IUBio

Robot Dreams

lupa lupawolf at deja.com
Wed Sep 13 20:16:30 EST 2000


In article <8po9pk$ues$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, George Bajszar <gyuri at usa.net> wrote:

> Emoitions comes down to "information". Let me explain:

everything comes down to information, as far as the brain is concerned.

> What are emotions: The brain receives constant information. By some
> information we feel emotionally affected. Hearing a good joke. Hearing
> very bad news. Our consciousness decides what is important information
> and what is not. 

i don't necessarily agree.
people with eidetic memories don't have to make any decision whatsoever.
and sometimes people can feel emotionally affected without receiving any
conscious information.

>When we receive important information, our brain
> becomes more active to blend in the new information with the existing
> ones.

this makes no sense to me.  please clarify.

> If we become active about a specific thought, we think extensively about it.

not necessarily consciously, though.  there are informational items the
brain can think about that we never have to register in our day to day
lives.

> When there is an overload of important data in our brain, we feel
> stressed.

stressed?  can you define stress in this context?
because sometimes overload of data can translate as exhilaration.

> the many recorded important events. When the consciouss brain receives
> information that appear very important, hormones (chemicals) are
> released that make the information in the brain to be recorded as
> important. 

that happens in sleep and dream mode too.  so clarify, please. 

> We feel those chemicals as the corresponding emotions
> playing role. 

this i disgree with for personal reasons.

> problem. Understanding a problem later on and knowing how it can be
> avoided the next time, releaves stress as understanding reflects a
> completed blend of the neural nets regaring an issue. 

i also disagree with this.
oftentimes even understanding how to solve a problem and avoid it next
time, especially an emotionally-charged problem, will not result in stress
relief until the SOURCE of the original problem is revealed.  to use a
mechanical analogy, you can fix a computer and know how to avoid the issue
happening again - for instance, find a virus and install virus cleaning
software.  but all the good techs *i've* known won't feel good about it
until they know how the problem got into the machine in the first place. 
even though the knowledge of how the problem acts and can be prevented is
integrated into the neural net, many brains seem to constantly want to
know *why.*

> Returning to dreams, if people don't dream, regardless of stressful or
> not stressful days, people will go insane. Memory would be corrupted.
> So some sort of reorganization of data must occur during dreams,

i don't see why it's a matter of reorganization, though.  you've said
nothing to make me accept this premise.  slow wave brain activity (the
more prevalent activity during sleeping and dreaming) has not been shown
to have that type of impact on cognitive processes.  slow wave brain
activity of a particular frequency *has* been show to correspond to worry
and anxiety.  that is one of the wave frequencies that is prevalent during
dream states.
(and of course now i can't find my source on this, but i can tell everyone
that i found this information when researching anomalies found in my own
brain patterns while awake and asleep.)

when i said 'processing intense emotion' in the previous post, i didn't
mean organization.  i meant analysis.  in my opinion (not scientific, just
personal, so everyone feel free to correct me) analysis is the mental
equivalent of picking something apart and leaving the pieces all over so
you can see how it was put together in the first place - it wouldn't be
the brain's way of cleaning up.  so organization is somewhat antithetical
to my idea of analysis.

if there is any data reorganization going on in the brain, i am of the
opinion that it's done all the time, regardless of sleep or dreaming - and
then dreaming is a way for us to pick through the mental garbage pail
before we discard things (jung's idea), or take things out that we had
organized on the shelves for later examination.

> remember that emotions refer to data.

as i said before, everything refers to data.  it's the reorganization part
i'm disputing.

~risa

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~from risarisabobisa






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