When Brains Dream (Part 1)

In the book 'When Brains Dream', dreams appear to be part of this ongoing memory processing, and their occurrence and content can predict subsequent memory improvement. While there is a vigorous debate over whether the actual conscious experiencing of dreams while they occur serves a function, we believe that it does, and that it is similar to that proposed for waking consciousness. Antonio Damasio, in this 2000 book 'The Feeling of What Happens', argues that consciousness provides two critical functions to the human brain: to construct narratives and to feel one’s emotional response to them. Together, they give humans (and presumably other conscious animals) the ability to imagine possibilities, evaluate them, and thereby plan future actions. Our NEXTUP model of dreaming (Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities) proposes that dreaming serves a similar function.

Specifically, we argue that dreaming allows the sleeping brain to enter an altered state of consciousness in which it can construct imagined narratives and respond emotionally to them. While dreaming, the brain identifies associations between recently formed memories (typically from the preceding day) and older, often only weakly related memories, and monitors whether the narrative it constructs from these memories induces an emotional response in the brain. If an emotional feeling is detected, the brain tags the association as potentially valuable, strengthening the link between the two memories and making the association available during subsequent wakefulness.

Antonio Zadra  is a professor at the Université de Montréal and a researcher at the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine. He has appeared on PBS's Nova and BBC's Horizon.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/DVkbtf7IV1U



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