A Hypothesis About Parallelism vs. Seriality in Dreams

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Umberto Barcaro¹  Paolo Paradisi¹  Laura Sebastiani³ 

[1] Institute of Information Science and Technologies “A. Faedo”;Basque Center for Applied Mathematics;Department of Translational Research and New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa

关键词: dream sources;    network properties of dream sources;    dream experience;    parallelism vs;    seriality in physiological systems;    dream building;    complexity;    self-organization;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02299

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The process of dream building implies the construction of a complex network of closely interrelatedsources. On the other hand, the dream experience develops as a succession of events. In this papera hypothesis is advanced about how the psychophysiological system of dream building, which isdistributed, acts to provide a serial output. This hypothesis is basically connected with the property,enjoyed by the dream experience, of simultaneously representing a plurality of meanings.Most of the products of our brain, which consists in an enormous number of cells and ofinterconnections among them, give serial outputs. In fact, physiological and psychophysiologicalsystems generally interact serially with the environment, as is obvious with regard to, e.g.,locomotion, reaching and grasping, and language. Two trivial examples are walking (we move aleg after the other) and speaking (we pronounce a word after the other). Seriality also appears tocharacterize the control of logical reasoning and, very generally, the flow of consciousness. In thevast literature about the issue of brain parallelism with serial output, a particularly significant rolehas been played in the last decade by the hypothesis of a Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW).According to a review by Dehaene and Changeux (2011), the GNW interconnects specialized,automatic and unconscious processors and, at the same time, is able to encode conscious contentsby means of the sustained activity of a fraction of its neurons, the others being inhibited. The patternof parallel computation with serial output is thus closely connected with the theoretical modelingof consciousness. In fact, quoting (Baars et al., 2013).

【 授权许可】

CC BY