As Domhoff (2023) notes:
“These two subsystems, which are the primary neural basis for dreaming, are also involved in supporting imagination and mind-wandering in waking life when the frontoparietal control network, the dorsal attention network, and the salience/ventral network are not constraining the default network to the degree they do in task-oriented contexts. . . . Although the two subsystems of the default network are relatively activated during dreaming, the “zones of integration” (the areas in the default network that connect it to the other association networks during waking) are relatively deactivated throughout sleep. Their relative deactivation contributes to the independence of the default network at the times when it is relatively activated during sleep.”
When we are awake, the medial temporal subsystem is activated by thinking about personal situations and decisions in the future. During a state of dreaming and during a state of mind-wandering, the Dorsal medial subsystem is activated. This could explain why dreaming, as intensified mind wandering, is often focused on the dreamers’ concerns about their relationships with significant others, regrets about the past, and worries about anxiety-arousing future events. This phenomenon is also found in mind wandering. In his earlier essay, Domhoff (2011) offers the following consideration:
“If the default network could be added to the list of waking cognitive systems that have adaptive value due to the new associations and ideas it provides via mind wandering and daydreaming, then it might be argued that dreaming may have similar functions as a residual by-product of the activation of a subsystem of the default network during sleep.”
Domhoff believes that dreams probably have no function, but they do have coherence and meaning, which is often conflated with function. Dreaming might be a by-product of the evolution of sleep and consciousness. In his concluding comments related to his 2011 essay, Domhoff offers the following opinion:
“[T]he mind may dream simply because it can. . . .[Dreams] have been put to use by people in many different times and places as important parts of religious and healing ceremonies, which means that they have an emergent cultural function due to human inventiveness. However, they may or may not have any adaptive value as evolutionary theorists use the term. They may simply be dramatic simulations of our conceptions, concerns, and interests that occur when a specific constellation of neural regions is activated in a context where there is no engagement with the external world. If that proves to be the case, then psychological meaning and cultural usefulness have to be distinguished from each other and from the issue of adaptive function in order to develop an adequate theory of dreams.”
While I appreciate the detailed and evidence-based analysis of dream functioning that Domhoff provides, I hesitate in accepting his conclusion that dreams are “simply” what our mind (and brain) can manufacture. I have already presented numerous examples of dreams that have provided dreamers with important insights. I will soon be presenting an essay that is devoted to Deirdre Barrett’s (2001) remarkable research on dreams serving as insight-providing and problem-solving “committees of sleep.” So, stay tuned . . .
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