Alice Robb is an American science journalist who has written for the Washington Post and the New Republic. Her new book, Why We Dream, encourages us to rethink the importance of dreams and to become dream interpreters ourselves.

Writing a book about dreams turned you into a “magnet for confessions”. Why are people compelled to talk about dreams?
It is a natural impulse because dreams are emotional, affect moods, feel profound. What is unusual is that we live in a culture where we’re expected to forget our dreams. We have this cliche that it is boring to talk about dreams.

Between 1970 and 2000 you note that no research about dreaming was published in the top US journal, Science. Is that because it was looked down upon as a topic or the technical challenges involved in studying it?
For most of the 20th century, researchers who wanted to study dreams had to rely on people’s descriptions of them – not the most perfect form of evidence. It didn’t help that psychologists were trying very hard to have their discipline seen as a “real” science; they were trying to distance themselves from Freud, who had put dreams at the centre of psychoanalysis.

I think this is a case of technological advances enabling a shift in attitude. Once scientists saw that it was possible to study dreams with neuroimaging, they were able to start asking questions about what’s going on in the brain when we dream. There were a couple of big breakthroughs in the 1990s and early 2000s that helped make dreams a valid topic of scientific inquiry. Neuroscientist Matt Wilson discovered that rats’ brains kept working as they slept, replaying a maze they had run through during the day. And Robert Stickgold, a psychiatrist at Harvard, found that people who played Tetris in the lab would dream of the game at night.

What is your prescription for those of us who do not remember our dreams?
Believe your dreams have value and tell yourself before bed you want to remember them. Keep a dream journal, which does not have to be a pen and paper – you could speak your dream into a phone in the morning – plenty of apps help with that. But get into a habit, set things up the night before to reinforce your goal. Sound sleepers who conk out at midnight and wake at eight are less likely to remember their dreams. But they get other benefits so I don’t feel so sorry for them. If you wake in the middle of the night, you’ll have more opportunities to remember. Jot down a couple of points. Integrate dreams into your daily life. Talk about them – if you can find someone to listen. Read about dreams or reflect on an image that comes from a dream during the day – just don’t dismiss them.

Have you ever taken a decision based on a dream?
I have – in relationships – but I’m not sure I’d want the details in the Observer!

What is ‘lucid dreaming’?
In lucid dreams, you become aware you’re dreaming. You can take control of the plot. They can be anything from a brief moment where you’re in a nightmare and tell yourself: “this is a dream” and wake up. That experience is fairly common. But there are also people who lucid dream constantly. People dream so differently. I’ve had people ask: “Are there people who can’t control their dreams?” Some learn to lucid dream and unlock different layers. It is extremely cool and mind-bending when it happens to you – an alternate reality that feels real. It is no mystery that people become obsessed with it.

Recently there’s been a massive interest in the science of sleep. Sleep plays a role in maintaining our mental health. Are dreams part of that process?
Dreams play a big role in helping us cope with stress, grief and trauma. Most of our dreams are actually unpleasant: the most common emotions in dreams include fear, guilt, anxiety and helplessness. Dreams are an opportunity to work through things that frighten us in real life, to play out worst-case scenarios in an environment where they have no consequences. Changes in sleep and dreaming might even aggravate mood disorders: depression is associated with a drop in dream recall. In one study, women who dreamed about their exes while going through a divorce were more likely to feel they had got over the break-up a year later. People who are in mourning often have vivid dreams about the person who has died, and say these dreams help them accept the loss.

Why should we suppose our unconscious mind to be a more trustworthy authority on our problems than our conscious one – especially when the majority of dreams are negative?
I’m glad you brought that up – four out of five dreams are more negative than positive. The most common feelings in dreams are fear and anxiety. There is a difference between anxiety dreams and nightmares. Anxiety dreams can be helpful – one theory is that we are working through our anxieties and more able to see what stresses us during the day.

I met someone at a dream conference who claimed to make all his decisions based on dreams and, although he seemed fine, I wouldn’t recommend that. In order to get through the day, we have to edit out so much of what is going on around us, and if we pay attention to our subconscious and our dreams we get a different angle on our lives and issues.

Can you talk a little about the research into the role of dreaming in learning, for example in languages or sports?
Dreaming helps us consolidate new memories: we replay salient experiences from the day, reinforcing new pathways in our brains. If rats run through a new maze, for example, their neurons will fire in the same pattern when they sleep afterwards. In one study, people enrolled in a French-language intensive course had an increase in REM sleep and dreams while they were studying: their brains were working overtime to master a new language, and that work continued in their sleep.

Has anyone explained why dreams contain such surreal elements, weird collages of time, people, geography and so on?
When we dream, the logic centres of our brain – the frontal lobes – go dark, and chemicals associated with self-control, like serotonin and norepinephrine, drop. At the same time, the emotion centres light up: we have a perfect chemical canvas for dramatic, psychologically intense visions. But most dreams are actually less bizarre than people think. The dreams we wonder about and talk about are the crazy ones, but when psychologists analysed hundreds of dream reports, they found that most of them could have passed for descriptions of the dreamers’ real lives; four out of five were set in real places the dreamers recognised. Our dreams also change over the course of the night – the dreams we have at the beginning of the night are more like replays of things that have happened that day, whereas the dreams we have closer to morning are the ones that are longer, more story-like and intense.

What’s the difference between night dreaming and mind-wandering or daydreaming… are the same regions of the brain involved?
Snapshots of the dreaming brain and the daydreaming brain look somewhat similar: both involve cognitive regions like the medial prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe. During night-dreams, the areas responsible for visual processing are particularly engaged – you can think of dreams as intensified, super-visual daydreams. (Dreams are primarily visual and only rarely include senses like smell, taste and touch.)

While you were writing your book what was the most surprising piece of research you uncovered about dreaming?
I particularly enjoyed learning about cultures and times in which dreams have been taken more seriously. In the 1880s, a popular American newspaper hosted a “best dream” competition for its readers. As recently as the 1960s, an English psychiatrist set up “premonitions bureaus” to try to predict world events based on people’s dreams.

Where do you place yourself on the spectrum spanning Freud and his interpretation of dreams and Hobson, who believed dreams were ‘just the product of biology’?
I don’t think these ideas are mutually exclusive. You can say dreams have a biological cause and an emotional impact. Hobson kept a dream journal and found meaning in his dreams. But Freud plays a complicated role. He is absolutely right that dreams reveal our subconscious and sometimes show our desires but the idea that dreams were always about sex – I definitely don’t agree with that and think it is because that idea took hold that people are still embarrassed to talk about their dreams. Several studies show that a surprisingly small proportion of our dreams have sexual content, although this differs from person to person.

You say neglecting to consider our dreams is like “throwing away a gift from our brains without bothering to open it.” What is the gift?
When we’re dreaming, we’re thinking in a state we never have access to by day. Dreams offer the opportunity to think in a different way and show new answers to problems, they often contain the seeds of something important. They show us blind spots, help us home in on things we might be neglecting in our personal lives. For me, dreams inspire awe, make me appreciate my brain and enjoy sleep more. I’m more excited to go to sleep now I can remember my dreams.

• Why We Dream: The Science, Creativity and Transformative Power of Dreams by Alice Robb is published by Pan Macmillan (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99