Sleep Brain Science: What Do Dreams Do? Prevent Death?
There is a new feature in the New Yorker, What Are Dreams For?, stating that, “In 1953, when two scientists at the University of Chicago, Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman, discovered REM sleep, they found that it was accompanied by surprisingly high levels of activity in the brain — as if the dreaming brain had woken up while the body remained sleeping. In the following years, the American sleep scientist William Dement and the French neuroscientist Michel Jouvet each observed that, when cats enter REM, they lose all muscle tone. The same is true for humans — the result, Jouvet discovered, of inhibitory signals, sent by the brain to the spinal cord, that paralyze the body. When this paralysis fails, it results in REM behavior disorder, in which people may talk, kick, and even act out violently in their sleep. When it persists, we experience “sleep paralysis,” in which we wake up unable to move.”
The article discusses twitches and how the brain talks to the body during sleep, where twitches are messages that help the brain to map the body. An obvious thing is that dreams are products of the mind, sometimes similar to interpretation of external senses or how information is prepared like in imaginations.
If dreams are the mind, then what is sleep, or what sleeps? Or, how does sleep result, if activities are abundant in the mind and body — with twitches?
It is hypothesized that sleep is a particular arrangement of loops [of electrical and chemical impulses] across circuits, triggered by the loops from which melatonin and adenosine are secreted.
This arrangement of loops of impulses does not mean a lack of activity, but means that external senses are not relayed for interpretation as usual. The arrangement makes some loops in the thalamus to be unable to integrate or send some signals to the cerebral cortex, hence ‘difficulty’ to hear, smell and so forth.
Sleep can be interrupted with an intense input [light, sound, cold, heat], since it can hit a loop and take it off that sleep arrangement. It could also be an internal sensation like the urge to pass water, sending its own loop into another position that affects some, but results in waking up. When melatonin and adenosine also recede, it is possible to become awake because what induced that arrangement of loops had waned. When the arrangement of the loops are also suddenly scattered, it is possible to wake up with headaches or dazed.
All parts of the brain with major functions have nerve cells. Nerve cells have electrical and chemical impulses. These cells in a circuit form their own loop. Some centers are postulated to have multiple loops [of impulses]. In each set or loop, electrical and chemical impulses are constantly interacting. Electrical impulses have their features, so do chemical impulses.
These loops have structures, based on where they are, spaces available, what they do and the arrangement of the instance. The cerebral cortex with several convolutions has numerous loops within each one, defining some of the spread functions. Gyrification can be linked to consciousness, as the cortex is more corrugated than the cerebellum.
During sleep, when the arrangement of loops already blocked out external signals, the loops in the prefrontal cortex can be said to be interacting individually and collectively, producing dreams.
While asleep, prioritized interactions, a feature of impulses, which is common for exteroception shifts to interoception. As incoming signals come from different parts of the body, they can have full-quotas of feedback and attention in their loops. It is when the mind can determine limits and extents for functions, as well as perform checks. Some of these attentions may cause movements or could happen for some other reasons, like longer low-pressure blood flow by sleeping in one direction, and so forth.
However, as beneficial as sleep is, for internal senses to get their drills, useful for the mind to know what to do when something goes wrong, and take immediate action, it is possible to ask, are there risks with sleep?
If there are risks with sleep, especially when a person is really tired and falls asleep, do dreams play a role in preventing those risks? There are several things that can trigger death, but it is theorized that if the loops of impulses do not meet an arrangement or one or a few does not cut out from usual, death would not close.
There are cases where usually fatal stuff happens to some people but they don’t die, at least immediately. There are others who regular stuff happens to, who die, almost instantly. It is known that CPR helps. This means that input is sent through the thalamus, then other parts, including the brain stem to resuscitate the person. It simply means that the arrangement of the loops of impulses settling in, to death, are being disrupted, so the individual returns.
In other cases, where the person did not die, the arrangement of loops did not match, or for those who did, just fast, the arrangement of loops matched a pattern, or one broke away too hard.
If there are no dreams, might it be possible that some loops would arrange then drop further and result in death? Could dreams be the communication between loops and their minimal displacements that prevents sleep from becoming a major risk factor for death?
In sickness, death maybe close, though a lot closer in old age. Sometimes, the lack of activity results in the arrangement of loops in ways that indicate no motion and the loops may likely settle in a form that results in fatality. Dreams may just be a way to keep activity, in some cases, to prevent death. It is possible to have people ‘who don’t dream’ and who lived long. Yes, the mind may use alternatives, like regulations of internal senses, movements or passing water urge to fill the gap. Though for the majority, it does so with dreams too.
In summary, sleep is mostly necessary so that [all or as many] internal senses can get their time, for prioritized interactions of impulses across their loops. This is useful to fully energize them and prepare different ways they connect to other loops or have time for checks and fixes [for contracted drifts during the day]. There is just one prioritized interaction on the mind at any point with fast and numerous interchanges, making external senses dominate during the day. Only with prioritized interactions is full connection communication possible from a loop to others, and it is what sleep offers internal senses. So the mind itself does not sleep, but pivots actions for interoception impulses. It may also check in with exteroceptive impulses, since rationing was done in the day, as utility, but during sleep it may provide fills or cleans as well.
Dreams are features of sleep that can be said to mostly keep life activity on some of the loops, to prevent the arrangement of loops [for sleep] from sliding further or worse, to prevent the death from becoming a major risk of sleep.
It is postulated that the collection of all the electrical and chemical impulses of nerve cells, with their features in loops and their interactions are the human mind. All functions of the brain have impulses at the center. These impulses are in sets or loops.
There is a feature of impulses called stairs or drifts, responsible for many of what is known or experienced, including how dreams get to be displayed. It is within these stairs or drifts that the sense of self is, and where there is access to some of those points, it is possible to have control, free will or intentionality.
The sense of sense is present in the dreams, but the access for control is not often present, which can be due to the arrangement of the loops. Some of the movements during sleep without intentionality can be linked to these drifts, as well, especially those originating from the mind, as adjustments to the body.
