The debate about whether prophetic dreams exist has been going on for more than one century. Alexander Kaplan, head of the laboratory of neurocomputer interfaces at Moscow State University, spoke in an interview with the Morning of Russia program about what modern science thinks about this.
From the point of view of science, what we dream is the result of our experiences and expectations. At the same time, one of the "regular" functions of the brain is to predict the future based on existing experience. Therefore, in principle, there is nothing supernatural in seeing in a dream a likely development of events or a solution to a long-tormented problem.
The “mystical” function of sleep as a whole has a fairly simple explanation. As Alexander Kaplan explained, the brain is, in principle, capable of predicting something in the waking state. However, this is difficult due to the plethora of distractions and extraneous thoughts. The sleep state works like a filter - it cuts out everything that is secondary, leaving only important facts for processing.
As for the stories common in popular rumor about the prophetic dreams of famous people - for example, how Mikhail Lomonosov dreamed of the place of his father's death - here, according to Alexander Kaplan, one must not forget that they are largely based on later memories. Therefore, it is difficult to say exactly how everything was in reality, whether memory distorted real experiences and whether the psychological phenomenon “lying as an eyewitness” worked. In general, in such cases, we are not talking about the fact as such, but about the text dedicated to it, and everyone invests in the interpretation of the texts what he wants to see there.