Thread: What theory of dreaming do YOU believe?

im in favor of the theory that says we dream becasue we are trying to sort out and process information from the previous day, and it just makes random stories. what about you?

i believed dreams are caused from a release of dmt in the brain while we sleep

I think that dreams happen because we're still a bit conscious. Or rather subconscious, but what I mean is that there's still some mental activity in the brain, even though we cannot direct it. The brain is still thinking in an unruly way, and some of its sections don't work while sleep, so it cannot think coherently. And dreams appear brightly and as images due to a habit... We always see things in reality vividly, so we see them in dreams vividly, too, we see ourselves being the central character in reality, we see the same in dreams. The subconscious activity mimics what it can remember about consciousness.

I could never understand the theory of sorting out information. It's sorted on-the-fly in an awaken state, or so it seems. You get your memories, thoughts, and feelings about a situation, and they don't change at all after you've slept a bit.

Originally Posted by Arutad

I could never understand the theory of sorting out information. It's sorted on-the-fly in an awaken state, or so it seems. You get your memories, thoughts, and feelings about a situation, and they don't change at all after you've slept a bit.

The contents themselves don't change (much) during the process, but brain stores some of them in long-term memory and also creates connections between the new 'data' and already existing knowledge.

If you study something extensively, provided it's something conceptually new, it usually becomes much clearer after some quality sleep.

I'm for the theory that dreams are 'simulations' our brain does to help this process. However, I'm not convinced that this is the only reason. There must be something else.

Originally Posted by SnakeCharmer

The contents themselves don't change (much) during the process, but brain stores some of them in long-term memory and also creates connections between the new 'data' and already existing knowledge.

Short-term memory lasts for a few minutes only, and what you remember after that doesn't generally change. There's no such threshold after sleep that makes a distinct difference. You may forget something in a week or a month, or you may forget details during a few hours, but no visible big change happens after sleep. That's why it's hard for me to believe that something happens to memories during sleep, even if it was true, then we'd be able to notice.

If you study something extensively, provided it's something conceptually new, it usually becomes much clearer after some quality sleep.

Not in my experience. When I study something new, I usually tend to forget the bigger part of the new information right away, and nothing becomes clearer than it was after sleeping...

There are tons of research showing memory consolidation during sleep.

Here's a figure from an article in Nature Neuroscience (unfortunately, I can't find the original paper from which it came). Shows how sleep affects skill-related memories with and without interference.



There's also research showing that synapses become 'saturated' during the day and sleep is needed to repolarize them in order to able to memorize new things.

But, as I said before, it's probably not the only reason why we dream.

Originally Posted by Arutad

Not in my experience. When I study something new, I usually tend to forget the bigger part of the new information right away, and nothing becomes clearer than it was after sleeping...

You're talking about memorizing information and I'm talking about learning concepts (and skills), those are two very different things.