Sleep and dreaming, Part 1: Dreams are emotionally meaningful adaptive learning engines that help us identify and deal with unconscious (ucs) threats by means of deferred action plans; REM sleep consolidates memory for that which we learn and express in dreams

4Précis: Part 1 presents a neuro-psychoanalytic (NP) model of dreaming and its relationship to sleep, wakefulness, and the ucs. Psychoanalysts (M. Stern, 1988; Greenberg, 2003) hypothesize that when we sense ucs difficulties, an active dream life supports its resolution in real life. Specifically, dreams create “deferred action plans” that are later actualized in a manner that explores and reduces dangers. Such action plans are adaptive for both the individual dreamer and any dreaming species (Revonsuo, 2000; Revonsuo & Valli, 2000). What is learned during dreaming is consolidated by REM sleep activation (Bednar, 2003) and the new knowledge “fixed” by multiple consolidation and reconsolidation events, themselves activated by various transcription factors (Bornstein & Pittman, 1992). In Part 2, we speculate on which subsystems of the brain make what kinds of contributions to dreaming.