I would reverse your statement: when we dream, we are engaging in un-prompted confabulation, enaction of imaginary scenarios with known characters, pondering an

I would reverse your statement: when we dream, we are engaging in un-prompted confabulation, enaction of imaginary scenarios with known characters, pondering and replaying emotional or stressful events, back-propagating to update memory associations, and all in imaginary worlds unconstrained by various logical and physical laws. Unprompted meaning we have shut down almost all sensory input (there seems to be some residual hearing and proprioception).