RODRIGUEZ DE SA, José Felipe    ARANHA ROSSI, Thais Régis. Dream to forget: an introduction to the "Reverse-Learning" hypothesis. []. , 17, 2, pp. 168-176. ISSN 1806-5821.

Advances brought by neuroscience have contributed to sleep and dreaming research, linking their features to memory consolidation. This article aims to analyze the contribution of the "Reverse-Learning" hypothesis to psychology. Due to memory's associative character and the brain's forging of new neural connections in a daily basis through learning, neural networks create "false" memories. At the risk of being overloaded, the network must go through periodic "unlearning"; a mechanism is needed to weaken the erroneous synaptic connections during REM sleep. An appraisal of this theory's implications will be considered, ranging from how the nervous system evolved to a disregard towards the idea that dreaming stems from individual psychological needs.© Cien. Cogn. 2012; Vol. 17 (2): 168-176.

: dreams; REM sleep; neural networks; computer; psychoanalysis; neurophysiology.

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