Inquire about purchasing the book | Table of Contents | Annotated Bibliography | Class on Nature of Mind
These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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We Dream to Remember and to Forget By contrast, in 1983 Francis
Crickproposed that the function of
dreams is to "clear the circuits" of the brain, otherwise there would
not be enough space to register each day's events. The brain, in the face of
huge daily sensory stimulation, must: understand what matters understand what does not
matter remember what will still
matter forget what will never
matter again Dreams help eliminate
useless memories. Therefore, according to Crick, we dream what is worth forgetting. What is still missing is the
physical link between dreams and genome.
Neurotransmitters (such as animenes and cholines) act on the surface
(the membrane) of the cell, whereas genes lie in the center (the nucleus) of
the cell. Messenger molecules transfer information from the membrane to the
nucleus and viceversa. Allan Hobsonhas hypothesized that
neurotransmitters may interact with messenger molecules and therefore affect
the work of genes. If during sleep the brain is
consolidating memories that have been acquired during the day, then dreaming,
far from being an eccentric manifestation of irrationality, is at the core of
human cognition. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Dreams" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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