It assigns intent where there isn't any, which is a lot of fiction as well - apophenia is one of the driving mechanisms of our conscious and subconscious thought processes so no wonder we see patterns where there are none. Technically speaking, "dreams" are the wargaming of your subconscious. As the acetylcholine rinses away the neural connections that aren't strong enough to survive, it triggers an unconscious replay of all those that are and reinforces the memories and experiences that have value to us as organisms - positive, negative, fight, flight, love, hate, good bad. A dream is your unconscious psyche having a fire drill over something it thinks you'll have to deal with so that when it happens, you'll be ready. A bunch of different connections firing, some washing away in oblivion, some strengthening through repeated views... I can see the similarities. What's different is that there's agency to the dream. There's a greater focus. The whole reason we're having this discussion is Alphabet refuses to be that greater focus. They don't want to be the curator. As such there's a neurobiological similarity but it is not the dreams of a conscious thing. It is the twitches of neurons without a greater brain.
This statement makes clear the intents of some dreams and make others' entirely less clear.A dream is your unconscious psyche having a fire drill over something it thinks you'll have to deal with so that when it happens, you'll be ready.
That's the part that freaks me out though. The fundamental architecture is there. It doesn't have a purpose, but I keep feeling the word "YET" clutching to the end of that statement. I wonder what the electrical signals of the first proto-nerve cells looked like in early multi-cellular organisms.It is the twitches of neurons without a greater brain.