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Study finds novel evidence that dreams reflect multiple memories, anticipate future events:
Dreams result from a process that often combines fragments of multiple life experiences and anticipates future events, according to novel evidence from a new study.
Results show that 53.5% of dreams were traced to a memory, and nearly 50% of reports with a memory source were connected to multiple past experiences. The study also found that 25.7% of dreams were related to specific impending events, and 37.4% of dreams with a future event source were additionally related to one or more specific memories of past experiences. Future-oriented dreams became proportionally more common later in the night.
"Humans have struggled to understand the meaning of dreams for millennia," said principal investigator Erin Wamsley, who has a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience and is an associate professor in the department of psychology and program in neuroscience at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. "We present new evidence that dreams reflect a memory-processing function. Although it has long been known that dreams incorporate fragments of past experience, our data suggest that dreams also anticipate probable future events."
According to Wamsley, the proportional increase of future-oriented dreams later in the night may be driven by temporal proximity to the upcoming events. While these dreams rarely depict future events realistically, the activation and recombination of future-relevant memory fragments may nonetheless serve an adaptive function.
Journal Reference:
Wamsley, Erin. 034 Dreaming as Constructive Episodic Future Simulation, Sleep (DOI: 10.1093/sleep/zsab072.033)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday June 09 2021, @03:06PM (5 children)
Anyone else dream about code?
Dreams seem to be about things that one has anxiety about.
Untangling some ugly XML file.
Or just solving problems.
How to rework this loop. Or improve a SQL query. Or some deployment issue. Or database upgrade issue.
When I was a teen I remember having a dream about connecting a small one inch speaker to some circuit. No longer remember the details of that.
Just a week or so ago, dreamed I was on a ride at Walt Disney World. With my brother. Strapped in. Ready to ride. All of a sudden my dog walks around the corner and jumps up into an empty space in the seat. I am thinking "Oh no!" I'm going to have to hold her very tight. Then a ride attendant is coming, and I have this internal feeling that I've got to conceal that I have my dog on the ride. But then realize the best thing is to tell the attendant so that I can get off the ride and let my brother actually go on the ride without me. Then I wake up, not in panic, but a little anxious.
Other strange dreams include: a truck crashing and overturning in my block, my dog rushes out and starts eating all of the cargo spilled all over the road, and when I get there, I realize it was a truck load of dog treats.
If I think about it, there are probably other strange ones I can recall.
I think dreams are a lot about solving real or potential problems. Dealing with anxieties, which are related to problem solving. Preparing for problems that might occur -- how would you solve it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday June 09 2021, @06:47PM (2 children)
I do that sometimes, but not often b/c I usually try to separate work from sleep by at least a few hours and throw in something like woodworking and reading to break it up. I do solve a lot of code (more logic, actually) problems while doing something mundane like mowing my lawn.
I still have dreams about college though, being late for a class, unprepared for an exam, etc. which seems strange b/c I graduated 25 years ago. I do remember dreaming about Calculus though, probably b/c I'd usually go right to bed after working on homework and would wake up in the middle of the night w/ an answer to a problem I couldn't solve at the time. That happened often.
I've journaled about my [soylentnews.org] dreams [soylentnews.org] too.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday June 09 2021, @07:39PM (1 child)
I had those dreams for about 20 years after college, but they eventually went away.
Let's not forget the common "showing up to class then discovering you are naked, or somehow very improperly dressed". That probably falls under the anxiety, and 'how would you solve this problem?' type dream.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @03:17AM
The funny thing about those kind of dreams for me is that I seem to be the only one in my dream that notices or cares that I am naked or improperly dressed, so it isn't really an anxiety dream for me. My dreams are really odd, odd things happen, odd situations happen, but it all seems somehow not odd. And the "scene" changes unnoticeably, where I'm in one place, then I'm in a new situation and I never noticed the transition.
Now: sex dreams. Why can't I have those?
(Score: 3, Funny) by looorg on Wednesday June 09 2021, @08:21PM (1 child)
Those would normally fall under the nightmare category. Other peoples code are horrific. Mine is perfect, for me ... as long as nobody else see it.
In general I think most of my dreams are weird and I am having a hard time connecting them to anything real. I don't even remember most of them beyond fragments. The main thing I wonder about is how time appears to be very different in dreams compared to reality. Then there are things that I can never remember or recall. The dreams are rarely very specific in some regards.
That said I do know that I am somehow processing things when I sleep cause I sometime wake up with solutions to problems that I have been thinking about. So now I have a notepad at bed, and have had for years. The drawback is that sometimes I do wake up, write things down but then when I wake up again later I have no idea what the hell I have written or what it was about. My dreamy self really needs to work on his penmanship.
I don't think I have ever, or can recall having, had that nude at work/school dream that is apparently supposed to be so common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @03:26AM
"Fax me some halibut"?
"Don't-mess-with-Johnny"?
"Salami, salami, bologna"?
"Cleveland 117, San Antonio 109"?
I know what it was! "Flaming globes of Sigmond!"