Dreaming during REM sleep: autobiographically meaningful or a simple reflection of a Hebbian-based memory consolidation process?
Archives italiennes de biologie September 1, 2018 U Voss, A Klimke
REM sleep is a brain state with desynchronized activity, often linked to dreaming. Dreams during REM sleep are typically bizarre, emotionally intense, and fragmented, yet feel story-like and personally meaningful. Elements of real-life events, especially trauma, tend to reappear, but the dream plot is distorted. This review presents a new testable model, the Trace-Spur-model, based on Hebbian neural network theory. It proposes that dream bizarreness results from changes in synaptic strength, allowing hyper-associative mental activity that may help consolidate or extinguish waking learning. Dream recall offers only a fragmentary glimpse into these processes, biased by autobiographical memory.