Dreaming has always been a mystical affair with people; letting them travel and experience things that may be foreign to them. But in addition to giving people a sense of exploration, new research found that dreams may also take away some of the hurt when it comes to emotionally painful experiences.

According to Matthew Walker, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley, and senior author of the study, during the phase of sleep when people dream, or Rapid Eye Movement sleep phase, stress chemistry is shut off and the brain can process emotional experiences without the painful edge of difficult memories.

Walker added that dreaming is like a form of overnight therapy which removes the sharp edges from the prior day's emotional experiences.

For their study, Walker cited that during REM sleep, memories are being reactivated, put in perspective, connected, and integrated in a state where stress neurochemicals are suppressed.

With this in mind, the researchers got 35 healthy young adult participants. These participants were divided into two groups and were asked to view 150 emotional images twice a day, 12 hours apart, while an MRI scanner measured their brain activity.

Half of the participants viewed the images in the morning and again in the evening, and were asked to stay awake between the two viewings, while the other half viewed the images in the evening and again the next morning after a full night's sleep.

Under these parameters, the researchers found that those who slept in between image viewing had a significant decrease in their emotional reaction to the images. Not only that, their MRI scans also showed a significant reduction in the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions. This permitted the rational part of the brain to regain control of the person's emotional reactions.

In addition to these findings, the researchers said that during REM dream sleep, levels of stress neurochemicals in the brain were reduced and that the brain soothed emotional reaction to the previous day's experience.

But aside from dulling emotionally painful memories, dreams have also been proven to help people when it comes to coping with stress and dealing with depressions, according to Neil Osterweil of WebMD.com.

Similar to the findings of Walker, Rosalind Cartwright, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology at Rush University in Chicago, said that dreaming is almost like having an internal therapist because people get to associate feelings to it, and that it can help people work through their emotions.

In other sleep studies wherein divorced women with untreated clinical depression were examined, Cartwright and colleagues found that these women who dreamt about their relationships scored better on tests of mood in the morning, alleviating some of their depression.

Now watch this video of Abba's "I have a dream":