I bet you must have not just once but many a times wondered why you dream. This post will describe a theory that takes some ideas from the domain of technology. Remember, we talked about the enormous network of brain neurons in an old post. We will visit that subject again. Just to tell the novice, the brain is composed of a massive network of countless neurons and its in these very neurons where the information gets stored. Every neuron would store some part of the info and when the brain needs to retrieve the complete information, it will pass a signal through a known and structured pattern of neurons and all the info in these neurons gets combined to give the complete information.The neural network concept, which is used to store information in artificially intelligent systems, uses a similar approach to organizing information. It was only after some research on these synthetic neural networks, that a very brittle, yet intriguing idea emerged on why would a human being dream. Here's a brief explanation of the same.
While we are sleeping, most of our body parts get engaged in routine maintenance tasks. The brain takes up this diagnosis and correction task and checks if all organs are functioning properly. It sends signals to these organs and they would do tasks like pumping some extra blood, disposing something in the impure blood and some other similar stuff. The brain also sends some check signals to itself. Tough Job, I must say ! The primary maintenance job it assumes is to free neurons which don't have valid information or information which may no longer be needed. But its the Brain and for its being so intelligent, you wont expect it to delete the info in these neurons straightaway. In fact, the brain checks to see if this info is useful and has to be retained.
The brain tries to see if these neurons have any useful information by sending random, yet organized, signals to them. These signals are similar to the information retrieval signals introduced in para 1 but, these signals are sent while you are wild asleep. These signals are sent across the neurons and the information in them is combined. This information gets played back while you are dreaming. The dreams are in a way a complement of the information you retrieve while you are awake. Now, these neurons had random pieces of information and they are combined randomly by some random signals. That's why the dreams we see often don't follow any specific flow of thoughts and we keep swinging from one place to another and combine people whom we met in different nations. In fact, the brain passes its own inputs to make the dreams more meaningful because it assumes that it has to supply any missing information to fill any gaps. The brain may supply commonsense knowledge that one has acquired or knowledge regarding the places you have visited or the people you know or have met at any time in your life. That's the reason why while dreaming, you end up combining several places into one and meet 10 people from 10 different houses in your own.
This was a very different theory and that's why I felt like sharing it with you. And since we've went a little off the track for this one, I will also like to thank an all time contributor to these posts - Tzinga Health Drink. I get all my ideas on posts and how to present them while I'm on my cycling spree every morning and the spree lasts for 80-100 minutes. The time I spend makes me feel refreshed and gets my ideas ticking but it also demands a lot of energy from me. So one of my pals told me to have this awesome health drink called Tzinga. This health drink comes in three irresistible flavors - Mango Strawberry,Lemon Mint and Tropical Trip and I feel that this is the only health drink which also gives a really refreshing taste to your taste buds apart from giving some serious charge to your body.When the other drinks demand you to put some clip carrier to your bicycle for holding them, you can carry Tzinga straight in your pockets and with a sipper like outlet, you can easily take a sip as an when you need it. A pack of Tzinga contains some serious energy so please be careful while using it.
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| A network of neurons |
While we are sleeping, most of our body parts get engaged in routine maintenance tasks. The brain takes up this diagnosis and correction task and checks if all organs are functioning properly. It sends signals to these organs and they would do tasks like pumping some extra blood, disposing something in the impure blood and some other similar stuff. The brain also sends some check signals to itself. Tough Job, I must say ! The primary maintenance job it assumes is to free neurons which don't have valid information or information which may no longer be needed. But its the Brain and for its being so intelligent, you wont expect it to delete the info in these neurons straightaway. In fact, the brain checks to see if this info is useful and has to be retained.
The brain tries to see if these neurons have any useful information by sending random, yet organized, signals to them. These signals are similar to the information retrieval signals introduced in para 1 but, these signals are sent while you are wild asleep. These signals are sent across the neurons and the information in them is combined. This information gets played back while you are dreaming. The dreams are in a way a complement of the information you retrieve while you are awake. Now, these neurons had random pieces of information and they are combined randomly by some random signals. That's why the dreams we see often don't follow any specific flow of thoughts and we keep swinging from one place to another and combine people whom we met in different nations. In fact, the brain passes its own inputs to make the dreams more meaningful because it assumes that it has to supply any missing information to fill any gaps. The brain may supply commonsense knowledge that one has acquired or knowledge regarding the places you have visited or the people you know or have met at any time in your life. That's the reason why while dreaming, you end up combining several places into one and meet 10 people from 10 different houses in your own.
That's how it all happens. In cases, when the brain is unable to get an ending for the dream, it just hangs up and waits for some real life event. The real life event like ringing of a bell, or yours falling on the ground, is combined in your dream so as to get an ending. And you wonder why you were dreaming of something that actually happened.After the dream gets over, the brain deletes all the information that was saved in those neurons. However, the dream that was generated is a new information in its own. Now its upon the brain to decide on whether the dream has to be retained or deleted. That's why at times, you remember what you dream't and at times, you don't. One more thing to this is the fact that while generating some dreams, the brain spends a lot of effort as the neurons it tries to combine don't have structured information and the brain has to put in a lot of stuff to make it meaningful. That's why the brain decides to break the dream and awake you. Or if the brain succeeds in finally generating some information, it lets it stay there and won't break the dream. But the next day when you get up, you wont feel fresh as your brain had been working a lot while you were asleep just to get the dream ticking.
This was a very different theory and that's why I felt like sharing it with you. And since we've went a little off the track for this one, I will also like to thank an all time contributor to these posts - Tzinga Health Drink. I get all my ideas on posts and how to present them while I'm on my cycling spree every morning and the spree lasts for 80-100 minutes. The time I spend makes me feel refreshed and gets my ideas ticking but it also demands a lot of energy from me. So one of my pals told me to have this awesome health drink called Tzinga. This health drink comes in three irresistible flavors - Mango Strawberry,Lemon Mint and Tropical Trip and I feel that this is the only health drink which also gives a really refreshing taste to your taste buds apart from giving some serious charge to your body.When the other drinks demand you to put some clip carrier to your bicycle for holding them, you can carry Tzinga straight in your pockets and with a sipper like outlet, you can easily take a sip as an when you need it. A pack of Tzinga contains some serious energy so please be careful while using it.
Okay, now lets get back to the topi and have some sort of a conclusion. This theory is one amongst those 100 theories on dreaming. Some of them tell that its the subconscious mind and some tell that its some other complex mechanism related to the locomotion of the body. But whatever it may be, this one actually explains most of the phenomena related to dreams and I personally believe, this one might be the real reason.Please tell me if you agree with me or if you have some different idea or any knowledge regarding this. I'm on this thing now !!!
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