What is the meaning of dreaming

Theories of dreaming. (Watch out, big paragraph ahead)

Here’s my theory:

Non-REM sleep is the period in which your brain refreshes and restors energy, but to do this, the Brain has to enter an unbalanced state. To do this it suppresses the eletrical state of the neuron membrains, make them inactive an unreactive to external stimuli. This is why there are only slow waves during this period. This comes with a price. Important potassium ions are lost, and leaving the brain in this state for too long would cause permanant damage. So the brain switches to REM sleep, where potassium ions are fired at the netrons to replensish them.

But this doesn’t explain our dream scenes. So we don’t singly sleep. The brain sleeps, and each section does it’s own sleeping function. PET scanning shows that a certain brain pattern that the brain came across when awake, is repeated many times during non-REM sleep. This could possibly be the brain simulating experiences, ie learning by replicating the circumstances. So when REM sleep eventualy happens the brain organises it’s simulations and consolidates the tests into one useful skill. The only way to ever stop learning is to die, or have an huge absence of sleep to make the brain unresposive. (Which in turn can lead to death)

During sleep body sense and movment control are made inactive. And (surprise, surprise) so is the rational though area. It is obvious that the body sense and movment is turned of so you don’t act out your dreams. Your rational side is turned off to allow more unbeleivable simulations to be run during non_-REM sleep. This then allows more simulation options to choose from when REM sleep is activated.

All Lucid dreamers relize that it is possible to over come the inactivity of rational though. I, therefore, also think you can over come the fact of not acting out your dreams.

4/7 of a Platypus’s sleep is spent in REM. Where as only 3/7 is spent in non-REM. This suggests little time for simulation and more time dedicated to useless memory consolidation, but useful if your a platypus wishing to LD!

A human spends one to two hours in REM sleep and the other 8 to 10 hours running simulations in non-REM sleep. This is what contributes to the difference in our intelligents to a Platypus’s.

If a Dolphin was not confined to water and had the body features we had, then it would be supperior to us. It sleeps for longer, and has very little REM sleep, and more non-REM. Not only that but half there brain stays active while the other half sleeps, and vice versa. The Dolphin could learn, and still process the information it gets.

These probably aren’t the only reasons for sleep though. I wonder wether LD increases REM dreaming time? However tests suggest not.

Technodreamer, wow - I wrote all that. You all must hate me. (If you bothered to read it all) Feel welcome to submit your own dull theories. (They have to be more intersting than mine! :cool:

I think you should also take a look at that- https://community.ld4all.com/t/an-evolutionary-hypothesis-of-the-function-of-dreaming/5979

The sciencific view

Thanks. Oops, I didn’t know there was already a topic on this. Well I would say I that the two theories agree that we run some type of simulation. I don’t beleive it’s limited to threats though.

I also beleive that diffrent parts of the brain sleep in different ways, and stages.

Technodreamer :cool: