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The purpose oí this paper is to draw analogies between dreaming and quantum states oí the mind and abo to make inferences about the relationship between dreaming states, waking states, and memory. That dreaming b intrinsically associated with memory has been an opinion asserted by many researchers including Nieben and Stenstrom (2005), Fosse, Fosse, Hobson, and Stickgold (2003), and Lee (2010). However, if dreaming is consciously recollected it must be that memory is also active at the time of dreaming, and if this is so, then the use of memory from dreaming must be associated with consciousness in the waking state. If a concept of consciousness is conceived as following from a layering of human perception, cognition, and physiological experience, then the brain may be understood as having the potential to produce quantum states - indeed the complexity of such brain states may make the experience of consciousness possible. The qualia of thoughts and consciousness, such as those experienced when dreams are recalled, can be likened to fluctuations in quantum states of the mind. Dreaming seems ephemeral yet may have a survival function.
Keywords: dreaming, quantum physics, memory
People are not simply conscious (awake) or not conscious (unconscious or asleep) [although they may be] but rather there are differing qualities and degrees of consciousness - such as dreaming - implicit in the cogni- tive frameworks with which people negotiate the experience of their worlds. So-called "lucid" dreamers, for example, are able to think clearly, to act or reflect whilst experiencing dreaming (LaBerge, 1990). The complexity of conscious and unconscious experience makes the consideration of quantum states a useful metaphor for understanding the interaction of sleeping, dreaming, and memory. Although dreams are likely to be the product of schema assimilation (and remembered dreams as if of recollected events experienced in consciousness) during sleep, the purpose of human dreams remains as elusive as the dream episodes themselves. Recognition of dream- ing states involves the semi-conscious recollection of memory trace during the sleep consolidation-based stabilisation phase, as such dreaming might be considered a by-product of schema assimilation. Sleep is thus necessary for the consolidation-based enhancement of motor sequence learning (Doyon, Carrier, Simard, Tahar, Morin, Benali, and Ungerleider, 2005, p. 68).
Early research from Jenkins and Dallenbach...