some 1,700 years later.

The physician who sparked that debate was none other than Sigmund Freud. According to his monumental 1899 work, The Interpretation of Dreams, our nighttime hallucinations are activated by subconscious wishes that can burst forth from behind the protective veil

of sleep. Freud's contention was just that, however--a hypothesis, one that neurologists of the day could never prove despite a flurry of scientific investigation. Freud lacked the answer to the ancient question, "What does the brain do when we enter the dreamworld?" And it frustrated him. He openly wished for neurological evidence, worked at it himself and even said that such information would likely supersede his psychological theories about dreams. But he lacked the science and tools needed to find it.

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