consilience

I'm reading a book called Consilience by Edward Wilson at the moment, a book given to me by JCJ who had three copies of it for reasons I forgot. I'm enjoying reading it, unlike the reviewer from the London Review of Books who pans it. I got bored reading that review. Anyway, I read in the book a bit about how and why dreams are as they are and coming so soon after a weird dream I think I'll share.

In condensed and dumbed down terms, possibly even inaccurate, when you sleep a couple of chemicals in the brain alter the way they work; one quietens and one wakes up. The quietening one is the one controlling pretty well all motor skills and that is why we're paralysed when we sleep. As part of the chemical (electrical? I'm vague on whether this is chemistry, biology or physics; probably all three) movement messages travel through the brain that stimulate parts that process vision and motion. But because we have no visual image or movement the brain fill in the gaps with whatever it can lay its metaphoric hands on and the result is a dream. The brain is mostly just making shit up. Which is why dreams are weird. Also explains why you can see and sense motion while dreaming but cannot smell anything; that part of the brain is switched off.

And here is the best bit...because the brain is being stimulated in the parts that process normal, wakeful (is that a word?) sensory input it believes what it senses. Which is why you tend to accept what is going on in a dream and the odd linkages. Such as fish eating parrots. It is, in fact, a form of temporary insanity. The chemical happenings impact memry and that is why we rarely remember dreams, but we all dream; anyone who tells you they do not dream is kidding themself. External stimuli can break in...a clap of thunder (real) may become a gunshot (making shit up) and so on. Cool huh?