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Random thought: Could dreams be a result of the processing of toxins? In the same way some "toxins" cause us to hallucinate etc. so too could these toxins, as a

Random thought: Could dreams be a result of the processing of toxins? In the same way some "toxins" cause us to hallucinate etc. so too could these toxins, as a side affect of processing?

clavalle 10y ago
>The team discovered that this increased flow was possible in part because when mice went to sleep, their brain cells actually shrank, making it easier for fluid to circulate. It could be that the brain needs to fire up for short periods in order to help pump the increased fluid out to prepare for another rinse.
- clort 10y ago
  What I thought of, when I read that was that perhaps the shrinking is related to reduced blood flow or reduced blood absorption (does blood pressure raise or lower during sleep?) and this is also related to sleep itself, in the same way that a chokehold causes unconsciousness by restricting the oxygen reaching the brain
- tbirrell 10y ago
  Hmm... Interesting, almost like a heart. Expand, contract, expand, contract. That could be why we have multiple dreams a night.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
e40 10y ago
I read somewhere in the last 10 years that dreams were practice for real life situations. After hearing that, when I awake in the middle of a dream, I always test that hypothesis, and sure enough, sometimes is quite plausible.
- Namrog84 10y ago
  Most of my dreams involve a lot of supernatural events and scenarios that'd be quite unlikely in real life. Am I preparing for a day soon where magic, superpowers and other super natural events become real?
  - e40 10y ago
    Perhaps you missed the "sometimes"...
  - bkkssnn 10y ago
    Perhaps if you where out hunting & gathering instead of watching movies, reading books and playing videogames your dreams would be more "real".
  - e40 10y ago
    bkkssnn hit the nail on the head, but I'll leave this here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-literary-mind/200911/what-do-dreams-do-us https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-literary-mind/20091... as a reply to your snarkiness.
- stevenh 10y ago
  This reminds me of how they used GTA V to train driverless cars.
d8421l01vv4r 10y ago
If dreams only were the result of some cleanup process (i.e. just arbitrary neurons firing), I imagine they would be a lot less coherent and all events would be (stochastically) independent. While dreams usually don't much make a huge lot of sense, they are sometimes quite realistic and "past" events seem to influence "later" events.
- asdA3asdas23 10y ago
  Interesting. If the cleaning process itself depended on firing of the neurons during the day (whatever happened that day) then activating to purge these same neurons could somehow appear to have some meaning where the activations would in some way be tied to the events triggered during the day. So, I guess in this sense dreams could be a cleanup without being random, but based on the daily usage (of course this is just an exercise in speculation :))

Random thought: Could dreams be a result of the processing of toxins? In the same way some "toxins" cause us to hallucinate etc. so too could these toxins, as a side affect of processing?

clavalle 10y ago

>The team discovered that this increased flow was possible in part because when mice went to sleep, their brain cells actually shrank, making it easier for fluid to circulate. It could be that the brain needs to fire up for short periods in order to help pump the increased fluid out to prepare for another rinse.

clort 10y ago
What I thought of, when I read that was that perhaps the shrinking is related to reduced blood flow or reduced blood absorption (does blood pressure raise or lower during sleep?) and this is also related to sleep itself, in the same way that a chokehold causes unconsciousness by restricting the oxygen reaching the brain
tbirrell 10y ago
Hmm... Interesting, almost like a heart. Expand, contract, expand, contract. That could be why we have multiple dreams a night.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

e40 10y ago

I read somewhere in the last 10 years that dreams were practice for real life situations. After hearing that, when I awake in the middle of a dream, I always test that hypothesis, and sure enough, sometimes is quite plausible.

Namrog84 10y ago
Most of my dreams involve a lot of supernatural events and scenarios that'd be quite unlikely in real life. Am I preparing for a day soon where magic, superpowers and other super natural events become real?
- e40 10y ago
  Perhaps you missed the "sometimes"...
- bkkssnn 10y ago
  Perhaps if you where out hunting & gathering instead of watching movies, reading books and playing videogames your dreams would be more "real".
- e40 10y ago
  bkkssnn hit the nail on the head, but I'll leave this here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-literary-mind/200911/what-do-dreams-do-us https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-literary-mind/20091... as a reply to your snarkiness.
stevenh 10y ago
This reminds me of how they used GTA V to train driverless cars.

d8421l01vv4r 10y ago

If dreams only were the result of some cleanup process (i.e. just arbitrary neurons firing), I imagine they would be a lot less coherent and all events would be (stochastically) independent. While dreams usually don't much make a huge lot of sense, they are sometimes quite realistic and "past" events seem to influence "later" events.

asdA3asdas23 10y ago
Interesting. If the cleaning process itself depended on firing of the neurons during the day (whatever happened that day) then activating to purge these same neurons could somehow appear to have some meaning where the activations would in some way be tied to the events triggered during the day. So, I guess in this sense dreams could be a cleanup without being random, but based on the daily usage (of course this is just an exercise in speculation :))