When dreams feel real: the MÖBIUS model

TL;DR

The paper introduces the MÖBIUS model to explain how certain vivid dreams are mistaken for real memories due to brain system failures during REM sleep.

Contribution

The novel contribution is the MÖBIUS model, which formalizes how REM sleep failures can lead to dream content being encoded as real memories.

Findings

Epic dreams may result from a systems-level failure in REM sleep containment.

The MÖBIUS model links neuromodulatory disruption and hippocampal misclassification to dream-reality confusion.

Internally generated content during REM sleep can be mis-encoded into episodic memory.

Abstract

A subset of dreams challenges long-standing distinctions between simulation and memory. These, so-called epic dreams, are defined by immersive realism, emotional neutrality, and persistent autobiographical salience, and can be subjectively indistinguishable from lived experience. They are often recalled with mnemonic authority. In this Perspective, epic dreaming is argued to reflect a systems-level failure of REM sleep’s containment architecture, namely a convergence of neuromodulatory disruption, hippocampal novelty-misclassification, and oscillatory instability that permits internally generated content to enter episodic memory. A probabilistic model of this failure, termed MÖBIUS, is introduced to formalise the conditions under which simulation is mis-encoded as memory.

The MÖBIUS model proposes that REM sleep gating failures may mis-tag (pre)replay-like sequences as autobiographical memory, linking MCH-orexin balance, CA2 novelty tagging and θ-γ coupling to dream-reality confusion.

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