Yesterday when I was sleeping, I suddenly thought of a question: Is dreaming similar to the principle of drawing by Midjourney?
Before falling asleep, what we see in books, movies, the music we listen to, or the random things we think about, often appear in our dreams. Throughout history, there have been many studies on controlling dreams, but it has never been possible to control them precisely. We can only control the probability of a specific content appearing in a dream.
This is similar to the images generated by Midjourney, which cannot be precisely controlled.
According to some research, our brains produce various activities during sleep, including neural activities related to memory, imagination, and emotion processing. These activities can manifest in our dreams, creating various scenes and plots.
Some researchers believe that we can influence the content of our dreams by inputting specific information to our brains before sleep. This method is called "dream incubation."
For example, vague input instructions can be seen as a form of dream incubation. Some experiments on dream incubation have shown certain effects, but these effects are often unstable and may vary from person to person.
Dream incubation is not a method that can accurately control the content of dreams. Our dreams are generated autonomously by our brains and are influenced by many factors, including our emotions, experiences, and memories. Therefore, even if you try dream incubation, it cannot guarantee that you will have dreams similar to Midjourney's drawings.
Both dream incubation and Midjourney's drawings involve providing vague instructions to influence the results, but the final outcomes are often uncertain because they involve factors that are difficult to control precisely.
In Midjourney's drawings, we can provide keywords or simple sketches to guide the direction of the drawing, but since the drawing process is autonomously performed by a machine, the final result may deviate from the initial instructions.
In dream incubation, we can provide vague instructions to influence the content of dreams, but it is also challenging to precisely control the final dream content because dreams are autonomously generated by our brains and are influenced by many factors.
Although the results of these methods are difficult to control precisely, they can still produce interesting outcomes and help us better understand the workings of our brains and artificial intelligence.
Additionally, I have noticed that when I am in a good mental state and have uninterrupted sleep, I can easily see through my dreams and quickly realize that I am dreaming.
The resolution of scenes in dreams is low, similar to low-poly graphics in games. Usually, we cannot see the faces of characters in dreams clearly, perhaps because it requires more neural computation in the brain to process facial details. Seeing the faces of characters in dreams clearly is not the purpose of dreaming.
Dreaming operates at low power consumption, maintaining brain activity frequency, integrating information from the day and the past, deleting redundancies, and transforming important information into long-term memory.
When our physical condition is weak, it is often difficult to distinguish between dreams and reality, especially when we have nightmares. We may feel as if we are really in the dream and may even be unable to wake up due to fear.
When we can see through a dream at a glance, it means that I am in the dream, rather than the dream being in me. Therefore, judging whether the body is in a sub-healthy state has gained another method.
In dreams, we strengthen the processing and consolidation of the knowledge and experiences we have learned in a wakeful state, which helps us better remember and apply this information.
Dreams can also help us process emotions and cope with stress. Some dreams can help us release stress and emotions, alleviating negative emotional experiences in our wakeful state.
In dreams, our brains can freely explore various imaginations and ideas, which helps us better unleash creativity and imagination in a wakeful state. This is similar to Midjourney continuously accumulating user operation data to train data models.
If we frequently have the same dream, it may represent a challenging difficulty or an emotional problem that needs to be resolved in the real world. This is like a line of fixed code that triggers a specific dream scene when encountering difficulties.
Dreams occupy half of our lives, but we still know very little about the nature and function of dreams.