Random Thought: Activation synthesis theory during wakefulness?
According to James Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, Activation-Synthesis Theory briefly suggests that dreams are the result of random brainstem activity which the brain then interprets into thoughts and patterns that can be understood. There is also another theory that suggests dreams are the production of (mostly) random memories that are tied together, like with activation-synthesis, in order for the brain to understand. I can’t recall what this theory is actually called, but I’ll try to find out.
I had the thought the other night about this, but as it relates to a wakeful state of consciousness. What if we experience things, primarily visually or mentally, that our brain cannot comprehend? Is it possible that we are not seeing or thinking all that we believe we are. I realize there are patterns going on at the subconscious level, but if we experience something that our brain isn’t conditioned to comprehend, does it go straight to our unconscious mind? Does it get replaced with something we are conditioned to comprehend? Here’s what I mean…
There’s always the thought that there’s more to just what we see around us. I don’t just mean at the quantum level with some eleven other dimensions, but more physical and more literal. Maybe there are things going on around us (at different frequencies?) that our brain hasn’t evolved to process, so it strings together a series of events so that it makes sense, like dreaming may be.
Maybe déjà vu occurs when something like this happens and our brain has no other way to interpret it?
Maybe children are more prone to seeing ghosts (I have no reference for this, it just seems to a popular conception) because their brains aren’t matured enough to be conditioned to see all that is “proper?”
These are some pretty far-fetched, generalized ideas though. My main question was: if the brain is processing randomized or inconsistent thoughts into patterns we can understand through dreaming, is it not possible this is happening in waking life even though we’re not fully aware? That seems interesting to think about to me.
Some other interesting Wiki links: dreams, What the Bleep Do We Know!?