[HN Gopher] Why do we dream? A new theory on how it protects our...
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Why do we dream? A new theory on how it protects our brains
Author : jdnier
Score : 233 points
Date : 2020-12-31 05:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (time.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (time.com)
| nerfhammer wrote:
| maybe firing random neurons keeps the connections alive
| vyrotek wrote:
| A sort of "Chaos Monkey" for the brain.
| starpilot wrote:
| So does melatonin give enhanced brain benefits since it leads to
| vivid dreams?
| FailMore wrote:
| This idea ignores a fascinating aspect of REM sleep. During REM,
| the brain shuts down the executive functions, while the brain
| goes into extreme 'story generation mode'. A story in which you
| are a character. I think this is one of the most overlooked and
| interesting parts of dreaming. We are able to observe ourselves
| in our dreams acting without the constraints of our 'executive
| functioning' brain. This means we get to learn about our purely
| emotional behaviour, and perhaps spot where it is maladaptive. (I
| am very bias on this subject, as I have written a paper on this
| topic - https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz, which was discussed here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590)
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I definitely feel like I have "executive function" even in many
| non-lucid dreams. It's just that I assume it's reality but I'm
| still solving problems, fighting, running away, talking to
| people to achieve things. Yes the world changes in weird ways
| and the distinctive thing about dreams is not noticing that
| this level of weirdness is implausible.
|
| But I'm distinctly not "purely emotional" or animalistic in my
| dreams.
| majkinetor wrote:
| You sound like its a fact, while its just one interpretation.
|
| The idea also doesn't ignore REM sleep like you claim.
|
| > This means we get to learn about our purely emotional
| behaviour, and perhaps spot where it is maladaptive.
|
| How did you get this ? Its another interpretation of available
| data. Extreme story generation mode may not be end goal but
| artifact.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| It may not even be a 'mode' as such.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Makes me wonder when did animals started to dream, even
| prototypcally.
|
| Mammals ? Reptiles ?
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| I think the article describes _one_ good reason for why we
| dream, one of the benefits of dreaming, but it doesn 't have to
| be the only or even main reason. I think it's most likely that
| dreaming provides multiple benefits, and what the article
| claims is one of the minor ones.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| I understand that current theories link dreaming to REM phase of
| the sleep. That is when we are in REM phase, we dream. Yet,
| remembering of the dreaming is not always guaranteed. So it's
| very much possible to have the REM phase, but no recollection of
| having dreamt at all. The data on dreams is likely based on self-
| reports, unlike the REM data which can be measured. So there's a
| lot of room for speculation on any possible connection and
| purpose of the dreaming.
|
| On thing is for sure, if we can say to remember of the dreaming,
| we indeed did wake up.
|
| In personal experience, I noticed a direct connection between
| physiological discomfort while sleeping and the related dreaming.
| That is a discomfort, say in my body positioning would generate
| dreams around the effect of it, not always literal but often it
| would either trigger a brief awakening or a change of the
| positioning.
|
| One very stark experience was related to a case when previously
| frozen (and likely swollen at night) toes were constantly
| triggering a dream of sleeping next to a campfire and leading
| invariably to waking up with my knees bent and feet tucked
| underneath me. Toes healed, the dream was gone.
|
| Another very much reliable trigger is airsupply. Say, by odd
| positioning the breathing is affected, sometimes an external
| factor can affect the air quality. Sure enough, there will be
| some dream leading to waking up just to be annoyed at dry/stuffy
| nose or some random smoke from an open window finding its way in.
| That I should feel probably grateful about, as it's like an
| internal smoke alarm... (though no substitute for proper
| detectors!!)
|
| The point is, the dreaming might still be an extension of our
| survival mechanism. Kind of internal dashboard to check while
| asleep, no matter how oddly scripted.
| time0ut wrote:
| My personal experience has been that dreams seem to play a
| critical role in learning. Often when learning something new, the
| new experience will manifest in my dreams. The more immersive the
| new experience, the more rapidly the dreams come and the more
| vivid they are. Most dreams that I remember are almost like
| mashups of previous experiences. Very often, my dreams have
| elements of places and experiences from my childhood. I could see
| this being a manifestation of the brain managing placticity.
| Perhaps the brain grounds itself in old experiences and mixes in
| new ones so that things are not forgotten.
| noncoml wrote:
| Dreaming is practicing our survival skills in a safe environment.
| Nature's "VR", if you want.
|
| Reference: Why else am I running naked in the supermarket?
| Daub wrote:
| "Dreaming is practicing our survival skills in a safe
| environment. Nature's "VR", if you want"
|
| This also sounds like a rationale for play. A safe practice
| zone... a sand box.
| spicyramen wrote:
| One of the few serious books about dream meaning is from Freud
| https://g.co/kgs/LdLZs8 this field is seen as pseudo-science but
| I believe we still have a lot to discover
| newdude116 wrote:
| Since even my dog dreams, it must be something very fundamental.
| Roritharr wrote:
| My wife is having really bad sleep problems which she attributes
| to dreaming too much too intensely. She just doesn't seem to get
| rested doing this.
|
| This article sadly does not give a clue what could be her
| problem.
| raducu wrote:
| My wife is exactly like this.
|
| She says she feels tired because she feels she lives paralel
| lifes in her sleep.
|
| But objectively she has NONE of the symptoms of bad sleep I get
| when I can't actually sleep.
|
| So she maybe just feels emotionally tired for the first 5
| minutes after she wakes up.
|
| I once gave her my fitbit and checked her sleep -- she had
| almost no restless sleep like I do, she had a lot of REM and a
| lot of deep sleep, I'd love to have her sleep pattern.
| Kathula wrote:
| What do you mean by "too intensely"? Is she having nightmares?
| Does she often wake up, only to later fall asleep and having
| nightmares again?
| jbotz wrote:
| She's probably putting the cart before the horse... light or
| troubled sleep leads to more dreaming because REM sleep phase
| comes just before a waking or almost waking phase. Also, you
| most vividly remember those dreams that happen just as you are
| waking up, so the more often you wake the more intense your
| dreaming seems.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Consider that maybe the intense dreams are a reflection of
| physical processes in the body that cause sleep to not be
| restful. That is, both intense dreams and not feeling rested
| are maybe caused by the same underlying thing.
| FailMore wrote:
| You/she might enjoy: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz, discussed on
| HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590 [written
| by me]
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| Hmmm this is interesting. I wonder if people that cannot sleep
| more than 4-5 hours per night also have very vivid dreams? And
| therefore the brain cleaning REM cycle is just more intense and
| prolonged so the mind-body decides it does not need to sleep any
| longer?
| axaxs wrote:
| Data point, unsure if helpful. I sleep plenty but wake up at
| least once per night. My most vivid dreams always occur in my
| last sleep, usually after 6am. I can literally live a lifetime
| in my dreams between 6 and 9am. I haven't quite figured it out
| yet, but because my dreams are less than stellar, I usually
| dread going back to bed.
| brianjunyinchan wrote:
| As another anecdote, on mornings when I can sleep in, I wake
| up momentarily before my final doze (another 30m-1hr). That
| wake always interrupts my most vivid dreams of the night
| (whose events feel like several hours of real life, but
| unsure about its real length).
|
| Then, as I fall back asleep, I'm either wishing for/against
| that dream topic to continue. Most of the time not getting
| what I want.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I often feel these waves of ... something ... flush and
| course through my head when I drift off and am still semi-
| conscious. I know it happens when I begin to nap, I think too
| it may happen early in the morning, just before waking. It
| feels almost chemical.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| I have had the same feeling too during a power nap. It
| feels like a reboot to me. Perceptually when I wake up I
| panic thinking it must have been hours then I look at the
| watch and only 10 minutes have passed.
| axaxs wrote:
| Yes, that. I can wake up at 8, accidentally fall asleep,
| and feel like hours or days have passed and panic, but
| it's just 8:15. Dreams are so mysterious it's weird, in
| our age of science.
| joubert wrote:
| Aren't those the ripples of theta waves that start to
| emerge as alpha waves drop while you transition through
| hypnagogia?
|
| On the other end, as you transition out of sleep to
| wakefulness, you pass through hypnopompia.
|
| I experience the feeling of these waves also when I
| meditate.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I don't buy it. Dreaming is computationally/metabolically
| expensive. If the sole purpose was to prevent plasticity then
| there would be far cheaper ways to accomplish the same result.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Is the suggestion meant to be that this only applies in certain
| kinds of brain function areas (eg for continuous senses, ie
| sight, sounds, etc) The reason I ask is that I don't need to
| repeatedly dream of bicycling actions to be able to keep
| bicycling - I might not use that skill for a long period and yet
| I can still do it with accomplished ease when I resume it after a
| gap. This suggests that the bicycling neural area (and likely
| those for other similar skills, assuming there is indeed an
| "area") does not suffer the kind of neural take over they
| hypothesise.
| User23 wrote:
| I've always suspected dreaming plays a role in fixing short term
| memories into long term ones.
| ratww wrote:
| Interesting. Recently my cat's vet (who's also a researcher)
| told me that the best guess they have is that animals dream
| about the things they did in the day so they can create long
| term memories. Wonder if it's the same for humans.
| baxtr wrote:
| Hmmm somehow I'm a bit skeptical. The article itself includes an
| example that is not easily reconcilable with their theory: What
| about the people like the boy who became blind they mention in
| the beginning? Shouldn't they have extreme visual dreams even at
| day to protect their visual area, at least if this theory was
| true? But instead the brain area was rewired.
| arbol wrote:
| It explained this with the example of the blindfolded braille
| readers. Over 5 days their sense of touch was enhanced,
| presumably at the expense of their visual senses. Over time,
| the visual cortex would be completely taken over if the brain
| was not receiving signal from the eyes.
| kolinko wrote:
| But if the theory were true, they would begin to see
| hallucinations while awake as a way of protecting the brain
| from changes.
| subaquamille wrote:
| And that's exactly what's described at the end of the
| article:
|
| > If dreams are visual hallucinations triggered by a lack
| of visual input, we might expect to find similar visual
| hallucinations in people who are slowly deprived of visual
| input while awake. In fact, this is precisely what happens
| in people with eye degeneration, patients confined to a
| tank-respirator, and prisoners in solitary confinement. In
| all of these cases, people see things that are not there.
| baxtr wrote:
| And that's exactly my point :) Shouldn't this have
| happened to those blind people, too?
| goodthenandnow wrote:
| Good point. Also: is the visual information transmitted
| by the optical nerves when you don't have eyes equal as
| when the eyes "see" darkness?
| scatters wrote:
| The article says that "dreams are primarily visual". That might
| be true for most people (and for the researchers), but I'm
| aphantasic and I don't think I've ever had a visual dream. My
| visual cortex seems to work perfectly fine on waking (though I do
| find a sunrise alarm clock useful in winter). If this is typical
| among aphantasics then I don't see how the theory can possibly be
| correct.
| brianpan wrote:
| The theory could be correct in general (dreams are a result of
| a evolutionary trait that keeps visual circuits active at
| night) while not apply to you specifically, especially if you
| are different than most people when it comes to
| vision/visualizing.
| kolinko wrote:
| But the prediction of the their theory is that without visual
| dreams his visual cortex would be overtaken by other senses.
|
| Since this doesn't happen, it's an important datapoint
| towards a falsehood of the theory.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I don't buy the theory. If you lose your vision, like the boy in
| the story then I'd expect that you'd eventually stop dreaming. It
| doesn't make sense that other senses would start then fighting
| for protection of their neural circuitry. Why didn't they earlier
| then?
|
| What feels more likely to me is that your brain is trying to
| optimize something in it, which is why it is correlated with
| plasticity. The brain has evolved to turn off most of the body
| (since there's probably strong selection against moving limbs
| while sleeping), but little selection against moving eyes while
| closed. REM is just what is left of our bodies movements.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Well. I don't (or very rarely) _remember_ my dreams. Hope I get
| the protection anyway.
| sci_prog wrote:
| I used to dream a lot and then it all stopped, especially when
| the pandemic started and I became less physically active. Long
| story short, It turns out I have a severe sleep apnea and it
| became more pronounced when my physical activity went down
| significantly (aka I was less tired). Few days later after i
| started using my CPAP machine my dreams came back. Make sure
| you don't have sleep apnea, about 7-8% of people have it.
| pixelbash wrote:
| Anecdotally some b6/b12 supplements have given both me and my
| partner very intense dreams and vivid recall. No idea what the
| mechanism might be (Or if it's a preservative/etc) but
| potentially an interesting data point?
| kirykl wrote:
| Particularly the P5P form of vitamin b6 will cause pretty
| crazy and vivid dreams
| dwighttk wrote:
| I've heard Stilton cheese has a similar effect. (Haven't
| tried)
|
| Also whatever malaria drug I took was supposed to have
| intense dreams as a side effect. (Don't remember any)
| esperent wrote:
| IIRC the cheese thing is basically a myth, any heavy food
| in your stomach when you sleep will cause you to sleep less
| deeply, wake more often, and consequently, remember more of
| your dreams.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Makes sense... I usually only remember dreams when my
| sleep is disturbed so this matches up.
| rmilk wrote:
| Funny that some medications have these dream effects. An
| uncommon side effect of Montelukast is vivid nightmares and
| sleep paralysis. It's a relativity common asthma control
| medication, but was recently moved to a not-recommended
| status for younger people because of this side effect. My
| personal experience was pretty intense nightmares 1-2 times
| a week if I took it before bed. Taking early in the day
| stopped this side effect.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Try changing your room temperature by a degree or two. This
| makes a big impact for me.
| hndudette wrote:
| Changing it up or down?
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Try both.
| neom wrote:
| Out of curiosity, are you a frequent cannabis user? I found I
| didn't remember my dreams when I smoked cannabis, however after
| a long break I started to remember dreams vividly.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. I smoked pretty heavily for two years and didnt really
| dream at all during that time. Outside of those two years
| I've always had pretty vivid dreams.
|
| A dream journal really does help though. The last thing most
| people want to do when sleepy is write though.
| majkinetor wrote:
| I can confirm dreamless nights on cannabis and vice-versa.
| handmodel wrote:
| Interesting - I pretty much never remember my dreams. I only
| started smoking/edibles fairly recently in life and one side
| effect was if I take an edible in the evening I almost always
| remember them.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Nope.
|
| The only time I seem to remember dreams is when my sleep is
| disturbed. Most nights I go to sleep and wake up in the
| morning, no (remembered)dream. If something wakes me up like
| indigestion or needing to pee I'll often remember a dream.
| tylorr wrote:
| This is the exact same for me. Only a disturbance in my
| sleep allows me to even remember that I had a dream at all.
| keerthiko wrote:
| I personally hardly ever use cannabis, and often oscillate
| between periods of distinctly remembering all my dreams to
| having weeks of seemingly dreamless sleep. The oscillations
| have gotten especially wild in post-lockdown pandemic life.
| [deleted]
| tgv wrote:
| Of course. Articles such as the "OP" are simplistic bollocks.
| For starters, you'd be completely blind by now if the article
| had any merit. And deaf. And lost all memory.
|
| Oh no, wait: we open our eyes every morning, so even if there
| was any effect, it would be the opposite: visual taking over
| everything else. Which also doesn't happen.
|
| So take it with a grain of salt: yet another unprovable
| "theory" about the brain.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| Have you stopped to think for a second where science would be
| if every possible hypothesis was thrown out as soon as its
| inventor realized he couldn't conclusively prove it in a day?
|
| Also exactly the fact that it hasn't been fully proved out
| yet is why the nuance is missing. But now all the sudden you
| want them to be able to give you an explanation of the
| nuanced mechanism that prevents visual from taking over
| everything else? (Plus why on earth would it? What are you
| even talking about? I'm seeing all day long, but I'm also
| smelling hearing touching and tasting) Make up your mind!
| tgv wrote:
| 1. If it's just a hypothesis, write it up in a journal,
| don't put it in Time magazine.
|
| 2. The hypothesis is as unprovable as they come: not only
| do we not have any idea on how this process of taking over
| other brain areas would work, if you knew how it worked,
| you couldn't build brains that lack this mechanism but are
| identical for the rest, and set up an experiment in which
| half of the brains (modified and original) would dream and
| the rest wouldn't. Because that seems to be about the only
| experiment that could truly falsify this idea.
|
| 3. It doesn't explain why only the visual cortex is
| susceptible to this, when we know that other brain areas
| also can adapt. The argument "it's dark" doesn't cut the
| mustard, because the effect should go away as soon as we
| open our eyes, which is around 2/3rds of the day. BTW,
| babies can't see, so it's odd that so many of them manage
| to develop a normally functioning visual cortex.
|
| 4. Sleep inhibits the senses, so how can the areas they
| input to take over, and why don't their areas get taken
| over?
|
| 5. They don't even attempt to prove that REM sleep and REM
| sleep alone activates the visual cortex and only that.
|
| > Make up your mind!
|
| That was under the assumption that the hypothesis was true.
| It seems to lead to rather unintuitive predictions. And I
| do like a theory to not be in apparent contradiction with
| simple observations.
|
| So no, I have no reason to take it seriously, and people
| that (think they) don't dream shouldn't worry.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Don't worry, I'm not worried.
|
| I hear a lot about people struggling with sleep and so I
| recognize that it is probably a widespread problem, but I
| sleep like a rock most nights and have little to no
| stress about it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Probably.
|
| But if you want to remember your dreams again, this is
| something you can work/train with. Basically, every morning
| before getting up, not jump up with the alarm out of bed, but
| rather ly still, in the same position as before and try to
| remember. If you want to, have a dream diary. Doing so a few
| days, should bring your memory of your dreams back.
|
| I used to do so to train my ability for active/lucid dreaming.
| Can be fun ...
|
| (but now with a toddler and a baby I lack the time and focus)
| brianjunyinchan wrote:
| I often remember the dream right when I wake up, but if I
| don't immediately focus on remembering it (e.g. while writing
| it down), later in the day I almost magically won't remember
| even what the general topic was.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I'd say about once a month I'm dreaming as I wake up and the
| dream quickly fades... but if I had a dream journal there'd
| be something to write down.
|
| Every other morning there's nothing.
| dtauzell wrote:
| You can also write down your dreams if you wake after a dream
| in the middle of the night. The downside is you might start
| waking up frequently to write down your dreams.
| syrrim wrote:
| This doesn't explain why consistently interrupting REM sleep will
| lead to death.
|
| Also, the exposition suggests that this is somehow particularly
| necessary for visual information because we can't see while
| sleeping. They originally suggest that this is because it's dark
| at night, but later modify it to be because one's eyes are closed
| while sleeping. However, to my knowledge, very little hearing is
| done while one is sleeping, certainly not enough to protect the
| auditory portions of the brain from being taken over.
| Furthermore, if other senses like hearing or smelling are in fact
| unused while sleeping, it seems like there wouldn't be much need
| to protect certain regions of the brain from takeover, since
| there would be no other sense to take them over. Finally, it
| seems like there are multiple situations where senses are
| required in a periodic way, such as an animal active during dusk,
| where its senses transition from being more to less sight
| focused. Being able to cycle the role of brain regions in
| response to these changes would be widely beneficial, and we
| would expect the capacity for this to be deeply ingrained.
| Insofar as we need non-sight senses while we are sleeping, it
| seems like the circuitry to deal with cyclic use of senses would
| be able to protect the visual cortex from total reuse.
|
| Stronger than all this, it seems like REM is fairly fundamental
| to sleep, in that understanding it ought to offer deep insight
| into why we sleep in the first place. The proposed explanation
| offers no such insight, and generally answers no other questions
| besides the one regarding dreams. It seems like answers to deep
| questions usually provide insight into questions we didn't even
| know we had, whereas this answer provides no such insight.
|
| I saw an answer to the dreams question to the effect that the
| brain cools down while we are sleeping, and REM sleep heats up
| the brain to prevent it from becoming too cold. This answer
| potentially provides insight into why we sleep, in that it
| proposes the cooling of the brain to be important to sleep,
| rather than incidental. It also explains why interrupting REM
| would kill a person. It doesn't obviously preference visual
| portions of the brain, suggesting that visual information is the
| focus of the brain simply because it is what the brain focuses on
| while awake. It potentially explains the data of these
| researchers, if the brain cools down more during sleep whenever
| the brain is more flexible.
|
| I am not suggesting that I think this answer is definitely true,
| but merely trying to demonstrate that the standard I am measuring
| this new theory against is not impossible to reach. I think the
| explanation of why we dream will look more like the brain cooling
| answer, rather than the brain reuse answer.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| REM sleep is when your brain does maintenance and cleaning,
| particularly with respect to the lymphatic/immune system.
| daen1on wrote:
| There's so much information about Sleep in Matthew Walker's
| "Why we sleep". I strongly recommend it. <3
| vosper wrote:
| You may be interested to know that the book has come in for
| strong criticism, including an accusation of deliberate
| manipulation of data.
|
| See: 'Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with
| Scientific and Factual Errors'
|
| https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
| melomal wrote:
| Hmmmm...there's a whole article on that blog about 'why
| you should have a blog' which to me reminds me of
| 'flatting the curve' medium post which was written by a
| 'marketing manager'....
| vosper wrote:
| Are you implying that the author of the post I linked to
| is untrustworthy, because their site also has a post
| about why it's good to have a blog? And then something
| about Covid which has nothing at all to do with this?
|
| Sorry, but this is just unfair insinuation, based on
| nothing.
| T-1000 wrote:
| Walker's response to the criticism can be found here:
| https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-
| sleep-...
| ben_w wrote:
| > consistently interrupting REM sleep will lead to death.
|
| I've seen this claim many times, but I've not seen any studies
| that say "no [REM] sleep causes you to die". The closest I can
| find are studies in the form "less [REM] sleep correlates with
| _all causes_ of death to go up" - it's not like you can
| literally kill someone just by keeping them awake for a month.
|
| https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2020/study-links-poor-dream-s...
| majkinetor wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Without a good reference its just a repeated nonsense.
|
| Even if this is true, there must be limits on it. What
| qualifies as 'interruption' ? Does REM taking 10ms counts as
| interrupted ? 100ms ? 1s ? 0ms (hard to believe this is
| actually possible). Its also known that some people require
| less sleep then others due to genetic factors. Perhaps 1m REM
| is enough for some...
| surgecoach wrote:
| Do we take Star Trek as a authoritative source? lack of rem
| sleep leading to violence, anarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Night_Terrors_(Star_Trek:_The_...
| [deleted]
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I don't have a link handy, but I recall watching a
| documentary where a bunch of college students participated in
| a study that involved waking them every time they reached REM
| state. After 6 days they started becoming psychotic. After 7
| days someone stepped in and aborted the project as the
| students were going fully psychotic. I don't recall who
| intervened. They may not have died but if I recall correctly,
| they would have killed each other.
| raducu wrote:
| There can be a lot of reasons we sleep.
|
| Why do we have weekends?
| gre wrote:
| unions
| irrational wrote:
| To the best of my knowledge, I've never dreamed (I'm almost 50
| years old). I've always wondered what that means about my brain.
| Is there a medical or psychological label for people who don't
| dream?
| air7 wrote:
| Healthy people dream several times a night and don't remember
| most of their dreams upon waking.
|
| Have someone monitor your sleep and wake you up when observing
| REM. There's a good chance you'll remember the dream you're
| currently in, and feel the disappointment of not knowing how it
| ends...
| tamrix wrote:
| Everybody dreams unless you're brain dead during sleep. It's
| more about if you can recall your dreams.
|
| Some medications and /or weed can prevent dream recall.
| easytiger wrote:
| Presumably you do enter REM sleep though, in which case you
| likely have no dream recall, which is not unheard of
| noja wrote:
| who don't dream, or don't remember their dreams?
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I dream fairly frequently but I'm very rarely myself or in a
| place I've been before or with people I know. Dreams are weird
| and I wouldn't worry about it too much.
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| Another prediction of this theory would be that naturally blind
| animals such as some moles would not need REM sleep or would have
| substantially less REM sleep. I couldn't find any research in
| completely blind mammals, but in a mammal that has very poor
| eyesight "Cape mole rats sleep substantially less than other
| similarly sized terrestrial rodents but have a similar percentage
| of total sleep time occupied by REM sleep."
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301482322_Sleep_in_...
| Seems like there is still a lot of scope for research on REM
| sleep in non-human species.
| pmontra wrote:
| I think that this part of the article answers that
|
| > those who are born blind (or who become blind early in life)
| don't experience visual imagery in their dreams; instead, they
| have other sensory experiences, such as feeling their way
| around a rearranged living room or hearing strange dogs
| barking. This is because other senses have taken over their
| visual cortex.
|
| The prediction would be that moles experience sounds in sleep,
| or smell, or touch, whatever their primary sense is.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > dreams are primarily visual precisely because ...
|
| This is a central claim in the article that's just stated and
| taken for granted.
|
| In my experience, at least, dreams are not _primarily_ visual.
| They have a visual component, but also a vague auditory
| component, a motor-experience (feeling of movement) component,
| etc., and all of those feel equally important. And most of all,
| there is a "felt experience" component that actually feels like
| the primary element of it; emotion is the core element of that,
| but a better description is "the lizard brain's interpretation"
| of what's happening in the dream, that feels like the central
| element of the dream.
|
| The visual part is also not in full colour generally, in my case,
| it's like early movies during the transition from black-and-
| white, with slight colour tints generally towards the bluish
| colour regions.
|
| I'm curious what others' dream experiences are like, and in
| particular whether it's the case that most people do experience
| them as primarily visual.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| For me, the dreams I remember seem indeed more like
| _experiences_. I 'm often aware that I dream, and can sometimes
| steer it. While it feels like a movie most of the time, it's
| not really _visual_ in the same sense.
|
| Like just yesterday I became aware that I was dreaming. In the
| dream I had somehow ended up in jail. The majority of the dream
| was me trying to escape in various ways, a bit like a reverse
| Ocean 11 thing.
|
| As I was dreaming I could picture the places around me, I
| particularly recall the gate in the main corridor.
|
| However even though my dreams are usually very visual in some
| sense, it's much closer to how I picture things in my mind when
| reading novels, rather than explicit images like when watching
| a movie.
|
| I've always had a hard time with visualizations when reading
| novels. Like I'll read the page or two the author uses to
| describe some location, but most of the time the details don't
| really "sink in". Instead my mind seems to quickly grab hold of
| the high-level things, like it's an old apartment building, and
| the details are just generated based on that. Whatever detailed
| description the author makes usually doesn't affect the mental
| image I've already built.
|
| I guess it's not that weird that the dream visuals feels more
| like that out of a book, both cases being generated by the
| imagination.
| agumonkey wrote:
| To me the most peculiar aspect of dreams is how vivid the
| universe you're in is. It feels as emotionally impactful as the
| best moments of your life. Super weird
| alexpetralia wrote:
| I've thought of dreams as unique in suspending self-doubt.
| For some reason, while in a dream, we are incapable of
| doubting what is going on. Everything feels incredibly vivid
| and real. Then we wake up, and we go back to doubting: "Ah,
| must've been a dream!"
|
| Edit: Perhaps immersive psychedelics (LSD, ketamine) are
| similar actually. Speculatively, one could define "real" as
| our ability to doubt, "fantasy" as the suspension of doubt.
| adamjb wrote:
| Dreams made a whole lot more sense to me when I learnt
| about idea of the brain as a predictive processing machine.
| It asserts that the brain works as a sort of recursive two-
| sided process, with theory creation on one side and
| evidence collecting on the other. Recursive in that the
| visual processing system might get a "is that a door?"
| theory from a higher level system, which it'll then answer
| by collecting and trying to match evidence from multiple
| lower level systems ("is that an edge?" "is that a shadow?"
| etc.) until it eventually reaches the level of processing
| stimuli directly, with each system on the way acting as
| both questioner and answerer.
|
| In this framework dreaming is when the evidence collecting
| side becomes a lot less rigorous than it usually is, so it
| says "sure, why not" without reference to a stimulus (i.e.
| a way to be falsified). In other words it's the brain's
| predictions continuously coming true.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > brain as a predictive processing machine. It asserts
| that the brain works as a sort of recursive two-sided
| process, with theory creation on one side and evidence
| collecting on the other.
|
| SlateStarCodex has a nice article[1] about this.
|
| > The key insight: the brain is a multi-layer prediction
| machine. All neural processing consists of two streams: a
| bottom-up stream of sense data, and a top-down stream of
| predictions. These streams interface at each level of
| processing, comparing themselves to each other and
| adjusting themselves as necessary.
|
| > ...
|
| > You're not seeing the world as it is, exactly. You're
| seeing your predictions about the world, cashed out as
| expected sensations, then shaped/constrained by the
| actual sense data.
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-
| surfing-un...
| rtx wrote:
| One theory I had read a longtime ago was that nightmares
| were a way for the subconscious mind to wake-up the
| conscious mind.
| krapp wrote:
| The same brain that simulates your entire perception of
| reality from external inputs is using all of its resources to
| simulate its own, with itself as an input.
|
| What's really weird is how dream-reality always makes _sense
| to you_ in context, regardless of how absurd or random it is,
| because your self awareness and identity are being simulated
| the same way, both in dreams and in reality. It 's like a
| virtual machine inside a virtual machine.
| lisper wrote:
| I occasionally have lucid dreams, where I realize I'm
| dreaming. When that happens, I can take control of the dream
| and do cool things like fly. Usually this only lasts a minute
| or two and then I wake up. But on a handful of occasions I've
| reverted to a non-lucid state, where I _forget_ that I just
| figured out that I 'm in a dream, and I lose control again.
| It's super freaky, and raises some pretty deep existential
| questions: who/what exactly am I when I'm in that state? How
| can I ever really be sure that I'm _not_ dreaming?
| GordonS wrote:
| > I occasionally have lucid dreams, where I realize I'm
| dreaming. When that happens, I can take control of the
| dream and do cool things
|
| I experience lucid dreams I can control quite frequently.
| The thing I do most often is let the dream play out, but
| _go back in (dream) time_ to replay certain scenes
| differently if I 'm not happy with the outcome.
|
| It's really pretty cool - like being in some kind of super-
| advanced VR simulation, or under the influence of some
| impossible drug. If anyone ever figures out tech to make
| this just happen (kind of like simulation VR goggles in
| scifi films), they are going to be very, very rich.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| In another kind of "weakly lucid" dream type I know I'm
| dreaming but I don't have (full) control. So I can't make
| people answer what I want, but it feels like I can
| "mentally manipulate" them and push their answer to a
| certain direction, like make an attacker friendlier or so.
| hx2a wrote:
| I've had recurring dreams that were entirely in math. And by
| that I don't mean a dream where I was sitting in math class or
| something. I mean the actual substance of the dreams were
| equations that I was trying to make sense of.
|
| In my awake life I like math a lot and am comfortable solving
| equations. The dreams themselves, though, were terrifying in
| ways no other dream has ever matched.
| mailslot wrote:
| I'm able to consciously enter dreams from waking state.
| Basically, lucid dreaming on hard mode. Like going through
| sleep paralysis on purpose.
|
| Dreams are so close to waking state, I'm always in awe when I
| successfully transition. Touch, taste, smell, every sense. It's
| like waking reality, but with god mode.
|
| That said, vision is really really weird. If you pull your
| sight into your dream body (hard to explain), then it's just
| like you'd expect. It's like it's possible to see multiple
| perspectives at once, and it's visual, but it's all like one
| continuous field of view. Sometimes I don't even really notice
| that I'm looking forward, backward, and from above all at once.
|
| When I'm just playing around, I like to smash things and jump
| so high that I fly above the clouds, feeling the cold air above
| and the weightlessness at the apex. It's no more visual primary
| than waking, IMHO.
| ford_o wrote:
| How do you pull it off?
| [deleted]
| dqv wrote:
| I experience the same color dullness, although warm colors like
| red are more vivid for me.
|
| Something I've noticed that I've never heard anyone else talk
| about is _text-based dreams_. That is, the dream primarily
| happens in a text interaction where the visual space is
| completely engulfed by a chatroom-like interface. The visual
| element is not the primary aspect of the dream, instead the
| text in the dream is projected into the visual space. Obviously
| this is because I spend a lot of time in chatrooms.
| opan wrote:
| I've had many dreams featuring IRC or the chat of an old MMO.
| I also heard it's very uncommon to see text in dreams,
| though.
| joveian wrote:
| The evidence doesn't support as close a relationship between
| dreaming and REM sleep as the authors suggest. See:
|
| Solms. 2000. Dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different
| brain mechanisms. BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2000) 23,
| 793-1121.
|
| https://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/...
|
| >>It is generally accepted that NREM mentation that is
| indistiguishable from REM dreaming does indeed occur. Monroe et
| al.'s (1965) widely cited study suggests that approximately
| 10-30% of NREM dreams are indistinguishable from REM dreams
| (Recht-schaffen 1973). Even Hobson accepts that 5-10% of NREM
| dream reports are "indistinguishable by any criterion from those
| obtained from post-REM awakenings" (Hobson 1988b, p. 143). If we
| adjust this conservative fig- ure to account for the fact that
| NREM sleep occupies ap- proximately 75% of total sleep time, this
| implies that roughly one quarter of all REM-like dreams occur
| outside of REM sleep.<<
|
| A recent reference that discusses this is:
|
| Nicholas and Ruby. 2020. Dreams, Sleep, and Psychotropic Drugs.
| Front Neurol. 2020; 11: 507495.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7674595/
|
| >>Regarding the link between dreaming and neurophysiology, 60
| years of debates has been necessary to get rid of the rapid eye
| movement (REM) sleep hypothesis of dreaming, and it is now
| acknowledged by a majority of dream researchers, be they
| neuroscientist or not, that REM sleep is neither necessary nor
| sufficient to get a dream report and that dream reports can be
| obtained at the awakening of any sleep stage (2, 7, 9-12). It is
| also now clear that the complexity and story-like characteristics
| of dream reports are related to sleep stages but also, and even
| more so, to circadian rhythms leading to more vivid and complex
| dreams in the morning than in the early night [e.g., (13-15)].<<
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| I see a lot of correlation here and very little causation, what
| if the visual dreaming is an effect of some other, more
| fundamental, mechanism?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| My pet theory is that brain uses its power at night to process
| data from different organs and to fine-tune their settings
| (especially guts which is extremely complex organ with millions
| of sensors). That's why sleep deprived creature dies from
| misbehaving organs. Some neurons are not required for this
| task, because they are too specialized. Namely neurons
| responsible for vision, conscience, movement. They receive
| random signals which don't really mean anything and more like
| white noise. But brain is brain, so those neurons are trying to
| make sense from that noise and that's how dreams are created.
| seesawtron wrote:
| Link to original paper which is still a non-peer reviewed biorxiv
| article [0]. The crux of the paper is based on expressions of
| plasticity correlating with the percentage of sleep time spent in
| REM (fig.2). Apart from the high-level questions raised already
| in the comments there are several caveats in the data:
| Data points are sparse i.e. the number of samples included are
| too few to strongly believe in correlations. Taking out extreme
| data points would make the correlations look independent.
| The data values across 25 primate species are based on averages
| across previous studies and using proxies where some data was not
| available. I do not know how justifiable such approaches are but
| I am skeptical about them.
|
| [0]
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.24.219089v1....
| GordonS wrote:
| I really love when I have strange dreams, especially when you go
| back into the same dream if you wafe briefly, giving you a moment
| to consider before it continues. I imagine it's unlikely there is
| any real meaning behind dreams, but I can't help but feel there
| must be sometimes, especially with some of the odder dreams.
|
| The most disappointing thing about a good dream though, is how
| _quickly_ memories of it fade away upon wakening - it 's like
| trying to grab tendrils of smoke rising away.
|
| Usually at best I manage to recall one or two small snippets, or
| something about the general theme, but every now and then - very
| rarely - more vivid details stick with me for a little longer.
| yalcinbar wrote:
| I have always woken up feeling rejuvenated if I could remember
| what I had dreamt vividly. I asked some of my friends if it's the
| same with them also, but they said it's the opposite.
| [deleted]
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| So by their theory blind people don't need to sleep? Total
| bullshit.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| Well, why are you implicitly insisting on the unproven theory
| that "sleep serves just one single purpose" - one that no one
| else has proposed? What if sleep is needed for more than one
| reason? Is the complexity of the world so hard to fathom that
| you throw up your hands and yell 'bullshit' on the first hint
| of challenge!
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Lol. Please quote where I'm saying this. I never wrote that
| phrase you quoted in your comment. Are you trying to lie? :)
|
| Better read my words one more time:
|
| "People see dreams not every time they sleep, not every
| night, sometimes we can have multiple nights without dreams.
| By this moronic theory our "visual cortex" should be modified
| to "blind mode" just in the first night of sleep without
| dreams."
| nhumrich wrote:
| dont need to _dream_. The article is about why we dream, not
| why we sleep.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| and? Still total bullshit.
| sa1 wrote:
| Their theory says nothing about sleep, except that your
| visual cortex isn't receiving any input.
|
| You're making a mistake in conflating dreams and sleep.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| You and they making a mistake saying that blind people
| should not see dreams. I wonder how such an idiotic idea
| reached the HN at all. It's Daily Mail level.
|
| People see dreams not every time they sleep, not every
| night, sometimes we can have multiple nights without
| dreams. By this moronic theory our "visual cortex" should
| be modified to "blind mode" just in the first night of
| sleep without dreams.
|
| Articles containing words "Mother Nature" are only good
| for religious organizations, homeopathy lovers and other
| imbeciles.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| I would recommend rereading the article, your reading
| comprehension wasn't up to par to tackle it in one pass.
| Also you're assuming a TON of things that were never
| suggested. Jumping to conclusions won't help you read
| what was written I'd say
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Quote where I'm wrong or don't start it. Just saying "a
| TON of things" without a single example is ridiculous.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| No, whatever their visual cortexed had been repurposed to do
| would be preserved. They might dream in "clicks". But I'm
| inclined to disregard this theory, it's overly simplistic, and
| doesn't explain vast reaches of sleep phenomena.
| yogrish wrote:
| In this article, there is a mention of "constant battle going on
| inside our brains between different sets of neurons, fighting
| over who gets control of certain parts of the brain." Because of
| which visual cortex always gets activated (even in sleep)so that
| it's neurons are not repurposed for other activities. Hence we
| dream. http://m.nautil.us/issue/91/the-amazing-brain/your-brain-
| mak...
| majkinetor wrote:
| This!
|
| Predatory neuron phenomena goes along with this theory.
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