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From impossible landscapes to talking animals and supernatural acts, our dreams can be downright bizarre.

Now, a new study suggests that strange events seem normal when we dream because part of our brain has given up trying to work out what is going on.

Italian researchers have controversially linked the weirdness of dreams to psychosis, because people become disconnected to reality and easily jump to the wrong conclusions.

A new study suggests that strange events seem normal when we dream because part of our brain has given up trying to work out what is going on. A stock image of a surreal dream landscape is shown

The study, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, says: 'The story-like organisation of dreams is characterised by a pervasive bizarreness of events and actions that resembles psychotic thought, and largely exceeds that observed in normal waking fantasies.'

Armando D'Agostino of the University of Milan and his team asked 12 volunteers to keep a dream diary in which they described vivid accounts of seven dreams, New Scientist reported. 

They were also asked to write what they did on the same day they had the dream and come up with an unrelated fantasy to go with an image they had been given. 

The researchers scored the dreams using a 'bizarreness' scale they had come up with and discovered that the volunteers' dreams were far stranger than the fantasies they deliberately concocted. 

Italian researchers have controversially linked the weirdness of dreams to psychosis, because people become disconnected to reality and easily jump to the wrong conclusions. A stock image of a dreaming woman is shown

Dr D'Agostino said: 'It seems counterintuitive, but there was almost no bizarreness in fantasies,' adding that people's tales were written within logical constraints. 

A month after completing the diaries, the brain activity of the volunteers were monitored using an fMRI scanner. 

The dreamers listened to their own narrative reports and attempted to relive the experiences. 

The experts found that the dreams and fantasies seemed to activate regions in the right hemisphere of the brain, usually associated with processing words and meanings, as well as reasoning. 

'In respect to non-bizarre reports of daytime activities, the script-driven recall of dreams and fantasies differentially activated a right hemisphere network including areas in the inferior frontal gyrus and superior and middle temporal gyrus,' the study says. 

Interestingly, the activity decreased the stranger the stories or dreams became, as if the brain was giving up trying to understand them. 

'Neural responses were significantly greater for fantasies than for dreams in all regions, and inversely proportional to the degree of bizarreness observed in narrative reports,' the study says.

Commenting on the research, which was published in the Journal of Sleep Research, Patrick McNamara at Boston University said that dreams may be stranger because they might act as symbols in a process that stores memories, so that weirdness may result from the brain's attempts to symbolise strong or confusing emotions. 

However, Bill Domhoff of the University of California, Santa Cruz told the publication that because not all dreams are strange, dreaming can't be said to be hallucinatory and psychotic. 'It is an intensified form of mind-wandering,' he added.

The experts found that the dreams and fantasies seemed to activate regions in the right hemisphere of the brain (illustrated above), usually associated with processing words and meanings, as well as reasoning