Dreams

Dreams are something that have boggled mankind for ages. We believe that dreams are built from the subconscious. Now from our previous discussions, we likened our consciousness to a virtual serial processor. So where does this subconscious fit into our parallel-serial processor combination? Well, from what we think of the subconscious, we can think of it as another type of memory, one which I shall call the cache memory of the brain.

For those that do not know, the cache memory in a computer is a very fast, very small amount of memory that is directly integrated with the processor. It stores the information that is currently in use by the processor, and information related to the process the processor is executing. In simpler terms, say you are playing a game on your computer. Your processor is executing many processes, and to make it go faster, game related processes are stored in the cache for quick access by the processor.

Our mind does something similar when we think about something. It automatically creates a list of things associated with that something for easy access in our subconscious. If you think about any single object, such as a book or a person, your brain will come up with various examples of a book and information regarding that person.

Now back to why we dream. First, the difference between a dream that occurs during sleep and a daydream. A daydream is nothing more than our imagination, artificial reality at its best. But dreams that occur during sleep are very different altogether. They are incredibly random, at times bringing people and events from different eras of your life together. They don’t follow any set progression or pattern. We don’t dream all the time, and we tend to forget most of what we dream.

I wrote in Evolutionary Creationism, that the brain has an infinitely powerful graphics engine which is limited by only how much we know. I also wrote that the brain has a set of definite data structures that it uses to store information. If we take these premises as true, I have an (although seemingly farfetched) idea of what is really happening when we dream. If there are definite data structures for the brain, then the brain must clean up and organize the contents every now and then for fast access. In other words, the brain must defragment its memory.

So how does this result in a dream? During the process of defragmentation in a computer, clusters of data are swapped all across the hard disk while they are being organized. These clusters of data will come from very different files and processes, and will go through the cache to be processed by the processor before being relocated to another area in the memory. If the brain does the same thing while defragmenting, then we can guess that when each memory goes through the subconscious, it gets processed by the processor, our consciousness, which is responsible for simulation. Thus, the dream is created of random memories while our consciousness works to clean up our brain while we sleep. You might ask, why then can’t you dream while you are awake? Well, most people know it is inadvisable to work on data that you are defragmenting. The brain takes this into account and chooses the time when the conscious is inactive, and can have full control.

Of course this is not a solid conclusion made from experiments, and all are welcome to tear apart my argument to shreds in the comments.