With rare exceptions, everyone dreams periodically while they sleep. And it's not just humans; based on REM activity and other evidence, it appears that almost all species of mammals also dream. Why? What purpose do these sometimes crazy hallucinations serve?
More to the point, why did dreaming evolve in our distant mammalian ancestors? What adaptive advantage did a tree shrew who dreamt have over its otherwise identical relatives who didn't? How could a propensity to hallucinate possibly confer an advantage?
Over the years, countless hypotheses have been proposed to explain the mystery of dreaming. Freud believed that dreams serve as a window into the subconscious mind. The trend among many modern researchers, on the other hand, is to see dreaming as merely epiphenomenal, an accidental byproduct of activity in the mammalian cortex, serving no real useful function. But there's still no consensus among researchers. And, until recently, none of the proposed explanations could account for all the known experimental data.
Psychology Today recently posted an article describing a promising new hypothesis by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo. He proposes that dreams are a "training ground" in which sleeping animals rehearse behaviors that are vital to their survival. From the article:
Revonsuo believes that dreams are a sort of nighttime theater in which our brains screen realistic scenarios. This virtual reality simulates emergency situations and provides an arena for safe training. As Revonsuo puts it, "The primary function of negative dreams is rehearsal for similar real events, so that threat recognition and avoidance happens faster and more automatically in comparable real situations."
In hindsight, Revonsuo's explanation is not only plausible but trivially obvious. Therefore, it must be true. I hereby declare it a fact. :-)
2 comments:
"Trivially obvious"? Is there an obvious reason I would need a training ground to prepare me for the real-life eventuality of watching the million-marmot-march throw rotten eggs at Mayor McCheese, except instead of being Mayor he got demoted so he had to wear the same five hats all the time?
A case can no doubt be made that surreal situations are perhaps a necessary byproduct of a system that at other times performs training for circumstances more usefully applicable to the real world. But I sure wouldn't call it trivially obvious.
For many years now I've thought I was the only one who had obsessive homoerotic fantasies centered upon Mayor McCheese. It's truly a joy to learn there are kindred spirits out there with the same synaptic defects as me.
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