Dream Thread
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The dream I saw last night had a sequence which was a bit similar to the above painting (by Beksinski). Although in my dream it was supposedly in a suburb of a city, and the scale was closer to human (the gaps in the ground were filled with people doing some kind of psychotropic drug, and the stalagmite-like peaks were roughly three meters high and more numerous).
I was taken to that part of the city by someone who likely meant to rob me (or worse), and when I saw how things were I tried to find a way to leave without being attacked. That was when the dream ended (I suppose the dream God felt disgusted by my cowardice
).
I'd like to know this as well!
I only ever have colored dreams, but I recall someone asking from me once "was it a colored dream or black-and-white?" and being completely dumbfounded.
It was a long time ago, so I had a theory people seeing black-and-white dreams might have been due to exposure to black-and-white TV-s...
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Book reveiw:
Destination Anywhere
Our nightly sojourns may accomplish many tasks during different phases: incorporating new memories, consolidating acquired skills and solving complex problems
When Brains Dream
By Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold Norton, 321 pages, $27.95
BY DANIEL J. LEVITIN
Destination Anywhere
Our nightly sojourns may accomplish many tasks during different phases: incorporating new memories, consolidating acquired skills and solving complex problems
When Brains Dream
By Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold Norton, 321 pages, $27.95
BY DANIEL J. LEVITIN
SOMETIME LAST August, five months into the pandemic lockdown, I had my first mask dream—I was in a crowded place and was the only person wearing a mask; it filled me with panic and I woke suddenly, scared out of my wits. Well into middle age, I still have nightmares that I’m back in college during finals week, and that there’s an entire course I forgot to attend.
Dreaming is a universal human experience; although there are some themes that run through them, dreams are also unique to the dreamer and can provoke calm, wonderment and fear. Animals have them, too, although we’re less certain about the content. About once a month, my wife and I find Madeleine, our 8-pound cairn terrier, doing battle with some unseen adversary as she whimpers and runs in her sleep; we wake her gently and comfort her because the whole thing seems so distressing to her. It sure seems as though she’s dreaming.
Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold, two of the world’s leading researchers in the science of sleep and dreams, have written a remarkable account of what we know and don’t know about this mysterious thing that happens during the night. The promise of “When Brains Dream” is to address four questions: “What are dreams? Where do they come from? What do they mean? And what are they for?” In a masterly narrative, the authors answer these and many more questions with solid scientific research and a flair for captivating storytelling.
Speaking of evolution across species, they note that “for it to have been maintained across half a billion years of evolution, sleep must serve functions critical to our survival.” One of those functions is cellular housekeeping. Sleep deprivation leads, for example, to impairments of insulin signaling; after being allowed only four hours of sleep for five nights, “otherwise healthy college students begin to look prediabetic.” Sleep also clears unwanted waste products from the brain, including ß-amyloid, which is a prime suspect in Alzheimer’s disease.
Attempts to understand and interpret dreams must be older than history— dreams and their meaning play parts in religious traditions from Tibetan Buddhism to the Old Testament, classical philosophy to Freud and Jung. To many, dreams are prophecies, implanted in our brains by God or angels; to others, they exist to encode our memories of the previous day, to others they are simply random neural firings. To still others, they are the products of fourth dimensional beings (such as the ones Clifford Pickover so eloquently describes in his book “Surfing Through Hyperspace”).
The weight of the evidence supports a more elaborate, nuanced and wondrous version of the memory-encoding hypothesis. Messrs. Zadra and Stickgold have designed a conceptual model they call Nextup (“Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities”), using it to describe the progression of dreams throughout the four sleep stages and their different functions. They debunk the common myth that we only dream during REM sleep and show that, in fact, we are typically dreaming throughout the night and in nonREM sleep states. They tie all of this into the brain’s “default mode network,” in which our minds are wandering and, often, problem-solving. When we’re awake, our brains are so busy attending to the environment that we tend to favor linear connections and thinking; when we allow ourselves to daydream, we solve problems that have distant, novel or nonlinear solutions.
As we first drift off to sleep, we are typically thinking about the events of the day and any unresolved issues. When we’re too agitated by these, we can end up with insomnia and can’t seem to turn off the chatter in our brains. But most of the time, quotidian events make their way into free association when we’re half awake and half asleep; they gradually become integrated into our dream content during sleep’s early stages, in less and less literal manifestations. The neurophysiology and neurochemistry that is ideal for strengthening one kind of memory might be different than that needed for other types. Improvements in activities like typing, playing a musical instrument or sinking baskets are consolidated by different mechanisms, in different sleep stages, from those dealing with emotional memories or abstract problem-solving. “As far as we know,” the authors write, “this is the best explanation available for why humans have so many different stages of sleep.”
By the time we reach REM sleep, later in the night, our brains have entered a superelaborate and vivid version of that default-mode network, where dreaming “extracts new knowledge from existing memories through the discovery and strengthening of previously unexplored weak associations. Typically, the brain starts with some new memory, encoded that day...and searches for other, weakly associated memories....The brain then combines the memories into a dream narrative that explores associations the brain would never normally consider.”
During dreaming, then, “the brain is searching . . . digging for hidden treasures in places” it would be unaware of when we’re awake. This, in part, explains why some dreams seem to have such a bizarre, otherworldly quality. Could it be that the content or effectiveness of REM sleep among intelligent people differs from that of others? We don’t yet know. The future may see brain-training games that allow our default mode and our REM sleep to create remote associations more often.
“When Brains Dream” is a rarity among popular science books, one that neither dumbs down the
research nor steps outside of what we know, and yet is still a page-turner. The authors are admirably cautious, leading us through a brief exploration of the epistemological limits of contemporary neuroscience. And they retain an infectious sense of the wonder of it all. “We’re all so used to dreaming . . . that we lose track of how truly extraordinary it is that our brains construct these wondrous dream worlds . . . with literally endless possibilities.” All this supports deep learning within the safe environment of your mind; your brain observes how you might react in a range of circumstances, and how the people around you may react. It “teaches you about yourself and the world you inhabit . . . to explore your past and better prepare you for an uncertain future.”
While visiting Las Vegas some years ago, I had occasion to see Picasso’s 1932 painting “Le Rêve” (“The Dream”). As I took it in, the work launched me into a wonderful daydream of loosely connected images, sounds and feelings, as great art does. Last night, after typing this review, I dreamed about “Le Rêve,” and, oddly, about “Hamlet.” Later, while I was doing the breakfast dishes, act II, scene 2 popped into my head: Guildenstern says to Hamlet, “The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.” This is a golden age for neuroscience, and its ambition of being able to understand how the brain works is within our grasp, if only we dare to dream it. Mr. Levitin is a neuroscientist and the author, most recently, of “Successful Aging.”
THE DREAM ‘Le Rêve’ (1932) by Pablo Picasso.
^
I doubt it is within our grasp. In fact, it certainly isn't. But things may be nearing a breakthrough, so that we will go one floor below.
I certainly agree that in dreams one has access to rarer connections. The dream itself is made of connections, with no visual external input, so is more complicated by default in what its images are.
Often (maybe always, not sure) everything in the dream is directly you. A few nights ago I had a dream which I am examining these days, where I was primarily a passenger on a train, but in reality also the driver, and also the workman who would be run over if the train went through a tunnel, and also the police authorities who started an investigation about the near-accident.
from the article said:
I doubt it is within our grasp. In fact, it certainly isn't. But things may be nearing a breakthrough, so that we will go one floor below.
I certainly agree that in dreams one has access to rarer connections. The dream itself is made of connections, with no visual external input, so is more complicated by default in what its images are.
Often (maybe always, not sure) everything in the dream is directly you. A few nights ago I had a dream which I am examining these days, where I was primarily a passenger on a train, but in reality also the driver, and also the workman who would be run over if the train went through a tunnel, and also the police authorities who started an investigation about the near-accident.
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Gori the Grey
The Poster
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I had a terrible dream about a week ago. I was in the upper floor of a tall building looking out a wide window. Across from me was another tall building. I saw a young woman swing from a rope off the top of that building, doing some kind of stunt. But her grip slipped. The buildings were tall enough that the fall had to be fatal. I heard some people talking. She'd done the same stunt earlier in the day, successfully.
Why try it again, young woman? What's proved by doing it the second time?
Why try it again, young woman? What's proved by doing it the second time?
That you still have the abilities you had in the past?
Maybe "earlier in the day" is related to the tall buildings. If buildings aged like people when young, they would get a lot taller. And that takes years.
In my last dream, I was a vampire. Although apparently more powerful than the other vampires who tried to corner me, since I managed to burn one with a beam from my eye (or my hand, don't recall which...).
Anyway, it's a nice change, to dream of power for once ^_^
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I lifted a garbage truck with one hand but not before having a tarantula climb all over me and bite me (allegedly not related)
Sarin
Deity
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Had a really weird dream today. Couldn't sleep well, so I was drifting in and out so I ended remembering the dream quite well. It was a movie...Starship Troopers 2. Much better than the garbage that goes under the same name in reality, and in parts, interactive. Weird, but funny.
The enemies were some kind of telepathic things that enslaved and genetically modified others into some kind of hive mind. Kinda like fully biological Borg, known only as "brains". At one point, Rico had to infiltrate their society, and had to be surgically modified with extra pair of arms.
Don't ask me what was going on in my brain, but it was fun to watch.
The enemies were some kind of telepathic things that enslaved and genetically modified others into some kind of hive mind. Kinda like fully biological Borg, known only as "brains". At one point, Rico had to infiltrate their society, and had to be surgically modified with extra pair of arms.
Don't ask me what was going on in my brain, but it was fun to watch.
This morning I dreamed that I was back in Ireland. It was so vivid. The sights, sounds and smells were all there. I thought I was really there and stomping the streets of Dublin. Then I woke up.
Now I'm homesick.
Now I'm homesick.
Zardnaar
Deity
Scared thecrap out of my wife. Woke up screaming/wailing.
I don't remember what about though but was scared while awake (at 4pm).
Mother of all nightmare's.
I don't remember what about though but was scared while awake (at 4pm).
Mother of all nightmare's.
You are too deep in the process of becoming CFCfied.
Interesting. So it was so scary that you don't even recall anything?
Hopefully you haven't built a clay statue of Cthulhu.
Sarin
Deity
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If you can't remember it, it's not that bad. Worst things stay with you...I've had a couple of dreams that I still partially remember...and I wish I didn't.
Didn't know Starship Troopers is a CFC thing.
I mean, there are a few obvious parallelisms, including the acronym's form.
r16
not deity
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actually no , ı don't actually remember dreaming about anyone ı have been accused of knowing . The only actress and stuff ı saw in a dream was already mentioned but not named possibly in this thread , living in my current street in a reported 1930s , even if it was all peach gardens back in the day if not straight farmland ...
