[HN Gopher] The brain simulates actions and their consequences d...
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The brain simulates actions and their consequences during REM sleep
Author : XzetaU8
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-08-18 19:48 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.biorxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.biorxiv.org)
| ziofill wrote:
| So... it's training itself on synthetic data?
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Thats what imagination is.
| calf wrote:
| Then it must be really efficient amount of data since we only
| get like 7 dreams a night
| justinl33 wrote:
| the biological grok
| lokimedes wrote:
| I thought this was already understood? Are anyone working on an
| analogous way of integrating reinforcement learning into training
| generative models based on what they have experienced in user
| interactions? Seems like having models "dream" e.g. do hypothesis
| testing and correct the weights based on the results could be a
| way out of the lack of enough training data.
| calf wrote:
| The mainstream info is predominantly that dreams are basically
| nonsense content (e.g. people dream they can fly) when
| executive functions are turned off and brain is doing garbage
| collection and memory consolidation, whereas this title argues
| the brain is nevertheless learning causal information from
| dreams which would suggest a more active role than previously
| thought.
| fluoridation wrote:
| I'm with the GP, I thought I had heard this somewhere before.
| Also, I don't think both propositions are in conflict. Dreams
| may be meaningless and the brain may be using them for
| something.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| My hunch (based on my personal experiences) is that these
| occur in different phases of sleep.
|
| I find that while I am falling asleep, I often have
| indescribable nonsense "hallucinations" (I hesitate to call
| them that because it makes them sound a lot more cohesive
| than they really are) that feel almost like random noise.
| These are not just sensory hallucinations, but also logical
| hallucinations: I have thoughts and beliefs that make so
| little rational sense that I don't know how to describe them.
|
| But later on I will have complex dreams with coherent
| characters, plots, etc., and have an inner sense of logic
| (even though it is dream logic) that I can describe after I
| wake up.
| relyks wrote:
| I wonder if this can apply to humans for situations that either
| resolve conflict or to anticipate future events more effectively?
| People are known to process traumatic memories from the past
| during REM sleep by essentially reliving the experience and
| they're known to work through potential future events e.g.
| business executives have simulated meetings in their dreams for
| ones they anticipate to happen soon in the future.
| aib wrote:
| So: "Sleep on it" is an effective strategy.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Why does my brain have to simulate so much of weird and stressful
| bullshit adventures which can never happen IRL? If it mostly is
| concerned about how to move the limbs then why I never remember
| actually using my body to do anything in a dream except the
| sensation I invoke to fly? To me it feels like my dreaming brain
| is mostly simulating emotional experiences.
| ugh123 wrote:
| During sleep the brain might be constantly simulating past
| experiences, movement, and altered consequences as a possible
| "re-training" model. Some of those simulations may have
| outsized emotional moments which "jolt" our consciousness
| enough to perceive the dream. Painful memories are often an
| easy target for these simulations to use because they have more
| definition that many other memories.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| These unrealistic adventures may not be for training you how to
| deal with unrealistic adventures. These dreams could be serving
| a much lower-level purpose: training your brain's deeper inner
| workings that you do not have direct conscious access to.
| Flying may help with fine tuning visual-spatial processing, for
| example.
| justinl33 wrote:
| This reminds me of an experiment in grad school on spatial memory
| in rats. We noticed that during sleep their hippocampal place
| cells would fire in a way similar to those seen during maze
| navigation. I personally experience this all the time, if I've
| been programming all day, I will be in a 'dream-like' state
| within the program
| seper8 wrote:
| The infamous Tetris brain. I don't feel it helps my sleep
| though. Usually im just solving problems that don't exist
| anymore.
| roca wrote:
| Makes sense to me. I organise a lot of hiking trips and I
| frequently have dreams where one of my trips has gone wrong and
| I'm trying to cope. It's a cheap way to simulate a problematic
| situation.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Only read the abstract, but I wonder if some consequence to this
| field of research leads to our ability to control movement in
| dreams using some kind of external rf. The "control" might not be
| crisp without a visual component, but even having some ability to
| issue commands would be incredible.
| sholladay wrote:
| I hope that nothing external can control my dreams.
|
| You can control your own dreams by practicing lucid dreaming.
| ronsor wrote:
| We know the end-game of such technology would be to serve ads
| to you while you're sleeping.
| amelius wrote:
| How do we know ads do not influence our dreams already?
| ronsor wrote:
| Maybe they do, but at least Google isn't charging for
| dream impressions yet.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| They do, Coca Cola been in my dreams before as product
| placement.
| walterbell wrote:
| https://x.com/propheticai/status/1803811493881798701 &
| http://bit.ly/3WumKvu Prophetic is developing a
| non-invasive neuromodulatory wearable. The device uses various
| "reading" neurotechnologies-- including EEG and fNIRS, as well
| as a "writing" neurotechnology-- transcranial focused
| ultrasound (tFUS). Our aim is to develop a viable
| neuromodulatory brain-computer interface for consumer use that
| is 1) closed-loop, 2) non-invasive, and 3) possesses a
| temporospatial resolution meaningful enough to induce discrete
| states of consciousness--such as lucid dreaming--with
| precision.
| hereme888 wrote:
| I've had plenty of dreams where I woke up thinking "I definitely
| won't do that."
| gkhartman wrote:
| I've often thought this was the case. Tangentially, when I don't
| get enough sleep, and my executive function is impaired, I tend
| to drift into involuntary daydreams. The content of those
| daydreams trends to feel like simulations of future events and
| possible outcomes. I can't say it's related, but I often wondered
| if my brain is saying "If your not going to sleep enough, so be
| it, I'll try to squeeze in some simulation tasks during the day".
| When I was a teen, I'd daydream about skateboarding. It could
| feel so realistic that I could get a "jump scare" in imagined
| situations that ended in me hitting the ground.
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