An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming

Another interesting post, hypnodude. It makes sense to me. Pretty much every facet of the body and mind was used for survival at one time. There wasn’t much else to do except die.

Hi,
Interesting, this might explain why almost all my regular dreams are either threatening or sexual in their content.
Geez,I hope I don’t have to confront a saber toothed tiger anytime soon!

                                                                                       Bye.

My personal experience with dreams has never been one of recurring, threatening experiences, though it seems that this is the case for many people. Consequently I’ve never really felt right about the concept of dreams as some kind of practicing space for waking life. My explanation for dreaming in an evolutionary sense would be that completely shutting down conciousness for the entire 8 hours needed to be completely rested is just too risky - we all know how groggy and unresponsive people can be at some stages of sleep. So, for extended periods during sleep, our conciousness is brought a little closer to the surface. In waking life, our concious perception of the world is built up from sensory information; during dreams, the slightly awakened conciousness is kept busy and alert by creating a model of reality from what it has access to during sleep - recent memories and imagination. We still have periods of almost complete shutdown, but during dreamtime we are still resting but are more ready and able to awaken quickly if there is any sudden threat in the real world. This makes more sense to me, but then I can only speak from my own experiences with dreams as being largely safe and unthreatening.

Sounds like a valid theory, although I dont think the two are mutually exclusive.

True, they aren’t mutally exclusive. I guess what I was aiming to say is that I’ve never felt that the fundamental point for dreams existing was as a training ground for RL, though that may indeed play a part.

Point taken.

I don’t think there has to be imminent threat involved for the “practice space theory” to be relevant. For instance, people dream a lot about social situations in different combinations and variations. These are important even though they might not be threatening, because social manoeuvring has very likely played a huge role in human evolution.

Ive always wondered about this too. One question ive asked myself is if human intelligence/awareness has anything to do with it. Do animals dream the same amount (or something)? I know that animals sleep a lot more, but do they dream? It may be interesting to note dream (like REM or something) differences between animals of the same species in the wild and in domestic houses. on an amusing side note, i originally typed WILD instead of wild :tongue:

I think its widely accepted that physically, sleep is for energy conservation, restoration of such and the body itself. Mentally, it gets vague of course, which is a reason i ask myself if intelligence has anything to do with it, one way to see is by differences, etc. Ah well without data im getting nowhere. :smile:

Training grounds, yeah that does make some sense. Factoring intelligence in, the differences between humanity and the animal kindom (humans preoccupied more with themselves, animals more preoccupied with the environment and all other animals) it makes sense. Perhaps the equivalent of ‘threatening situation’ for us is stuff like human interaction, love, learning, pondering the nature of our existence. While, in the past, when we were closer to animals, it was stuff like sex, defense, food, basic threatening situations (of which civilization has had to worry about less and less, except for like war and the general darkness of the population i.e. each other rather than entirely different animal species, but i digress). Then again, how do i know for sure what we dreamed long, long ago… :content:

I read somewhere that the amount of dreaming in a species is related to how developed the animal is when it is born. The more helpless it is, the more it will dream throughout its life.

But, according to the same website, dreaming is not related to intelligence, which is perhaps a bit surprising. If I find it again, I’ll post the link.

Pr Laberge has another evolutionnary explanation on Lucidity.com, which pleases me more. I’ll find the link one day.

Hey found it. This quote comes from this site: npi.ucla.edu/sleepresearch/e … iaMax3.htm

I remember reading it before.If so it seems that REM was given to us as “training ground” to learn about many possibilities in life.
Then again…if thats correct,either nature is damn smart or theres really god behind it.

I found it. There is a link towards some hypotheses about dream functions and meaning.
https://www.lucidity.com/LD8DFM.html
In chapter “The Functions Of Dreaming And The Advantages Of Consciousness”, you can find Dr Laberge’s evolutionnary theory.