How Adversarial Rem-Dreams May Facilitate Creativity, and Why We Become Aware of Them

Dreams during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep may help learning and creativity through an adversarial process inspired by artificial intelligence, where a discriminator network classifies internally generated sensory activity as real. This process facilitates the emergence of real-world semantic representations in higher cortical areas and balances fantastic with realistic dream elements to promote creative insights. Non-REM (NREM) dreams, which replay single hippocampal memories, serve a complementary role by improving cortical representations' robustness to environmental perturbations. Subjects can become aware of adversarial REM dreams more easily than NREM dreams, and this awareness relates to wake, dream, and lucid dreaming phenomena.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The importance of sleep for healthy brain function is widely acknowledged. However, it remains unclear how the internal generation of dreams might facilitate cognitive processes. In this perspective we review a computational approach inspired by artificial intelligence that proposes a framework for how dreams occurring during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep can contribute to learning and creativity. In this framework, REM dreams are characterized by an adversarial process that, against the dream reality, tell a discriminator network to classify the internally created sensory activity as real. Such an adversarial dreaming process is shown to facilitate the emergence of real-world semantic representations in higher cortical areas. We further discuss the potential contributions of adversarial dreaming beyond learning, such as balancing fantastic and realistic dream elements, and facilitating the occurrence of creative insights. We characterize non-REM (NREM) dreams, where a single hippocampal memory is replayed at a time, as serving a complementary role of improving the robustness of cortical representations to environmental perturbations. We finally explain how subjects can become aware of the adversarial REM dreams, but less of the NREM dreams, and how the awareness phenomenon of wake, dream and lucid dreaming may appear.