Joe E. Dees [jdees0@students.uwf.edu] wrote:
>Dreaming is a way for the brain to function more efficiently by
>sifting the day's stimuli for novel or useful memories, comparing/
>contrasting them with previously filed data, and shifting those
>selected for retention into longer-term storage (and dumping the
>rest) while it is disconnected (offline) from the cerebral load
>imposed by the exigencies of interaction with the perception-action
>manifold.
Well, I don't understand half of what you're saying here, but I've heard similar things before. I disagree; it's not the simple algorithmic process that you make it out to be here, it seems to be analagous to methods of neural network training which inject random data into the network and then wait for it to settle (I forget the technical term). So it's not surprising that we end up with lots of memories of dreams that may or may not have happened.
That said, I've had plenty of experience of lucid dreaming and that does tend to point towards dreams having some real existence.
Mark