Chemistry of Dream

Dream is the perception in sub consciousness. There is no external stimuli from sense organs. Still person perceives various interconnected events creating a continuous real life experience  in dream. 

Many theories are postulated to decipher the meaning of dream and linking it to psychological state of person or as indicator of future events. But to my mind, dream is nothing but manifestation of chemical reactions in the brain.

Development in  of organic chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and bioinformatics have given us new tools for investigating the mechanism of memory management is brain.

 We know that our brain has a large storage capacity for storing  all our experience. It could be compared with  unlimited memory storage capacity provided by cloud storage architecture. To extend this comparison,  the data might be getting stored in Big Table with many scattered  tablets or in the form of no sql database with flexible structure  with small chunks  of related information packets ( like small video clips with multimedia features).  Each of these memory  packets have context links related to persons, location or time for creating meaningful  streaming data through recombination.

Comparison of cloud storage to memory storage in brain seems logical.  Because
due to early neurological work of Karl Lashley and Wilder Penfield in the 1950s and 1960s, it has become clear that long-term memories are not stored in just one part of the brain, but are widely distributed throughout the cortex. After consolidation, long-term memories are stored throughout the brain as groups of neurons that are primed to fire together in the same pattern that created the original experience
( Ref : http://www.human-memory.net/processes_storage.html)

Human brain is composed of organic compounds and dynamic memory also must be in the form of numerous  large molecular weight organic compounds.  We know that  starch, cellulose, proteins and fats ( main constituents of organic matter) are nothing but large interconnected simple organic compounds like aldehydes, ketones, sugars and amino acids. Even the DNA and RNA in the cell nucleus are long spiral chains of nucleic acids carrying specific sequences of amino acid residues representing some characteristics.

In genetic engineering,  molecular cloning is used for producing recombinant DNA . The procedure allows random selection and recombination of different parts of DNA fragments. The DNA to be cloned is obtained from an organism of interest, then treated with enzymes in the test tube to generate smaller DNA fragments.

 Subsequently, these fragments are then combined with vector DNA to generate recombinant DNA molecules.

Now suppose our experience is stored in brain as small fragments of organic molecules like DNA fragments in a small pool of memory storage where all fragments are freely moving  like Brownian motion and each fragment has some context specific links there can be recombination of experience in dream sequence based on random joining of such links. As the string grows, it attains intelligence which prompts and prefers combination of typical memory package which is in tune with previous  scene.

Memory storage mechanism in brain can be compared with chemical coagulation, flocculation and precipitation  processes. With time, memory goes on accumulating. This memory if considered as a large cluster of organic molecules, they will conglomerate to form flocs and get settled or adsorbed on surfaces in for of layers, the older memories in deeper layers will still have some context links accessible to intentional probing.

Precipitation

This is the reason why in dream also we expect occurrence of some person or  situation and in a moment it gets materialized changing the story giving false impression of consciousness in our mind. Still we feel that some thing is missing or some where there is darkness or fear or there is memory gap.  This may be  due to vague knowledge of earlier correct sequence  in actual life experience stored somewhere at other location. (like job tracker in Hadoop programming)  Failure in matching new sequence with original disrupts our sleep.

Many events in dream  match our previous experience and are associated with some alerts and alarms. Similarly as the sequence of memory packets is due to uncontrolled selection, we  feel unsecured  in dream with sudden change of situations.  The dreams in school days often relate examination  event  where we fail to reach in time, forget something or do not remember the answers creating anxiety.  Elder persons have dreams related to their work where they spend most of their time or crises in personal relations. Devotees do experience appearance of their favorite gods or saints in dream due to large storage of previous memory packets composed of visuals and stories related to them.

Dream can also be interpreted to be a stress reliever mechanism where many memory packets orient themselves in some pattern during storage compression, which triggers popping up of some old memories creating false but meaningful sequence.

Any experience of real life is perceived by person through process of perception. This perception is stored as some cluster of organic molecules which is retained in the brain and used for understanding meaning of new perceptions. Recalling memory during conscious state does not create any confusion but during dream such recall is unintentional and hence results in dream with synthesized unpredictable sequence.

These are some thoughts on possible role of previous experience in dream generation. But one thing is certain that its sole dependence on existing memory storage rules out forcasting capabilities of dream.

Research in exploring mechanisms in memory storage and dream generation will help in eliminating false dogma associated with dreams as indicators of future events.