[algoth1]

There’s an hypothesis that states we dream so we don’t lose visual processing neural connections. Similar to what happens in blind people: visual processing neurons are recruited to other sensory tasks due to lack of stimulation. My ed. guess is that dreaming probably serves multiple purposes

[dofm]

There was an early visual neural network demonstration — strong feeling it was called "Yorick" or somesuch as it was built in a plaster skull — that had a square grid of red LEDs to show its output state as a simple picture; when its camera was unplugged the neural network appeared to "dream" in the sense that things it had seen would flicker and swirl in the output.

I saw this in a video in the early 90s and cannot remember where.