Pseudo consciousness: dreaming

Why we sleep and dream? The body needs rest. Muscle requires an idle period to recover. This is sleeping. Our sensory system mostly ...

Why we sleep and dream?

The body needs rest. Muscle requires an idle period to recover. This is sleeping. Our sensory system mostly turned off or at least lowered its sensitivity. Our consciousness turned off too to support and make efficient the body's need to rest and recovery.

But when we sleep there are periods when we are dreaming of high activity of the brain. Even our body starts to be activated. Even we are capable of remembering what our dream was as it looks like happened to us. As it looks like we were conscious. Why we dream?

Neurons working method is the continuous charging and firing. The cerebral cortex is responsible for thoughts and memory. The brain's working method is synchronized firing. The synchronized firing governed and drove, modulated by the sensory system. If no apparent sensory stimuli then no governed modulation, random activation happens. Until spontaneous modulation emerges. This is dreaming.

The spontaneous modulation not induced by the sensory system, it is a random phenomenon. But the spontaneous modulation induces activity in the connected neuron routes, so the dreaming not random after it started. The most easily and this is why most likely induced neuron routes are the newest, last active routes, so the dreams frequently related to events related to the day before.

Spontaneous synchronization is a shallow neuronal activity and quickly fade, we remember our dreams only if we wake up quickly after the dreaming.

So the dreaming is an emerging feature of how our neurons work. It doesn't have a clearly dedicated function, but it can contribute to maintaining memory by activating and conditioning connections.

And as of how it works, dreaming is a pseudo-consciousness as it fits the mechanism of consciousness as it was discussed. As it might be, dreaming is a byproduct of consciousness, a side-effect of having consciousness.