The three amazing evolutionary adaptations of dreams
Dreams involve three amazing evolutionary adaptations - suspension of disbelief, long term memory suppression and inhibition of motor control. Each one of these adaptations is essential in order for dreams not to make us feel completely crazy either during or after dreams take place.
Suspension of disbelief
In life when things take a turn for the truly weird you second guess things. Everyone, no matter how naive, has some level of skepticism. In dreams even the most skeptical of people accept what they see as real. Without this suspension of disbelief, the flow of dreams would be brought to a halt and possibly hijacked. This happens for some people in the form of lucid dreams. Somehow during lucid dreaming suspension of disbelief is interrupted and the dreamer can often control the aspects of their dream. If we did not suspend disbelief during dreams - everyone’s dreams would always be lucid. They would be immediately aware they were dreaming. This “night-time naivety” is in contrast to our natural way of looking at things and is an adaption that makes us go through the exercises presented to us by our dreams without questioning them.
Long Term Memory Suppression
If we forgot entire fragments of our recent lives without reason, most of us would be very concerned. Normal people have a reasonable account of the things they have been doing and thinking in the recent past. This is another strange and novel twist of dreams. For some reason our long term memories have been suppressed with respect to dreams. Given the often bizarre content of our dreams this frees us from having to think about them during our waking hours. It seems as though our brains have developed a specific mechanism to forget the strange thoughts we have at night.
Inhibition of Motor Control
Sleep itself seems to inhibit motor activities. Dreams, however, in most cases completely inhibit motor control. This keeps us from acting out the content of our dreams. When this doesn’t work properly we sleepwalk. If we didn’t inhibit motor control during our dreams - everyone would sleepwalk as they slept at night. This would be as strange as it would be disruptive. Nature has built in a protective adaptation for the dreamer that keeps us in one place - safe and sound.
Are dreams beneficial?
No one knows why we dream, but it seems as though somehow it benefits us to do so as we have evolved so many different processes to keep dreams “in working order”. Occam’s razor would tell us that not dreaming at all would be far simpler than dreaming and going into a special state where we suspend disbelief, stop forming long term memories and inhibit our motor control. Given the evolutionary time and cost of these adaptations it would seem as though quite possibly dreams do give us a beneficial edge - even if we don’t know what it is.
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Posted: January 16th, 2007 under Dreams.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Kim
Time: January 17, 2007, 10:37 pm
Great article. Sleeping really makes you start to think!
Comment from lynda
Time: January 18, 2007, 6:19 am
I would guess that during sleep, there is a part of the brain that sorts the information or work of the mind and defrags the memory storage. The “down-time” mind tries to sort or make sense of what the mind has done during the day, When you solve a jigsaw, you often put pieces together in strange ways, making strange pictures.
Comment from Dan
Time: January 19, 2007, 3:32 am
neat, but you misunderstand occam’s razor. It doesn’t state “the simpler or more likely of two solutions is most likely the correct one” but rather it instructs us not to invent needless pluralities. That isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie Contact.
Comment from justin
Time: January 19, 2007, 10:15 am
when you are in REM sleep, your pineal gland pumps out DMT (dimethyltryptamine), referred to by some as “LSD lightning”.
every time you sleep, you have an intense psychedelic trip
Comment from brandon
Time: January 20, 2007, 5:18 am
I’ve had my motor cortex fire up again in sleep a couple times. Had a dream I was about to knock the crud out of someone and drew back my fist, then I grabbed him by the collar, had a sharp pain, and I woke up…if I hadn’t cut my thumb pretty deep earlier that day, I’d have punched my fiance straight in the face while asleep! I actually had her by the collar of her nightgown and had my fist cocked back….
Comment from Carl
Time: January 21, 2007, 3:49 am
Interesting article. However your inference to evolution is unfounded and unnecessary.
Comment from Ric
Time: January 21, 2007, 2:19 pm
I read an interesting theory that said that dreams are a result of spontaneous emission of electrical pulses designed to keep our brain from atrophying. These pulses unlock scenes or flashes and because our brains are hardwired to construct a linear narrative from our experiences, we try to weave these flashes into a story. The result is a dream. This also accounts for the reason our dreams are so disjointed.
Comment from Jay
Time: February 3, 2007, 7:06 am
I agree with Carl and ask what evolution has to do with anything substantive here.
Comment from craig
Time: February 9, 2007, 11:17 pm
i often experiance my future in the dreams(im not a whack job honest ) i have and have vivid deja vu s all the time since i was 8 .
how can or do you explain this ?
its not radom images being played in my subcon mind my dreams are real !!
everyone reading this has had a deja vu !! remember how you felt ?strange,puzzled, not really there ?
It felt like a dream right ? what makes it happen and why u know you have been,done or experianced the thought before why you going through it again powerless to change the outcome !why to you experiance deja vu at just over the half way line committed to the outcome that you have already seen
unable to help out ?????????
Comment from Greg
Time: September 24, 2008, 1:42 am
Ok this is how i got deje vu!(i’m 10)
(ok i’m not awack somthing)When i went to sleep ihad this wierd drea.In real life i felt like i was being strangled(i could not breeth!)woke up @ midnight.went back to sleep.
the next night i had dejavu in a dream!
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