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Considering a fresh hypothesis about dreams: “dreaming” is a search for sensory permutations that will trigger release conditions for obsolete latches

There’s no scientific consensus on why we dream, although I really like @erikphoel’s idea that they generate synthetic data so our brains don’t overfit. But following vasocomputation (“latch theory”), I wonder if dreams are (also) a core tool for the body to release unneeded latches

Basic thesis (vasocomputation):
Vascular latches are semi-permanent vascular muscle clenches that act as ‘side channel memory’ on the dynamic range of local neurons (see quoted tweet). They often form when the body decides it really needs to remember something. A latch is essentially a sensory lock: tension that is held until some perception occurs (e.g. “my tension released when I saw my husband come home from the war”)

Many of our latches are important for keeping us functional/contextual, but many of them are also unnecessary, i.e. frozen compute that doesn’t matter anymore (e.g. shards of memory from college, old jobs, old relationships, etc). Memory is valuable and garbage collection is hard so I think it’s very common to have unnecessary latches build up. But the body doesn’t particularly know which are useful — if it did, the unnecessary latches would be open already!

How can the body do ‘garbage collection’ on these latches? I suspect “dreams” are an advanced technology for generating sensory permutations as keys to test against the body’s latches and see what opens. Sometimes as part of a large narrative, but sometimes just sensory permutations that might plausibly hit some completion criterion. Basically, dreams are a hash attack against tension — and if one of the hashes hits and we reach catharsis in a dream, we benefit from it in ‘real life’ — the latch stays open

Predictions:
- If you don’t dream, you’ll accumulate chronic vascular tension (latches) over time; after a cathartic dream this will measurably drop
- Dreams that feel the most cathartic will be those that involve unresolved elements of your past (and this need not be profound; it could be “I never returned a library book when I was 9 and I totally forgot about it until I had a dream I returned it and now I feel weirdly better, like some hidden tension dissolved”)
- The body will stochastically attempt classes of dreams that could release commonly-stuck computations. One core strategy here is ‘restarting and completing scenarios’ — starting a scenario from scratch and running it to its conclusion might trigger a release condition if something similar is latched.

“Running from some mysterious figure” is a super common dream, perhaps because it would be an obvious ancestral situation with frozen computation; there’s an imperative to get away from something, but the chase takes a long time to be ‘over’ and this makes the tension more sticky (increasing the chance of it latching). If you go through the same scenario, but it resolves more quickly, it could open related old latches

I think a dream questionnaire on “what did you dream about? Did this have sensory or abstract relevance to some stressful event in your past? How did the dream end? Did this dream produce catharsis?” would be pretty interesting

Of course, the ancestral distribution of sensory permutations to try as keys while dreaming might be different than the ideal distribution now, given that modern life & modern trauma (‘forced memory’) is significantly different than in our ancestral environment. Maybe there’s room for improvement — thinking about framing what @EricWollberg & @weslouis_ are building at Prophetic as a ‘latch-opening dojo’*

If latches were metaphorical, this theory might be evocative but not particularly diagnostic. But latches are very concrete physical things! Bullish for the possibility of inducing more cathartic dreams

*cf an old NYT piece about dreams as a ‘threat dojo’;
Research context for vasocomputation: https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1863603206649208983