The Relationship Between Plasticity and Dreaming

Human brains drop into the world half baked and we're incredibly flexible. Other animals arrive more, let's call it pre-programmed - there's no vervet monkey culture to absorb. Different species of primate can have very different levels of plasticity. How does this translate to the amount of dreaming they do each night? And our hypothesis is that the more plastic species need more dreaming at night to make sure that big changes don't happen or visual system doesn't get taken over. If you are a less plastic species, the brain is essentially more fixed into place and there's less risk of takeover in darkness.