ylikoski@opmvax.kpo.fi (Antti Ylikoski tel +358 0 457 2704) (03/27/89)
I would like to try to contribute to the discussion involving dreams "not following the usual laws of nature". The following is my attempt to make a stab at it: One aspect of one's behaviour can be described as symbol processing driven by events in both one's external world and in his nonverbal "internal reality" consisting of feelings and similar things. During a dream one's "symbol processing engine" roams free, and this is known to be good for one's mental health. (It is known that the deprivation of the dreaming stage of the sleep, the REM sleep, (for Rapid Eye Movement) is harmful to one's mental health.) Andy Ylikoski
andrew@nsc.nsc.com (andrew) (03/27/89)
In article <74@opmvax.kpo.fi>, ylikoski@opmvax.kpo.fi (Antti Ylikoski tel +358 0 457 2704) writes: > I would like to try to contribute to the discussion involving dreams > During a dream one's "symbol processing engine" roams free I have read in at least a couple of places (exact refs unknown) that sleep would be a useful mechanism for consolidating memory (sculpting those hyperdimensional basins) and for unlearning. I guess these are really two expressions for essentially the same process. There has to be an unlearning mechanism somewhere/ sometime surely; the vast unconscious bandwidth, integrated over a lifetime, HAS to be greater than the capacity of even the brain, I would have thought. ============================================================================ DOMAIN: andrew@logic.sc.nsc.com ARPA: nsc!logic!andrew@sun.com USENET: ...{amdahl,decwrl,hplabs,pyramid,sun}!nsc!logic!andrew Andrew Palfreyman 408-721-4788 work National Semiconductor MS D3969 408-247-0145 home 2900 Semiconductor Dr. P.O. Box 58090 there's many a slip Santa Clara, CA 95052-8090 'twixt cup and lip ============================================================================
rayt@cognos.uucp (R.) (03/28/89)
In article <74@opmvax.kpo.fi> Andy Ylikoski writes: >I would like to try to contribute to the discussion involving dreams >"not following the usual laws of nature". >The following is my attempt to make a stab at it: >One aspect of one's behaviour can be described as symbol processing >driven by events in both one's external world and in his nonverbal >"internal reality" consisting of feelings and similar things. During >a dream one's "symbol processing engine" roams free, and this is known >to be good for one's mental health. (It is known that the deprivation >of the dreaming stage of the sleep, the REM sleep, (for Rapid Eye >Movement) is harmful to one's mental health.) Some interesting things we know about the phenomenon of sleep: 1) the symbol processing engine `roams free' 2) it is a requirement for mental health 3) solutions to problems can be discovered during the process I will also add a forth (in opposition to Janice Jopin's "its all the same f__king day") 4) a sense of resolution of (minor) emotional stresses and renewal after sleep Another puzzle about mental activity is that one seems to be able to search the memory space without an explicit search key (e.g. a `lookup' of someone's name which escape you for the moment). These items (as well as the obvious database retrieval analogy which underlies it) make me wonder whether one is doing a, perhaps systematic, exhaustive search and best fit resolution of particular domains during sleep. Clearly, this satisfies `roaming free'. The requirement for mental health and the resolution of emotional stresses, I contend, could be satisfied if the resource that is expended for such a process exceeds that which could be allocated during waking hours (that is, both the search/resolution exercise and consciousness cannot be undertaken simultaneously), and these resolutions MUST be made (the discomfiture which they cause increases as their resolution is postponed, etc.). Solutions to problems now resolves into a search and the undefinability of insight becomes a learned and practiced heuristic set. This would also explain how one can search without explicitly knowing what one is looking for, though one can RECOGNIZE it when it is seen. The difference in being able to do unkeyed lookup while awake and resolution only(?) during sleep would be the difference in resource allocation (that is, one must CHANGE the system during resolution, while simple lookup is clearly less expensive). Is this taking the computer analogy beyond respectable limits? R. -- Ray Tigg | Cognos Incorporated | P.O. Box 9707 (613) 738-1338 x5013 | 3755 Riverside Dr. UUCP: rayt@cognos.uucp | Ottawa, Ontario CANADA K1G 3Z4
jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) (03/31/89)
In article <5698@cognos.UUCP>, rayt@cognos.uucp (R.) writes: | In article <74@opmvax.kpo.fi> Andy Ylikoski writes: | |One aspect of one's behaviour can be described as symbol processing | |driven by events in both one's external world and in his nonverbal | |"internal reality" consisting of feelings and similar things. During | |a dream one's "symbol processing engine" roams free, and this is known | |to be good for one's mental health. (It is known that the deprivation | |of the dreaming stage of the sleep, the REM sleep, (for Rapid Eye | |Movement) is harmful to one's mental health.) | | Some interesting things we know about the phenomenon of sleep: | | 1) the symbol processing engine `roams free' | | Another puzzle about mental activity is that one seems to be able to search | the memory space without an explicit search key (e.g. a `lookup' of someone's | name which escape you for the moment). These items (as well as the obvious | database retrieval analogy which underlies it) make me wonder whether one is | doing a, perhaps systematic, exhaustive search and best fit resolution of | particular domains during sleep. | | Clearly, this satisfies `roaming free'. | (omitted) | Solutions to problems now resolves into a search and the | undefinability of insight becomes a learned and practiced heuristic set. This | would also explain how one can search without explicitly knowing what one is | looking for, though one can RECOGNIZE it when it is seen. The difference in | being able to do unkeyed lookup while awake and resolution only(?) during | sleep would be the difference in resource allocation (that is, one must | CHANGE the system during resolution, while simple lookup is clearly less | expensive). I don't think this is a matter of roaming free, but more like using an alternate where clause. For example, we would normally retrieve a record on the WHERE Name=<name> but we can't remember the name. During sleep, we retrieve on an alternate key with a much broader search. For example, WHERE HairColor=brown and State=CA. This could result in hundreds of retrievals giving the impression of free roaming, but is actually just an extended search based on different attributes that we subconciously remember. Jim Winer ..!lzfme!jwi I believe in absolute freedom of the press. I believe that freedom of the press is the only protection we have from the abuses of power of the church, from the abuses of power of the state, from the abuses of power of the corporate body, and from the abuses of power of the press itself. Those persons who advocate censorship offend my religion.
markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) (03/31/89)
In article <10228@nsc.nsc.com> andrew@nsc.nsc.com (andrew) writes: >In article <74@opmvax.kpo.fi>, ylikoski@opmvax.kpo.fi (Antti Ylikoski tel +358 0 457 2704) writes: >> I would like to try to contribute to the discussion involving dreams >> During a dream one's "symbol processing engine" roams free > >I have read in at least a couple of places (exact refs unknown) that sleep >would be a useful mechanism for consolidating memory (sculpting those >hyperdimensional basins) and for unlearning. I guess these are really two >expressions for essentially the same process. And now I'd like to add in a third viewpoint. It is known among sleep researchers that the seemingly nonsensical quality of dreams arises because the medulla is sending out random signals during this phase of sleep, which the neocortex tries is damned best to weave into a logically consistent framework. It is well known among people who work with NP complete problems that very efficient algorithms can be devised if it randomness is allowed. Also, randomizers go a long way towards shaking processors out of ruts (read: infinte loops). So I would say that we dream in order to keep ourselves from being rigidly mechanical machines and thereby increase our intelligence by a whole order of magnitude.
staff_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (04/01/89)
> >And now I'd like to add in a third viewpoint. It is known among sleep >researchers that the seemingly nonsensical quality of dreams arises because the >medulla is sending out random signals during this phase of sleep, which the >neocortex tries is damned best to weave into a logically consistent framework. This points up a major flaw that we see again and again in modern biology, to wit: there is no way one can prove that something occurs 'at random'. In particular, there is no way in this case to tell whether 'the medulla is sending out random signals' or whether it is actually sending out signals in some very definite, well determined fashion which we are unable to fathom. Western biology (as opposed to Russian, which I'm told takes a somewhat different view) seems somewhat preoccupied with this notion of randomness: Most biologists I have met seem to feel that the theory of evolution is premised upon random recombination and random mutation. This dogmatic attachment to an unprovable hypothesis is even more interesting in light of the fact that the assumption of randomness adds very little to our understanding of the phenomena in question. To add my two cents to this discussion of dreaming, I seem to recall an old "Scientific American" article on the effects of LSD. Among other things, it claimed that LSD affected the synapses of some 50,000 "controller neurons" (if anyone knows the proper name, please post) causing them to relax in the same fashion that they do naturally when people sleep. Taking this description of what happens naturally as a given, doesn't it seem possible that during sleep, the brain relaxes so that it can reorganize itself, make new sets of associations and possibly reform decision structures? From personal experience, I know that it is often helpful to get a good night's sleep if I have encountered a particularly difficult mathematical or programming problem. Sometimes it almost seems that I wake up with the correct solution. A plausible model for this is the theory that my mind initially proceeds down some search path/decision tree on which a solution is not to be found. Unfortunately, we discover the non-existence of a solution too far down this tree to be able to easily back up to the decision node at which we took the wrong branch. We then search around a sub-tree which does not contain the requisite particulars for our solution. In sleep, the brain relaxes and we effectively move up the search tree, so that when we reexamine the problem in the morning the incorrect assumption from the previous night becomes obvious, or even perhaps it is somehow identified during the dreaming process. (I realize that this hierarchical decision tree is a bad model for the real life workings of brain but it helps to describe the process in a relatively easy to understand, linear fashion. I think that a model based upon competing processes and associative lookup would be more appropriate, but more difficult to describe and understand, without adding much to the discussion.) To take this one step further, I have often performed the following experiment (albeit non-scientifically because, unfortunately, the means escape me at this time): Find someone who's been a National Football League fan, and ask him (randomly, of course) one the the following two questions: 1) Who was that really tall, 6'10" wide receiver, who used to play for the Eagles and set the record for consecutive games with at least one reception? 2) Who was that really tall, 6'10" wide receiver, who used to play for the Eagles and set the record for consecutive games with at least one reception? Its not Randall Cunningham... (The answer to both of these is Harold Carmichael) My experience shows that people find 1 much easier to answer than 2, although 2 actually contains all the information in 1, plus one additional fact, and I suggest that this is because the addition of the name "Randall Cunningham" actually serves to block the search for "Harold Carmicheal". Randall Cunningham is also a football player, he also plays for the Eagles and the structure of the two names is similar. To test this, we could also ask the following, third question 3) Who was that really tall, 6'10" wide receiver, who used to play for the Eagles and set the record for consecutive games with at least one reception? Its not Skip Aaron... where Skip Aaron is no one in particular (apologies if you actually exist), and the name doesn't seem to have much resemblance to Harold Carmicheal. My expectation is that 1 will be slightly easier to answer than 3, and both will be easier than 2. This is because 2 pushes us down the search tree to a particular node that is close to the solution, without providing us the information to tell us how we accidentally got to this node instead of the correct one. In spite of the fact that we're 'close', we're unable to back up to an appropriate point to discover where we went wrong. Only when the brain relaxes sufficiently to do this (e.g. we 'forget' the question) are we able to find the correct answer. 3 is slightly more difficult than 1 because it also puts the search process at a particular solution node, but because of it's dissimilarity to the correct solution, we are easily able to recover from it. R.Kohout
ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards) (04/01/89)
In article <5698@cognos.UUCP> rayt@cognos.UUCP (R.) writes: >In article <74@opmvax.kpo.fi> Andy Ylikoski writes: >>I would like to try to contribute to the discussion involving dreams >>"not following the usual laws of nature". A while back I mentioned that there are some analogies between dreaming and Boltzman Machine learning in PDP. I am sure that the author's do not mean to claim that dreaming is Boltzman Machine learning unclamped, but just that there are interesting similarities. Hinton and Sejnowski point out that Crick and Mitchison (1983) "have suggested that a form of reverse learning might occur during REM sleep in mamals. Their proposal was based on the assumption that parasitic modes develop in large networks that hinder the distributed storage and retrieval of information." They quote Crick and Mitchision: "More or less stimulation of the forebrain by the brain stem that will tend to stimulate the inappropriate modes of brain activity ... and especially those which are too prone to be set off by random noise rather than by specific signals." Boltzman Machine learning uses a similar concept. Learning is split into two phases, a phase+ , where positive Hebbian learning occurs with input and output units clamped to their proper values, and a phase-, where negative Hebbian learning occurs to the unclamped network (thus randomly stimulating those parasitic modes described above, and the associated nodes get de-strengthened by the negative Hebbian learning which usually strengthens nodes which are simultaneously stimulated, reducing the combined importance of those "erroneous" modes). Crick, F. and Mitchison, G. (1983). The function of dream sleep. Nature, 304, 111-114. Rumelhart, McClelland eds (1987). Parallel Distributed Processing. MIT Press, 282-317. -Thomas Edwards
bert@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Bert Hutchings) (04/04/89)
In article <1763@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes: > It is known among sleep researchers that the seemingly nonsensical quality > of dreams arises because the medulla is sending out random signals during > this phase of sleep, which the neocortex tries is damned best to weave into > a logically consistent framework. J.W. Dunne took a similar view in his book "An Experiment with Time". The dreaming mind is re-visiting segments of its past experience, but it has a defective span of attention, so the segments are short and disjointed. At a later stage, a less dreamy mind fills in the gaps between the segments. Dunne is intrigued that, searching for logical consistency, the gap-filler will resort to almost any surrealism, rather than directly juxtapose the segments. He concludes that our subconscious holds on far more strongly to a rule that "human beings do not travel instantaneously in time or place" than it does to its general rules about the physical world.