Procedural Memory and Dream Content

I love football (soccer) and, seeing as it is the holidays and I had a ball at home, I figured why not practice some football while I have the time. I always wanted to run with the ball and become skillful with it, seeing as I can't make it through three steps without it bouncing off my feet or getting lost in the distance. So, for the first week of December I did just that. I ran with the ball for about 1 to an hour and a half each day. I enjoyed every bit of time I spend training, although there were moments of frustration when things didn't go as planned. I remember I tried keeping a certain pace with the ball, feeling the sense of my feet as I touched it, whatever I could come up with for the time. As days went by the exercise felt more and more natural. Then, around the 4th day of practice I have a dream. In it I'm playing football with my friends. At one point I receive the ball and decide to make a run with it. Now, to my surprise I run exactly as I had practiced back when I was awake. It wasn't anything spectacular, but what stood with me from that dream was how easily the muscle memory of running with the ball made it to the dream. To this day I continue to work my football skills, and from that day on, every time I receive the ball in my dreams (I tend to dream about football a lot haha) my dream avatar "remembers" what it is to run with it, just as it has been since that first week of December.

Now, with this in mind, it's particularly interesting how the implicit aspect of memory makes its way naturally to dreams, among the rest of subtypes. Skills like talking, typing, reading, driving, walking, are pretty much a given even in dreams, whereas recognizing the nature of the experience as a dream, not so. True, all of these examples work at an unconscious level, but I can't help but feel a certain curiosity as to why these memories make the cut, but not others that spend more time in consciousness? I guess, without them we wouldn't make a sense of what is going on during the night. On that same token, why did an exercise as simple as learning a football skill make it to the dream so fast, yet weeks and months of reality checking don't? And last, to what extent are these skills incubated for dream content? I know the specific skill I used was perfectly replicated, not so where or when it happened, or the details pertaining to the event itself.

Anyway, I just wanted to share for anyone who might be interested.

I have a good answer for you. You hit one of the factors that repeating a thing over and over works like incubating a dream. The next part is totally true from my 1st hand experience and some dream scholars. In the normal function of the brain a process must take place to transfer short-term memory into long-term memory. A similar process must take place to convert short term activity type memory into the sought after body-memory. Body memory requires that new pathways of neurons be formed. This takes time. In a certain phase of sleep (to deep for many to remember) your brain goes over everything you learned that was physical. It focuses on short cuts or errors that need improvement and has you run the paces. You do the physical activity in dreamland over and over while your body tries to form a neural map before committing to growing the new neuron.
In conclusion, the most likely thing to dream about is any setting where you were recently trying to improve a skill, either work or sport. You dream about doing it dozens of times. Most non-explorers of dreams are sleeping right through this with no memory that they passed the soccer ball 48 times last night.

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Originally Posted by sivason

I have a good answer for you. You hit one of the factors that repeating a thing over and over works like incubating a dream. The next part is totally true from my 1st hand experience and some dream scholars. In the normal function of the brain a process must take place to transfer short-term memory into long-term memory. A similar process must take place to convert short term activity type memory into the sought after body-memory. Body memory requires that new pathways of neurons be formed. This takes time. In a certain phase of sleep (to deep for many to remember) your brain goes over everything you learned that was physical. It focuses on short cuts or errors that need improvement and has you run the paces. You do the physical activity in dreamland over and over while your body tries to form a neural map before committing to growing the new neuron.

In conclusion, the most likely thing to dream about is any setting where you were recently trying to improve a skill, either work or sport. You dream about doing it dozens of times. Most non-explorers of dreams are sleeping right through this with no memory that they passed the soccer ball 48 times last night.

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Of course, I had forgotten such crucial piece of information! I remembered reading through research on theories as to why we dream, and that which you speak of was pointed out. The idea being that dreams function first and foremost as a consolidation of what we've learned throughout the day, in memory. With that, I'm reminded of human life ages ago where they had to live the hardships that entailed surviving wildlife attack. If I recall correctly, these people would mostly dream recurrently about being chased or fighting a predator, in order to further consolidate the experience and make way for methods to better deal with the situation.

As for that last bit of text of yours I remarked in bold, it makes sense just as much when it's the brain's turn to decide what makes it to the dream or not. For example, I look back at my football dream and notice many differences between it and the actual thing. Back in the waking world I had used a park as my training grounds, during the day, and used a ball I had previously bought. However, in the dream I was actually playing with some friends, at a court, with some random ball, and at night. So, while the procedural memory of pacing the ball did transferred perfectly, not so the rest of information. Which makes me think, in the brain's attempt to simulate a world while we sleep, and to create a character within that world for us to experience such simulation, it would require us to make a general sense out of this world in order to function at all. So, it heads over to the bank of long-term memories we hold and uses that to build a "realistic" universe, then it designs a character we can use in it, and then it must let us live it. That last phase, the ultimate phase that brings an overall sense to it, requires why but a series of implicit memories to live out the dream in ways we can understand.

We could use the football dream as an example that ties both (unintentional) incubation and dream content. The brain has chosen “football” as the theme for the night’s dream, therefore it must build the world around it, specifically if the theme involves "playing" football. To begin, it needs the necessary tools to play the sport, which include a setting, a character, and a ball. Now, although football is what's important here, the specifics as to what to use, where to play, and at what time aren't so. Next, we must make sense of the world, so while we have football as the topic, the dream is incomplete unless we add people in it (because who the hell plays by him/herself?). Also, our memory bank holds mostly events where we have played, whether with friends, strangers, when we watch on T.V., and so on and so forth. At last, we must live the dream in a way we can understand, hence the procedural memories.

Another consideration to add to yours and Sivason's is that a primary motivator for bringing daytime experience into the dream world is emotional resonance. You said it yourself, Silence11, you were highly motivated to practice your football. You invested a great deal of emotion in the exercises. You loved the process of training. Combine Sivason's points with emotional impact, and you have relatively easy transmission of actions from day to night, whether intended or not. Perhaps apply an emotional element to your QCs. You should find they transmit more effectively if highly charged.