Question: Why can our dreams feel real?

Damien Hall answered on 18 Jun 2011:

(I’m not a psychologist, but …) I think that our dreams can feel real because we use the same mechanisms to know there is a real world, as we use to experience our dreams. It seems to me that the only way we know there is a world at all is that we perceive it through our senses, and we know what they tell us because the impressions they give us come through our brain. Now, when we’re asleep, a lot of our senses are dulled (like being turned down, though they’re not turned off because we can still be woken up by a loud noise, a strong smell, a bright light etc) – and we don’t have the external input to those senses. However, the brain is still working, and the mind (or whatever the thing that perceives is called) can’t tell the difference between what we perceive when we are awake and what our brain imagines when we are asleep. Both things are just brain-waves, and so the brain reacts the same to both of them. So you could say that the real world feels like a dream! The point is, they are both perceived in the same way.

I don’t know whether that makes sense, but it seems plausible to me!