Virtual reality and consciousness inference in dreaming

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Computational Psychiatry

Background:

• The brain may possess an innate virtual reality generator.
• This generator forms a predictive model of the world through experience-dependent plasticity.
• Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep dreaming may reveal this model and serve as the basis for consciousness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the hypothesis that the brain functions as a virtual reality generator.
• To investigate the role of REM sleep dreaming in refining the brain's predictive model.
• To link consciousness to the embodied process of generating virtual realities.

Main Methods:

• Review of functional neuroimaging evidence.
• Analysis of brain activations time-locked to REMs.
• Examination of evidence grounding consciousness in biophysical computations.

Main Results:

• Functional neuroimaging supports the link between REM sleep and waking consciousness.
• Dreaming refines the brain's predictive model, minimizing complexity for efficiency.
• Waking perception relies on updating the model with sensory prediction errors.

Conclusions:

• Consciousness arises from the brain's embodied inference process, generating virtual realities.
• Dreaming is crucial for maintaining and enhancing the brain's world model efficiency.
• Sleep research reveals the neurobiological basis of consciousness as biophysical computation.