What Is Sleep For?

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

All these computer analogies have one HUGE flaw.

We are NOT the computer CPU style of brain. We are NEURAL NETS, and as such , do not have CPUs, RAM, or a harddrive. We are one huge moving piece. New connections are constantly being formed, and old ones are constantly decaying.The physical shape of the brain, and it's neural pathways is how memory is stored. Your brain is constantly rewiring itself, as you get more memories. It is not possible to wipe memory withou causing brain damage. Neural nets are not "erasable."
The two methods of long term memory formation, are repitition, and emotional intensity. Practice, and repitition, like in school, Drills, drills, and more drills) or dialing a phone number many times, wires the brain a certain way.
Intense emotions, can also make memories permanent, by "burning " them into the wiring.The stress is so great on a connection, that it is the eqivalent of normal use, many times repeated.
Neural connections, get stronger with use, and weaker without. One VERY intence use, or many low level uses are one and the same.

Neural nets are entirly different than CPU style processors. There is no "Firewire" port in our heads, nor COULD there be one. There IS no hard drive, as our memory and processing is one and the same!
There are specialised area of the brain, but other areas can often take up the slack for these areas, when dammaged.
Machines do not grow, heal, die, or atrophy.
The advantage of a nural net, is that it can split itself into smaller pieces, be at odds with itself, (I have to pee, I won't pee until I gett the zipper down, and willy into the urinal) and not freeze up.(if you take too long getting that zipper open, or are to drunk to care, you piss yourself)Neural nets never get the "blue screen of death," but can go insane. Insane people can still function, depending on the type and scope of insanity.

As for what dreaming is.
Close your eyes, and push one finger of each hand, into the corner of your closed eyes, and gently press on your eyes. Increase the pressure gradualy, and the physical pressure on you optic nerve will sent random signals to the brain. You will "see" bright lights, and swirling geometric shapes of all colors.
You will note, that you will NOT see static, like a TV with no input signal, that is turned on. (Ant wars!)
The signal is random, yet you see shapes. Why?
Because unlike the TV screen, your brain is not capable of comprehending randomness. You percieve geometric shapes, and swilring colors, because that is the best pattern your brain can get, out of a random "noise."

This is what dreams are.
They are your brain, making order, out of randomness.
That which you yearn for, think about, supress, or celebrate, comes out as your dream. It can be metaphorical, literal, or a mixture, depending on YOU!

The ULTIMATE Rorschach test! (Ink blots)
THAT, is what dreams are.

Dreams are the real you, even the parts you don't admit to having.

[RichP82]

This is all very fascinating, but dammit EmperorChrostas the Cruel, learn how to use commas correctly!

I think it's fascinating how the brain is able to generate complex and sometimes original thoughts and images in dreams without the conscious mind being active.

[Trytostaydead]

Good God.. you computer geeks! Stop trying to mix neuro with computer sciences! LOL

[Dooey Jo]

That ain't nothing jack.. I've dreamt of full symphonies and choral arrangements of songs I've never heard or poetry so beautiful it made me cry. I remember them for a few seconds after I wake up in coherent detail but never well enough to transcribe. It's a curse really. I have some problem where I can hear music in my head but I can never manifest it out in words, tune or paper.

That's happened to me too. But that is nothing compared to the time I dreamt that I constructed a working lightsabre. I remember some of the stuff I used; a 4.5 V battery, some eletric wires, some other stuff that I can't remember and a crystal. I put it all together and pushed the "on"-switch and it worked!! Then I woke up, but I decided to write everthing about the dream down on a paper and test it. So I got me a piece of paper and a pen and then it hit me: I couldn't remember a damn thing about the dream! The only thing I remember is a 4.5 volt battery, wires and a crystal!! How frustrating is that?! Fucking brain; if it could just remember how I did it, I might have my very own working lightsabre right now.

Oh well, what good could 4.5 volts do anyway...

[Darth Gojira]

It's for pissing me off. Today is the 20th time I have overslept in a row!!!!!

[Admiral Valdemar]

Rats, EmperorChrostas the Cruel put it better than I could.

[russellb6666]

I allways kind of figured sleep was inbetween time that the brain used to sort everything out and place everything in its own little spot I kind of figured the brain to have a "file system" like a big filing cabnet sorting everything into have to remember skills, skills that are useful, random skills, and useless crap thats kept because its cool

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Sorry, that isn't even possible.
You don't HAVE a storage area. Your whole brain is memory, problem solving, sensory interpitation, and motor control, ALL COMBINED.

Neural NET! One piece. Short term memory is like a group of people, taking a path, with a repeating pattern. If they repeat their pattern enough, it becomes a trail. Here is the hard part, stay with me. The people, the pattern, their trails, (fresh, well traveled, or old, and fading into the background as the grass grows back) the grass, are all parts of the same WHOLE! The combination of figure/foreground, and background. One GESTALT.

You are an organism, a Gestalt. The sum is greater than the whole of the parts. Just like a running engine isn't the same as all of the parts in a pile, unassembled, and unworking. The order, has as much to do with working as the nature and number of the parts.
You are a dynamic process, like fire. When the process stops, you DIE. Life after death, is very much like fire after combustion ceases. Remember the classic fire triangle?

Heat, fuel, and oxygen, take away one, and no fire.

Inside, outside, and boundry.

Inside you, there is memory, personality, and abstract thought, and the ability to manipulate the outside.
Outside of your, there is an impersonal, objective universe, going about it's ways, indifferent.
At some point, the outside world, makes contact, through your contact boundry. Input comes from sences. Output goes through motor activity. Order is when the inner zone makes predictions about the outer zone, and directs the motor function to act accordingly.

MOST inportant. Sensory data is useless without interpetation, and action, IN A COORDINATED WHOLE!
Action is useless without reative direction. Reactive direction is impossible without predicting the outcome of action BASED on sensory input, and predictive modeling, based on memory.

The loop is complete. You are not PART of the loop, you ARE the whole loop.

If you had no memory, you couldn't predict. (what happened last time?)If you had no reasoning, memory couldn't be used to predict. (how is now similar to then?)If you had no senses, you would have nothing TO predict. (no data, no conclusion) If you had no motor function you could not ACT, and prediction would be useless.(brain in a tank, input only, no body)

Your eyes are a perfect example. They are not passive sensors. There is a strong feedback between pointing them, focusing them, and interpiting what you see in your inner zone. What you see changes where you point them, and the feedback of focusing them, for lense focus, and binocular tracking, tells you range, speed, and direction, all at once.

You ARE your contact boundry. Where the inner, meets the outer, at sensory and motor nerves.

You are an ORGANISM. Note the similarity between organised, and organism. Without an ordered structure, working AS ONE, you are not.

Forget this mechanistic, ghost in the machine BULLSHIT!
Shed your "Newtonian chains."

Like Newtonians physics, the mechanistic view of your self only works on a certain scale, below which, it goes crazy, and illogical, like quantum physics SEEMS to be, to those who don't grasp it.
Psycology is just as simple as quantum physics. When viewed through the lens of Newtonian physics, "bizzare, unpredictable, and impossible" things happen.

Fixing a broken arm needs only to address the gross macrostructure of the being.
Restoring the ability to trust in an abused abandonded child, is multiple orders of magnitude harder to do "right."
There is no, and can never be, a "patch," for this type of thing. Nor a "sling," or "splint."
Oy vay, would be there was.

Translation:
"Oh pain, I wish there was."