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From: rl3s@netcom.com (Zeus Paleologos)
Subject: Re: Function of sleep in brain (Neural-Nets)?
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Date: Sun, 30 Jul 1995 05:53:05 GMT
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On sleep:

It seems to me that I read somewhere ("Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan
maybe?) that sleep might be an evolutionary artefact from the early days
of mammal origin.  At that time, it was hypothesized that mammals slept
in the daytime and were, therefore, relatively inactive and less
conspicuous when their reptilian predators were most active.  They were
awake at night and could search for food with less danger.  The theory
is that sleep evolved as a protective mechanism in mammals initially,
though today it may serve to support other functions that have evolved
since.

On dreaming:

Dreaming, it seems to me, might just be a natural consequence of a brain
that does not shutdown entirely.  The brain receives at all times, even
when sleeping some stimuli.  Some are strictly endogenous while others 
like sounds may be exogenous.  If we assume that a main function of mind 
is to make sense of our environment and if this function operates albeit 
dimly even when we sleep, then could it not be the case that dreams are 
simply the brain's attempt to interpret the various endogenous and 
exogenous signals it receives while we are sleeping.  This process of
interpretation attempts to map this "noise" into something meaningful
that correlates with the mind's model of reality.  Most of the time
what results is nonsense and as the mind abhors nonsense we have no
waking memory of it.  But occasionally the dream achieves a quality of
reality or surreality so that we remember portions of it later.  What I 
mean is, perhaps, that dream you had last night was in reality (pardon 
the pun) partly the result of that chili you had for supper.  );-)>


Zeus Paleologos
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