Do synactors dream?

The book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is a novel by Philip Dick, published in 1968. The film, Blade Runner (1982, directed by Ridley Scott) is based on this book. It is set at a time when the world has been severely affected by nuclear war. Animals are very rare, and the possession of robotic pets indistinguishable from their living counterparts is a status symbol. The book explores the differences between humans and androids (robots with a human appearance). Androids are banned from Earth in the book, and police and bounty hunters seek to identify and "retire" (or destroy) any breaking the ban. One, Rachel, is so sophisticated that she is not aware of being an android, and she is convinced that all the embedded memories and dreams she can recall of a human childhood and upbringing are evidence that she is human.

Tests applied to determine whether a subject is human or android are based on determining empathy, since androids are not capable of empathy. Empathy is the understanding and sharing of the feelings of others. Fictional tests include a Voight-Kampff test (measuring breathing, blushing, heart rate and eye movement during interrogation), a Boneli test (measuring reaction time to visual stimulae) and the only fool proof test, bone-marrow sampling. (Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep.) Note that some humans, those with Autism Spectrum Disorders, have difficulty experiencing and expressing empathy and have to be taught to respond with simulated empathy in appropriate circumstances.

Currently, synactors are not capable of sleeping and dreaming so to imitate a human doing these things requires the synactor to learn how to appear to be sleeping and dreaming and to learn how to describe plausible dream experiences. A dream is a series of thoughts and images occurring in the mind when asleep that resemble experiences when awake. They are based on memories but constructed in novel ways so that they can convince the dreamer of their actuality and evoke strong responses in the dreamer as a result, that they may, or may not, remember when awake.