>>The rapid eye movement (REM) sleep appears to have very little to do with
consolidation of experience and more to do with establishing and repairing
connections in the brain. A foetus at 26 weeks gestation spends 100% of its
time in REM sleep, having had almost no 'experiences' to deal with and no
psychological dilemmas which Freud proposed as the function of dreaming. A
new-born baby spends 10 of its 20 sleeping hours a day in REM sleep, this
amount
diminishing as the brain approaches its adult size.<<
pre-natal 'experience' is the same stuff as post-natal 'experience', except
that there's much-more integration going on... the only 'difference' is in the
qualities 'sensed'.
i don't have it handy, and i'm not going to go through my mountain of paper to
find it, but i've read a study that verifies that all of the seemingly-random
kicks and punches that to-be Mothers experience are necessary concommitants of
the 'correct' wiring up of fetal nervous systems.
that is, the wiring-up is activity-dependent... and that's all that ever
happens within nervous systems.
it's just that pre-nates have so much more of the same stuff to do.
in this way, pre-natal 'experience' is the same stuff as post-natal
'experience'... it's the experiential environment, and it's input set, and the
degree to which activity-dependent guidance of wiring-up is occuring, that are
the only 'differences'.
post-nates are like jet airplanes. pre-nates are like jet airplanes on
afterburner.
same-o, same-o, only hugely more-powerful.
cheers, k. p. collins (ken)
