My idea on dreams in one's sleep -- why we do it, what its function is, what its mechanism is
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    I read some long time ago a sentence: "our worries and anxieties work to compensate for our dreams". Except now I can't remember if this above was what I read, or else this is what I read: "our dreams work to compensate for our anxieties and worries". It put my mind to task, what the author could have meant by it.

    Another theory that helped me to develop my theory or hypothesis on dreams is the notion that memory develops by re-hashing the same thing in one's mind over and over.

    Another theory that helped me to develop my theory or hypothesis on dreams is the notion that you always know and can plan for what you will worry about tomorrow, pending of course new things to worry about if they happen in the course of the next day; IN CONTRAST you never know what your dream will be about tonight (or any future night).

    0000000000000

    This gave me the idea that dreams are scramblers. If we constantly rehash an event, there is no room in our minds to rehash new, other events. So potentially we could only develop one single memory in our lives.

    This is what dream does. It unplugs the connections between the sections of an event, if that is how it works, and re-plugs parts of the memory loop to unplugged parts of other memory loops.

    The consequence is that in your dreams your mother can morph into your dog, your job can become your knapsack, and they house you live in in the middle of the forest becomes a song, or a lover, or hunger.

    These discombobulation-events comply with my theory: the loops of memory building are destroyed, and that is what we experience in the dreams. It is seemingly a randomization type process. Hence, we get randomized events, things that don't make sense in the real world, but seem logical and intuitively true in the dreams.

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    Your:

    Ideas? Thoughts? Criticism? with regard to the foregoing.
    god must be atheist Options
  • BC
    13.2k
    There are several theories about dreaming: Freuds, of course: dreams are the work of the subconscious expressing its hot mess in a way that the conscious mind or ego can tolerate.

    Another theory is that dreams are a by-product of the nightly task of organizing the memories of the day. Psychologists determined quite a while ago that students who go to bed after a day of study remember more the next day than students who stayed up all night trying to learn more.

    IF the brain is organizing material, then it must employ some obscure operations.

    your mother can morph into your dog, your job can become your knapsack, and they house you live in in the middle of the forest becomes a song, or a lover, or hunger. — god must be atheist

    I opt for the obscure operation theory. Brains evolved a long time before we appeared. The so-far inscrutable methods of the brain don't have to be "logical" -- they just have to work, and for the most part they do.

    If we constantly rehash an event, there is no room in our minds to rehash new, other events. — god must be atheist

    The old saw about us using only 1/10th of our brains is totally erroneous. We use the whole brain all the time. And the capacity of the brain to remember things seems very large, but it can't be infinite. At some point, our brains get 'full'. And fortunately we forget, not just because some memories are really inconvenient, but because a lot of them are just useless. What is the point of remembering every glass of milk one ever drank?

    Maybe new memories are plugged into empty slots, sort of at random, and a memory about your mother and your dog end up in adjacent slots. In the process of nighttime organizing, the brain trips over "mother/dog" and suddenly your dog is scolding you or you are petting your mother-- well, lets not get into all that too deeply. You and your analyst will have to sort that out.
    BC Options
  • Razorback kitten
    111
    I would say the issue with most theories about sleep seem to, like yours, give some form of separate consciousness to the unconscious brain. DMT released during sleep can block receptors, which could lead to a redirection of the circuit or loop. But I think any process in the brain is governed by chemistry. Your brain isn't doing anything on purpose or making decisions about what memory to pick from. Lastly, one thing I'd suggest working into your hypothesis is the role of the limbic system and the amygdala as emotion in dreams seems to me to be quite Central.
    Razorback kitten Options
  • Galuchat
    809
    This is what dream does. It unplugs the connections between the sections of an event, if that is how it works, and re-plugs parts of the memory loop to unplugged parts of other memory loops. — god must be atheist

    This agrees with the Continual-Activation Theory of Dreaming, a neurological explanation of memory consolidation during sleep, and dreaming as by-product.

    "The type I dream, a thought-like mentation, is the consequence of the memory replay when the declarative memory data is retrieved from the temporary memory store to the conscious subsidiary systems of the working memory for processing during NREM sleep. On the other hand, type II dream, a more dream-like mentation, often occurs during REM sleep, when the procedural memory is being transferred from the temporary memory to the long-term memory."

    Zhang, Jie (2004). Memory Process and the Function of Sleep. (6–6 ed.). Journal of Theoretics.
    Galuchat Options
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