A Theory on Dreams
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Have you ever noticed how events that occured during the day, or the previous day seem to reoccur in dreams? Or how you become easily confused or frustrated when you have gone without sleeping? I have come up with a theory to explain this.
During the day, the brain is filling up a 'buffer', where information is stored in a disorganised unreferenced way. All the key events of the day, anything even moderately important is stored. When you finally close your eyes and go to sleep at the end of the day, your brain goes to work emptying this buffer, sorting the imformation and catagorising it. You interpret this reorganization as a dream. Your brain chooses all the most important events and stores them. This would explain many things.
When you go without sleep for 2-3 days, your buffer becomes extremely crowded, making you irritable and 'brain-farts' (when you suddenly space out) common. This is because your brain is constantly trying to decided which information is least important, and dumping it. This causes forgetfulness, as your brain accidently deletes important information. It has been shown that long term sleep deprivation causes insanity. This happens because the brain is overloaded, and simple can't deal with any new information.
The 'predictions' you sometimes get while you are dreaming are caused by the brain extrapolating the events of the day into two parts: recorded events and something similar to a reference guide, how to deal with a similar problem or event if it occurs again. Your brain runs tests on the events, deciding whether to put them in the 'do it this way' or 'don't do this again' catagories. To do this your brain must act out the situation again, if a similar situation has occured before, it can use data from that to form a more accurate and longer mental forecast, giving you a prediction of the events of the coming day, week or longer.
The brain is far more complex than most people think, it is constantly doing things that we don't even notice, simply because we don't need to notice them.
During the day, the brain is filling up a 'buffer', where information is stored in a disorganised unreferenced way. All the key events of the day, anything even moderately important is stored. When you finally close your eyes and go to sleep at the end of the day, your brain goes to work emptying this buffer, sorting the imformation and catagorising it. You interpret this reorganization as a dream. Your brain chooses all the most important events and stores them. This would explain many things.
When you go without sleep for 2-3 days, your buffer becomes extremely crowded, making you irritable and 'brain-farts' (when you suddenly space out) common. This is because your brain is constantly trying to decided which information is least important, and dumping it. This causes forgetfulness, as your brain accidently deletes important information. It has been shown that long term sleep deprivation causes insanity. This happens because the brain is overloaded, and simple can't deal with any new information.
The 'predictions' you sometimes get while you are dreaming are caused by the brain extrapolating the events of the day into two parts: recorded events and something similar to a reference guide, how to deal with a similar problem or event if it occurs again. Your brain runs tests on the events, deciding whether to put them in the 'do it this way' or 'don't do this again' catagories. To do this your brain must act out the situation again, if a similar situation has occured before, it can use data from that to form a more accurate and longer mental forecast, giving you a prediction of the events of the coming day, week or longer.
The brain is far more complex than most people think, it is constantly doing things that we don't even notice, simply because we don't need to notice them.
