Talking about dreams
Talking about Dreaming
0.1: Facts about
dream
1: Dream
2: Subjective
experience and content
3:
Neurophysiology
4: Generation
5: Theories on
function
6: Religious and
other cultural contexts
6.1: Hindu
6.2: Abrahamic
6.3: Buddhist
6.4: Other
7: Interpretation
8: Images and
literature
9: Lucidity
10: Recollection
11: Miscellany
11.1: Illusion of
reality
11.2: Absent
minded transgression
11.3: Day Dreams
11.4
Halluncations
11.5 Nightmare
11.6 Night terror
11.7 Deja vu
Then Lucid
dreaming
Here are some
facts about dreams
We all dream every night
Our brains are active throughout the entire night. But after we wake up, we
often don't remember much about our dreams.
We dream most vividly during
Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep
Some of our sleep has vivid, structured thoughts - or dreams. These occur
during a stage of sleep that is called REM sleep. REM sleep occurs in short
episodes across each night each about 90 minutes apart. Our longer dreams are
in the morning hours.
We are specially wired not to act
out our dreams
During our REM sleep many of our muscles relax completely and this prevents us
acting out our dreams. If this system doesn’t work properly, we may try to act
out our dreams, especially if the dreams involve strong emotions.
Many dreams are bizarre because
part of our brain shuts down
When we are awake the front part of our brain controls how we make sense of the
world. This shuts down during dreaming. Because of this, the dreaming brain
puts together ideas that normally do not go together.
Most dreams relate to recent
awake experiences
Dreams are often linked to real life events from the past. Usually these are
events or thoughts from one to two days before the dream.
.
We dream in pictures
About two thirds of dreams are mainly visual, with fewer that involve sounds,
movement, taste, or smell. Colour is only in about a third of all dreams. It
has been said that when we are awake, we think in ideas, but when asleep we
think in pictures.
We can learn to control our
dreams
Many people have bad dreams or nightmares. These can happen over and over
again. But people can change the events in these dreams to be less frightening.
First, write down memories of the scary dream. After this think about how it
might end differently.
Scientists disagree about the
meaning of dreams
Some people say our dreams mean nothing. They say we have them only because parts
of our brain are stimulated when we sleep. Other people say dreams have value.
They say it is a kind of therapy for when we're feeling down. Having and
remembering vivid dreams about stressful things in our lives may help deal with
stress. Many people think that dreams contain messages, but the evidence for
this is weak.
Morning dreams are better than
night dreams
Longer dreams occurs during the morning hours than at night
Weekends help you remember better
during your dreams
You are more likely to remember your dreams on weekends or on days where you
sleep in, because each episode of REM sleep is longer than the last.
You are Paralyzed While Dreaming
REM sleep is characterized by paralysis of the voluntary
muscles. This phenomenon is known as REM atonia, and it stops you from acting
out your dreams while you're asleep. Basically, because motor neurons are not
stimulated, your body does not move.
In some cases, this paralysis can even carry over into the
waking state for as long as 10 minutes, a condition known as sleep paralysis.
Although the experience can be frightening, it's perfectly
normal and should last only a few minutes before normal muscle control returns.
Pictures are common when we sleep
We dream mostly in pictures, with most of the dreams being mainly visual with
little sound or movement too.
Recurring dreams have themes
Recurring dreams that children mostly have are about:
Confrontations with animals or monsters, physical aggressions, falling,
and being chased.
Strange is normal in dreams
Many of our dreams are strange because a part of the brain is responsible for
making sense of things shuts down which happens while we are sleeping.
Our day informs our dreams
Most of our dreams are linked through the events and to your thoughts from the
previous day or two.
Faces are familiar for us when we
sleep
You likely only dream about the faces that we have already seen in person or on
the Tv, according to a study in Stanford University.
Lower stress means happier dreams
You’re more likely to have a better and pleasant dreams if you are experiencing
low stress and feel satisfied in your life.
The psychology of dreams
Dreaming is the most extensively studied cognitive
state. While some experts believe that dreams have no meaning and serve no
function, others believe that our dreams do mean something.
A number of theories exist on what dreams mean, some
of the more recognized theories include:
Psychoanalytic theory. In this theory, dreams are
believed to represent unconscious desires, wish fulfilment, and personal
conflicts. Dreams give us a way to act out unconscious desires in the safety of
an unreal setting, because acting them out in reality would be unacceptable.
Activation-synthesis theory. Popularized in the
1970s, this theory suggests that dreams are just a by-product of your brain
trying to process random signals from your limbic system, which is involved in
your memories, emotions, and sensations.
Continual activation theory. This is the idea
that our brains are continuously storing memories, even when we’re asleep. It
suggests our dreams provide a place to hold our memories while they make the
transition from our short-term memory to our long-term memory.
These barely begin to scratch the surface of dream
interpretation theories. Here are some other interesting theories on the
meaning of dreams:
Dreams are threat simulations that help prepare you
when faced with threats in real life.
Dreams are your brain’s way of collecting and clearing
out useless information from the day to make room for new information the next
day.
Dreaming goes back to an evolutionary defense
mechanism of playing dead to fool enemies. This explains why our bodies are
paralyzed while dreaming, but our minds remain highly active.
Here are the
links to the Facts I found on google
45
Facts About Dreams: Nightmares, Fun Info, and More (healthline.com)
Facts
About Dreaming (sleephealthfoundation.org.au)
Do You Dream Every Night? And More Facts About Dreams
(verywellmind.com)
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and also
sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages
of you sleeping. Humans spends around 2 hours of dreaming a night, and each
dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the person dreaming may say that
the dream is much longer than 5 to 20 minutes.
The content and function of dreams have been a topic of
scientific, philosophical, and also religious interest through out current recorded
history. Dream interpretation, practised by the Babylonians in the third
millennium BCE and even earlier by the ancient Sumerians, figures prominently in religious texts in
several traditions around the world, and also it had played a lead role in psychotherapy. The scientific
study of dreams is called oneirology. Most modern dream study focuses on the
neurophysiology of dreams and on proposing and testing hypotheses regarding
dream function. It is not known where in the brain dreams still originate, if
there is a single origin for the dreams or if multiple types of regions of the
brain are even involved? Or what is the purpose of dreaming is for the body and
mind.
The human dream experience what to make of it has undergone
many sizable shifts over the course of history. A long time ago, according to
writings from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, dreams dictated post dream
behaviours to an extent sharply reduced in later millennia. These ancient
writings about dreams highlight visitation dreams, where a dream figure, may or
usually a deity or a prominent forebear, commands the dreamer to take specific
actions and may predict future events. Framing the dream experience varies
across cultures is as well as through time.
Dreaming and sleep are intertwined. Dreams mainly occur in
the rapid eye movement ( rem ) stage of sleep. And it is when the brain
activity is high when you are sleeping, and it resembles that you are awake
during your sleep. Because REM sleep is detectable in many different types of
species, and because research suggests that all mammals experience REM, which
links dream to REM sleep, it has led to conjectures that animals dream.
However, humans dream during non REM sleep too, also, and not all REM
awakenings elicit dream reports. To be studied, a dream must first to be
reduced to a verbal report, which is an account of the subject memory of the
dream subject’s memory of the dream, not the subject’s dream experience itself.
So, dreaming by non humans is currently unprovable, as is dreaming by human
fetuses and pre verbal infants.
Subjective experience
Preserved writings from the early times of Mediterranean
civilizations indicate that a relatively abrupt change in a subjective dream
experience between Bronze Age antiquity and also the beginning of the classical
era times.
In visitation dreams reported that in the ancient writings,
dreamers were largely passive in their dreams, and also visual content served
primarily to frame authoritative auditory messaging. Gudea, the king of the
Sumerian city state of “ Lagash “ (
reigned c 2144 BCE to 2124 BCE ), rebuilt the temple of Ningirsu as the result
of a dream in which he was told to do so. After the antiquity, the passive
hearing of visitation dreams largely gave a way to visualized narratives in which
the dreamer dreams about becoming the character who actively participates.
From the times of the 1940’s to 1985, Calvin S. Hall was
collecting dreams from other people are in that time spawn he was able to
collect more than 50,000 ream reports at the Western Reserve University. In
1966, Hall and Robert Van de Castle decided
to publish The Content Analysis of Dreams, in where they outlined a
coding system which allowed itself to study 1,000 dream reports from other
college students. Results were indicated that the participants from varying
parts of the world demonstrated that similarity in their dream content. The
only residue of antiquity’s authoritative dream figure in the Hall and Van de
Castle listing of dream characters is the inclusion of God in the category of
prominent persons. Hall’s complete dream reports were soon later ween made
publicly available in the mid 1990’s time by his protégé named “ William
Domhoff “. More recent studies of dreams which were reported by more people,
and nowadays they give out the reports with more providing with more details of
their dreams, and it still continues to cite the Hall study favourably.
In the Hall study, the most common emotion which most people
were experiencing in their dreams was anxiety. Other emotions which are
included are abandonment, anger, fear, joy , happiness. Negative emotions were
much more common than the positive emotions. The Hall data analysis showed that
sexual dreams were occurring no more than 10% of the time and there are more
prevalent into young to mid teens dreams. Another study showed that 8% of both
of men’s and women’s dreams to have sexual content. And in Some cases, sexual
dreams may result in orgasms or nocturnal emissions. ( I don’t know what that
is I’m just following what Wikipedia is saying ). These are colloquially known
as “ wet dreams “.
The visual of nature in a person dream is generally high phantasmagoric,
that is, different locations and objects continuously blend into each other.
The visuals ( which also includes the different locations and objects too ) are
generally reflective of a person’s memories and experience if its in their past
or if it’s in their current time or anytime, conversation can take on highly
exaggerated and bizarre types of forms. Some dreams may even tell elaborate
stories where in the dreamers enters entirely new, the complex worlds and with
awakening ideas in their dreams, and thoughts and feelings never experienced in
their dreams. So, you can learn a lot in your dreams, and you can do whatever
you want in your dreams which cannot be possible in real life so that’s a
benefit to dreaming.
Some people think that Blind people can dream but according
to some experiments, People who are blind from birth can still dream without
the visuals because they are blind. Their dreams contents are only related to
the other senses they have or example like hearing, touch, smell, and also
taste, whichever are present since birth.
Neurophysiology
Dream study is popular within the scientists exploring the
mind brain problem. Some “ propose to reduce aspects of dream phenomenology to
neurobiology “. But currently right n ow science cannot specify dream
physiology in detail. Protocols in most nations restrict the human brain
research to non invasive procedures. In the United States, invasive brain
procedures with a human subject are only allowed if that doing the procedures
will benefit the future of surgical treatment to address medical needs of the
same human subject. Non invasive measures that of the brain activity like
electroencephalogram ( EEG ) voltage averaging or cerebral blood flow cannot
identify small but influential neuronal populations. Also, fMRI signals are too
slow to explain how to brain is computing in real time instead of a delay.
Scientists have been researching some of the brain functions
and they are working around the current restrictions by examining animal
subjects instead of humans subjects. As stated
by the Society for Neuroscience, “ Because no adequate alternatives
exist, much of this research must be done on animal subjects. “ However, since then
animal dreaming can only be inferred, and not confirmed, animal studies yield
no hard facts to illuminate the neurophysiology of dreams. Examining human
subjects with brain lesions can provide clues, but the lesion method cannot
discriminate between the effects of the destruction and the disconnected and it
also cannot target specific neuronal groups in the heterogeneous regions kind off
like the brain stem.
Generation
Denied precision tools, obliged to depending on just
imaging, much dreams research has succumbed to the law of the instrument,
Studies detected an increase of blood flow in a specific area in the brain
region and then credit that region with a role in generating dreams. But
pooling study results has led to the newer conclusion which is that dreaming
involves a large number of regions and pathways, which likely are more
different for different dream events.
Image creation in the brain involves a significant neural
activity down streaming from the eye intake, and it is theorized that the “ the
visual imagery of dreams is produced by the activation during the sleep of the
same structure that generates complex visual imagery in waking perception “.
Dreams present a running narrative rather than an
exclusively visual imagery. Following their work with a split brain subject,
like Gazzaniga and LeDoux postulated, without attempting to try to specify the
neural mechanisms, a “ left brain interpreter “ that goes out and seek to
create a plausible from whatever electro chemical signals reach the brain’s
left hemisphere. Sleep research has determined that some of the brain regions
are fully active during the walking are, during REM sleep, activated only in a
partial way or a fragmentary way. Drawing on the knowledge we have, textbook
author ( James W. Kalat ) explains that “ [ A ] dream represents the brain’s
effort to make sense of sparse and distorted information. The cortex combines this
haphazard input in with whatever other
activity was already occurring and odes it’s best to synthesize a story that
makes sense of the information. “ Neuroscientist ( And his name is “ Indre
Viskontas “ ) is even more blunt calling often bizarre dream content “ just the
result of your interpreter which is trying to create a story out a random
neural signalling.
Theories on functions
For humans in the pre classical era’s and continuing for
some non literate populations in to the modern times, dreams were to be
believed that it was functioning as a revealers of truths source during the
sleep from their gods or just from other external entities going into their
dreams revealing the truth. Ancient Egyptians believed that the dreams were the
best way to receive the divine revelation, and it would thus they would induce
( or “ incubate “ ) dreams. They went to sanctuaries and sleep on their special
“ dreams beds “ in to hoping that they would receive some advice, comfort, or
some healing from the gods in their dreams . From a Darwinian perspective dream,
it would fulfil some kind of biological requirement, provide some benefit for
some natural selection to take place, or at least have no negative impact on
fitness. Robert ( 1886 ), a physician from Hamburg, was the first one who
suggested that the dreams everyone had was that it was a need and that they
have the function to be able to eras ( a ) sensory impressions that were not
fully worked up, and ( b ) ideas that were not fully developed during the day.
In dreams, incomplete material is either removed ( supressed ) or deepened and included into their memory. Freud,
whose dream studies focused on to be able to interpreting dreams, not
explaining how or why human dream, disputed Robert’s hypothesis and wasp
proposed to the idea that dreams preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled
those wishes that otherwise would have awakened the dreamer. Freud wrote that
dreams " serve the purpose of prolonging sleep instead of waking up. “ And
he also said that “ Dreams are the GUARDIANS of sleep and not it’s disturbers.
“
A turning point in theorizing about the dreams and the
functions of how we dream came about in 1953, when a Scientist decided to
publish the Aserinsky and also the Kleitman paper establishing the REM sleep as
a distinct phase of sleeping and linking dreams to REM sleep. Until and even
after publication of it of the Solms 2000 Paper that certified the separability
of REM sleep and dream phenomena, many studies were done purporting to uncover
the functions of dreams and have in fact been studying not dreams but measurable
REM sleep
Theories of dream function since the identification of REM
sleep includes:
Hobson’s and McCarley’s 1977 activation-synthesis
hypothesis, in which proposed “ a functional role for dreaming sleep in
promoting some aspects of the learning process. “ In 2010 a Harvard study was
published showing that an experimental evidence that dreams were correlated
with improved of learning.
Crick’s and Mithison’s 1983 “ reverse learning “ theory,
which states that the dreams are like the cleaning up operations of computer
when they are offline, which they are removing ( suppressing ) parasitic nodes
and other “ junk “ from the mind during sleep.
Hartmann’s 19955 proposal that dreams were served as a “
quasi-therapeutic “ function, enabling that the dreamer to process trauma in a
safe place.
Revonsuo’s 2000 threat simulation hypothesis, whose premise
is that during much of the human evolution, physical and also interpersonal
threats were serious, which were giving reproductive advantage to those who survived
them. Dreaming also aided survival by replicating these threats and providing
the dreamer with practise in dealing with them.
Eagleman’s and also Vaughn’s 2021 defensive activation
theory, which said that it was, given the brain’s neuroplasticity, dreams
evolved as a visual hallucinatory activity during the sleep’s extended period
of time in the darkness, busying the occipital lobe and thereby protecting it
orm the possible appropriation by other, non vision, sense operations.
Religious and other cultural
contexts
Dreams figure prominently in major different world
religions. The dream experience is pretty early for humans, according to one
interpretation, gave rise to the notion
of a human “ soul, “ a central element in much religious thought. J. W. Dunne
wrote:
But there can be no reasonable doubt that the idea of a soul
must have first arisen in the mind of primitive man as result of observation of
his dreams. Ignorant as he was, he could have come to no other conclusion but
that, in dreams, he left his sleeping body in one universe and went wandering
of into another. It is considered that, but for that savage, the idea of such a
thing as a ‘ soul ‘ would never have even occurred to mankind…
Hindu
In the Mandukya Upanishad, part of the Veda scriptures of
Indian Hinduism, a dream is a state which there are three states that the soul
experiences during the lifetime of itself, and the other two states being the
awaken state and also the sleep state. The earliest Upanishads, was written
before the 300 BCE, emphasize two meanings of dreams. The first says that the
dreams are merely just an expression of their inner desires. While the second
is the belief of that the soul leaving the body and it is being guided until
awakened.
Abrahamic
In Judaism, dreams are considered that a part of the
experience of the world that can be interpreted and from which lessons can be
garnered. It is discussed in the Talmud, Tractate Berachot 55 – 60.
The ancient Hebrews connected their dreams heavily with
their religion, though the Hebrews were monotheistic and believed that the
dreams were the voice of the Gods alone. Hebrews also differentiated between
the good dreams ( from God ) and also the bad dreams ( from the evil spirits ).
The Hebrews, like many other ancient cultures, incubated dreams in order to be
able to receive a divine revelation. For example, the Hebrew prophet Samuel
would “ lie down and sleep in the temple at Shiloh before the Ark and receive
the word of the Lord “. Most of the dreams in the Bible and in the Book of
Genesis.
Christians mostly shared
the beliefs of the Hebrews beliefs, and they thought that the dreams
were of a supernatural character because of the Old Testament includes of the
frequent stories of dreams with divine inspiration. The most famous of these
dream stories was Jacob’s dream of a ladder that stretches from earth to
Heaven. Many Christians preach that god can speak to other people through their
dreams while they are asleep. The famous glossary, the Somniale Danielis,
written in the name of Daniel, decided to attempt to teach the Christian
populations to interpret their dreams.
Iain R. Edgar has researched the role of dreams in Islam. He
has argued that the dreams while we sleep play an important role / part in the
history Islam and the lives of many Muslims, since the dream interpretation is
the only way Muslims can receive revelations from God since the death or the
last prophet ( Muhammed SAW ). According to Edgar, Islam classifies threw types
of dreams while they sleep. Firstly, there are the true dreams ( al-ru ‘ya ).
Then the false dream, which may come from the devil ( shaytan ), and finally,
the meaningless everyday dream ( hulm ). This last dream could be brought by
the dreamer’s ego, or the base appetite based on what they experience in the
real world and takes what happened in the past or in the current time and put
it in their dreams. The true dream is often indicated by Islam’s hadith
tradition. In one narration by Aisha, the wife of the Prophet, it is said that
the Prophet’s dreams would just come true like the ocean waves. Just as in its
predecessors, the Quran also would recount of the story of Joseph and his
unique ability to be able to interpret people dreams. So that was the theories
that the Christians and the Muslim theories and other people in the older times
trying to figure out where the dreams.
Buddhist
In Buddhism, ideas about dreams are pretty similar to the
classical fold tradition which is as the South Asia. The same dream is
sometimes experienced by multiple people, as in the case of the Buddha-to-be,
before he is leaving his home. It is described in the Mahavastu that several of
the Buddha’s relatives had a premonitory dream preceding this. Some dreams are
also seen to transcend their time: The Buddha-to-be has a certain dream that
are the same as those of the previous Buddhas as what they have experienced in
their dreams, the Lalitavisata states. In Buddhist literature, dreams often
function as a “ signpost “ motif to mark a certain stage in their life of the
main character.
Buddhist views about dreams are express in the Pali
Commentaries and also the Milinda Panha.
Other
In Chinese history, people were writing about two vital
aspects o the soul of which one is freed from the body when it is experiencing
the slumber to the journey in a dream realm, while the other remained in the
body. This belief was dream interpretation had been questioned many times even
since the early times, such ass the philosopher Wang Chong ( 27 CE to 97 CE ).
The Babylonians and Assyrians divided dreams into “ good, “
which they were sent by the gods, while the “ bad “ dreams, were sent by the
bad spirits or demons. A surviving collection of dream omens entitled Iskar
Zaqiqu records various dream scenarios as well as a prognostication of what
will happen to the people experience in each during the dream, apparently based
on the previous cases. It is suggested that it could possibly be the different
possible outcomes, based on the occasions in which the people experienced the
same dreams but just with different results. The Greeks decided to share their
beliefs to the Egyptians on how to interpret the good and also the bad dreams,
and the idea of incubating dreams. Morpheus, the Greek god of the dreams, also
they sent warnings and also the prophecies to those who slept inside the
shrines and also the temples. The earliest Greek beliefs were about dreams were
about that their gods physically went inside their dreams of the person
dreaming, which they would enter through a keyhole, exiting the same way after
they had delivered the divine message to the dreamer.
Antiphon wrote that the first known Greek book which was
about dreams was in the 5th century BCE. In that century, the other
cultures were influenced for Greeks to develop they’re on beliefs that souls
left the sleeping body. Hippocrates (
during 469 BCE to 399 BCE ) had a simple dream theory which was that: during
the day, the soul receives images; and during the night, it produces images.
Greek philosopher Aristotle ( 384 BCE to 322 BCE ) believed that the dreams
caused physiological activity. He thought that the dreams would be able to analyse
illnesses and to also predict diseases. Marcus Tullius Cicero, for his part, he
believed that all of the dream were produced by the thought of your brain and
the conservation that the dreamer had during the preceding days. Cicero’s
Somnium Scipionis described a lengthy dream vision, which was in turn was
commented on by Macrobius in his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis.
Herodotus in his “ The Histories “ , he writes about that “
The visions that occur to use in dreams are, more often than not, the things we
have been concerned about during the day. “
The dreaming is a common term within the animist creation
narrative of indigenous Australians for a personal, or a group, creation and
for what may be understood as the “ timeless time “ which is a formative
creation and perpetual creating.
Some Indigenous American tribes and Mexican populations
believe that dreams are a way to be able to visit and having contact with their
ancestors. Some Native American tribes have been able to use vision quests as a
rite of a passage, fasting and also praying until an anticipated guiding dream
was received, to be shared with the rest of the tribe upon their return back.
Interpretation
In the Late 19th century, an Austrian neurologist
named “ Sigmund Freud “, was a founder of psychoanalysis, theorized that dreams
reflected that the dreamer’s unconscious mind and specifically that the dream
contents was shaped by an unconscious wish fulfilment. He argued that the
important unconscious desires often to relate to their early childhood memories
and experiences. Carl Jung and other decided to expand on Freud’s idea that the
dream content reflects the dreamer unconscious desires.
Dream interpretation can become a result of a subjective
ideas and experiences. One study found out that most people believed that “
their dreams revealed a meaningful hidden truth “. The researchers surveyed the
students in the United States, South Korea, and also India too, and found out
that 74% of Indians, 65% of South Koreans and 56% of Americans believed that
their dream content had provided them with very meaningful insight into their
unconscious beliefs and desire. This Freudian view of dreaming was believed by
many people infant significantly more than theories of dreaming that attribute
dream content to memory consolidation, problem solving, and also as a
by-product of unrelated brain activity. The same study found out that people
attribute to more important to dream content than to a similar thought content
that they always occur while they are awake. The Americans were more likely to
report that they would usually miss their flight if they dreamt about of their
plane crashing than if they bought of their plane crashing the night before
their flight as if there was an actual plane crash that had happened on the
route they intended to take. Participants in the study were also more likely to
perceive dreams to be meaningful when they content of dreams was in accordance with
their beliefs and their desires while they are awake. They were more likely to
view a positive dream about a friend to be meaningful than a positive dream
about someone that they had disliked, for example, they were more likely to view
a negative dream about a person that
they disliked in their life as meaningful than an negative dream about a person
that they have liked.
According to the surveys, it says that it is pretty common
for people to feel their dreams are predicting their future subsequent life
events. Psychologists have explained these experiences in the terms of the
memory biases, namely a selective of the memory for accurate predictions and
distorted memory so that dreams are retrospectively fitted onto their life
experiences. The multi-faceted nature of dreams makes it easy to find
connections between a dream content and also real life events. The term “
veridical dream “ has been used to indicated dreams that reveals or contains
the truth to not yet known to the
dreamer, whether onto the future events or secrets.
In one experiment, the subjects were asked to write down
about their dreams in a diary to gather information. This prevented the
selective memory effect, and which makes the dream no longer seemed accurate
about the future. Another experiment gave the subjects a fake diary of a
student which apparently precognitive dreams. This diary described about events
which happened during the person’s life, as well as some predictive dreams and
some non predictive dreams. When the subjects were asked to recall the dreams
that they had read, they remembered more of the successful predictions than the
predications which were unsuccessful.
Images and literature
Graphics artists, writers and filmmakers all had found a
dream to offer a rich vein for a creative expression. In the west, artist’s
depictions of dreams in the Renaissance and Baroque art often were related to
the Biblical narrative. Especially preferred by visual artists were the Jacob’s
Ladder dream in Genesis and also St. Joseph’s
dreams in the Gospel according to Matthew.
Nicolas Dipre. Le songe de Jacob. c.1500 Avignon, Petit Palais.
José de Ribera (1591–1652). El sueño de Jacob, from Prado in Google Earth
Raphael. Jacob's Dream (1518)
Rembrandt. Dream of Joseph (1645)
Anton Raphael Mengs. Traum des Hl. Joseph (1773 or 1774)
Many later graphic artists have a depicted
dream, which includes a Japanese woodblock artists Hokusai ( 1760 - 1849 ) and Western European painters
Rousseau ( 1844 – 1910 ), Picasso ( 1881 – 1973 ), and also Dali ( 1904 – 1989
).
In literature, the dream frames were
frequently used in the medieval allegory to justify the narrative; The Book of
the Duchess and The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman are two such a dream
visions. Even before them both, in antiquity, the same device had been used by
Cicero and also Lucian of Samosata.
Dreams have also been featured in
fantasy and also speculative fiction since the 19th century. On of
the best known dream worlds is called Wonderland created by Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as well as another one called Looking Glass
Land from its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. Unlike many other dream
worlds, Carroll’s logic is like that of an actual dream, with transitions and
flexible causality.
Other fictional dream worlds which
include the Dreamlands of H. P. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle and also the
Never-ending Story’s world of Fantastica, which also includes places like the
places called Desert of Lost Dreams, the Sea of Possibilities, and the Swamps
of Sadness. Dreamworlds actually shares another hallucinations and other
alternate realities feature in a number of works by Philip K. Dick, such as The
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik. Similar themes were explored by a
person called “ Jorge Luis Borges “, for instance in The Circular Ruins.
In this time of the Modern popular
culture often conceives of dreams, as did Freud, as expressions of the
dreamer’s deepest fears and also desires. In speculative fiction, the line
between their dreams and reality may be blurred even more due to the service of
the story. Dreams may be psychically invaded or manipulated ( Dreamscape, 1984;
the Nightmare on Elm Street films, from 1984 to 2010; Inception, 2010 ) or even
come literally to reality ( as in The Lathe of Heaven, 1971 ).
Lucidity
Lucid dreaming is the conscious
perception of one’s state while dreaming. In this type of state, the dreamer
may often have some degree of control over their actions within in the dreamers
dream or even the characters and also the environment surrounding the dreamers’
dream. Dream control has been reported to be able to improve with practiced
deliberate lucid dreaming, but also the ability to control the aspects of the
dream is not necessary for a dream to qualify as “ lucid “ as a lucid dream is
technically any dream during which the dreamer knows that they are dreaming
during the time they are actually dreaming. The occurrence of lucid dreaming
has been scientifically verified.
“ Oneironaut “ is a term used
sometimes for those who lucidly dream.
In the year 1975, a psychologist Keith
Hearne was successful to record a communication from a dreamer which was
experiencing lucid dreaming while he was recording the dreamer. On April 12,
1975, after agreeing to move his eyes left and right upon becoming lucid which
made him to lucid dream, the subject and Hearne’s co-author on the resulting
article, Alan Worsley, was successful to carry out this task. While years
later, psychophysiology’s Stephen LaBerge decided to conduct a similar type of
experiment which includes:
1. Using eye signals to map the
subjective sense of times in their dreams.
2. Comparing the electrical activity
of the brain while singing awake and also while dreaming.
3. And also more.
Communication between the two dreamers
has also been documented. Which the process involved included EEG monitoring,
ocular signalling, incorporation of
reality was in the form of a red light stimuli and also a coordinating website.
The website was tracked when both of the dreamers were fully dreaming and sent
the stimulus to one of the dreamers which is where it was incorporated into
their dream. This dreamer, upon becoming lucid, signalled with eye movements;
this was able to be detected due to the website whereupon the stimulus was sent
to the second dreamer, which invoked incorporation into that dreamer’s dream.
Recollection
The recollection of dreams is
extremely unreliable, although it is an actual skill which can actually be
trained. Dreams can usually be recalled if a person is awakened during their
dream. Women usually tends to have a more frequent dream than men. Dreams that
are too difficult to recall may be characterized by relatively little affect,
and factors such as salience, arousal, and also interference play a role in dream
recall. Most of the time, a dream may be able to be recalled upon viewing or
hearing a random trigger or stimulus. The salience hypothesis proposes that
dream content that is salient, that is, novel, intense, or unusual, is easily
more remembered. There is considerable evidence that vivid, intense, or unusual
dream content is more frequently recalled on than the other dreams. A dream
journal can be able to be used as to assist a dream recall, for personal
interest or psychotherapy purposes.
Adults has reported that they remember
only around 2 dreams per week, on average. Unless a dream is particularly vivid
and if one wakes during or immediately after it, the content of the dreamer’s
dream is usual / most of the time not remembered. Recording or reconstructing dreams
may one day be able to assist with another dream recall. By using the permitted
non-invasive technologies, functional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI ) and
electromyography ( EMG ), researchers have been able to find out and identify a
basic dream imagery, the dream speech activity, and also the ream motor
behaviour ( an example is such as walking around and hand movements too ).
In line with the salience hypothesis,
there is a good amount of evidence that people who have a more vivid dream,
intense or an unusual dream shows that those dreams are able to have a better
recall. There are backing up evidence that continuity of consciousness is
related to a recall. Specifically, the people who have a vivid and unusual
experiences during the day tend to have a better memorable dream content and
which it also means they have a b better dream recall. People who score a high
on measures of the personality traits associated with their creativity,
imagination, and also fantasy, such as an openness to experience, day dreaming,
fantasy, proneness, absorption, and the last one hypnotic susceptibility, and
tend to be able to be able to recall on their dreams more. There is also more
evidence for continuity between the bizarre aspects of dreaming and also waking
experience. That is, people who report more bizarre experiences during the day,
such as people high in schizotypy ( psychosis proneness ), have more frequent
dream recall and also report more frequent nightmares too.
Miscellany
The Illusion of reality
Some philosophers have been proposed
to that what we think of as the “ real world “ could be or our world is just an
illusion to everyone ( an idea known as the skeptical hypothesis about ontology
). The first recorded of a mention of the idea was a long time ago in the 4th
century BCE by Zhuangzi, and also in the Eastern philosophy, the problem has
been named the “ Zhuangzi Paradox. “
He
who dreams of drinking wine may weep when the morning comes, he who dreams of
weeping may in the morning to go off to hunt. While he is dreaming, he does not
know that it is a dream, and in his dream, he may even be able to try to
interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was adream. And someday
there will be a great awakening on when we will know that this is all a great
dream. Yet the very dumb believe they are awake, and busily and brightly
assuming that they understand things, calling this man rulers, that one
herdsman how dense! Confucius and you both are dreaming! And when I say you are
dreaming, I am dreaming too. Words like these will be labelled the Supreme
Swindle. Either yet, after ten and thousands of generations, a great sage may
appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appearing
with a astonishing speed.
The idea was also discussed in Hindu
and also Buddhists writings. It was formally to introduced to the Western
philosophy by the Descartes during the 17th century time in his
Meditations on his First Philosophy.
Absent minded transgression
Dreams of absent minded transgression
( DAMT ) are the dreams where in the dreamer absent mindedly performs an action
that he or she has been trying to stop ( one classic example of this is of a
quitting smoker having a dream of lighting a cigarette ). Subjects who have had
DAMT have been reported that they have been waking up with an intense feeling
of guilt. And in one study they were able to find out a positive association
between having these types of dreams actually being able to stop the dreamer
behaviour.
Daydreams
A daydream is a visionary fantasy, especially
one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake. There
are many different types of day dreaming, and there is no consistent definition
of amongst psychologists. The general public also uses the term for a broad
variety of experiences. Research by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett has
been able to be found out that people who have experience vivid dream like
mental images reserve the world for these, where as many other people has reserved
to that milder imagery, realistic future planning, review of memories or just “
spacing out “ – i.e., one’s mind going relatively blank – when they are talking
about “ day dreaming “.
While day dreaming has been long been
derided as a lazy, and non-productive pastime, it is now extremely commonly
acknowledged now that day dreaming can also be a constructive in some contexts.
There are numerous of examples of people in creative or artistic careers, such
as composters, novelists and also filmmakers, being able to develop new ideas
through day dreaming. Similarly, research scientists, mathematicians and also
physicists have also developed a new idea by day dreaming they subjects areas.
Hallucinations
A Hallucination, in the broadest sense
of the world, it is a perception in the absence of a stimulus, In a stricter
sense, hallucinations are perceptions in a conscious and awake state, in the
absences of external stimuli, and also have qualities of real perception, in
that they are vivid, substantial, and also located in a external objective
space. The latter definition distinguishes hallucinations from the related
phenomena of dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness.
Nightmares
A nightmare is a scary dream that no
one likes or anything that they don’t like or scared of, and those types of
dreams can cause a strong negative emotional response from the dreamer’s
nightmare mind, typically its fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety, and
great sadness too. The dream may contain a situation which has danger in it,
but it could also be, discomfort, psychological, or physical terror. Sufferers
usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return back to sleep
for a prolonged period of time.
Night terror
A night terror, which is also known as
sleep terror or pavor nocturnus is a parasomnia disorder that predominantly
affects children’s, which causes the feeling of terror or dread. Night terrors
should not be confused with nightmares, which are bad dreams which makes us the
felling of horror or fear.
Déjà vu
One theory of déjà vu attributes is
that the felling of having previously seen or experience something to having
dreamed about a similar situation or also place, and forgetting about it until
one seems to be mysteriously similar of the thing we dreamed about and reminds
us of the situation or the pace while awake.
Talking about lucid dreaming now:
0.1: Facts about Lucid dreaming
1: Lucid Dream
2: Etymology
3: Definition
4: History
4.1: Ancient
4.2: 17th Century
4.3: 19th Century
4.4: 20th Century
Facts about Lucid dreaming:
Most of the time when we dream, we
aren’t really aware that we might be dreaming. However, in some cases, an
individual might become aware that they themselves are in a dream, or even be
able to exert some type of control during their dreams!
This dream phenomenon is called and
known as Lucid dreaming. Most of us have heard of it, but yet maybe don’t know
about anything about it or know a little bit. So here are some interesting
facts about Lucid dreams that you probably didn’t know about!
1. What are Lucid dreams?
Lucid dreams are when you know that
you are dreaming while you are asleep.
You are fully aware that the events
flashing through your brain are not actually happening in your real life. But
the dream still feels vivid and still feels very real. You may be able to
control your lucid dream, as if it’s like you’re directing a movie in your own
sleep. Studies have shown that half of the people had said that they have had
at least one lucid dream. But most times they probably don’t really happen
often, usually only a handful number of times in a year.
2. When do Lucid Dreams usually
happen?
Lucid Dreams are most common during
the REM sleep ( usually known as the rapid eye movement sleep ), which is a
period while you are in a very deep sleep marked by eye motion, faster
breathing, and also more brain activity.
You can usually enter a REM sleep
around 90 minutes after you fall asleep. And it can last around for about 10
minutes. As you sleep, each REM period becomes longer than the one you felt
before, and finally it can be able to last up to an hour.
3. Lucid Dreams Research
Neuroscientist don’t have any explanation or
exactly know how and why a lucid dream happens. But they do have some theories
about it.
For one thing, studies have been able
to find a physical differences in the brains of people who do lucid dreams and
also for those who don’t lucid dreams. The main difference is the part in front
of their brain, called the prefrontal cortex – the site of high level tasks for
example like making decisions and being able to recall memories – is bigger in
those people who have lucid dreams. That suggests that folks who are most
likely to have lucid dreams tend to be self-reflective types who over thoughts
in their heads.
One small study which was done in
Germany was able to track down a brain electrical activity into the volunteers
as they sleep. Based on the information which were gathered, the researchers
said that lucid dreaming may be a kind of a “ between state “ in which you
aren’t fully awake not quite asleep, either. Some sleep scientists believed
that lucid dreams may also happen just outside of the REM sleep, which many
long thoughts were the only time when you can dream.
4. Benefits of Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreaming might actually help you
in your waking life with benefits like:
a. Less anxiety. The sense of control
of what you feel during a lucid dream may be able to stay with you and make you
feel more empowered. When you’re awake that you’re in a dream, you can be able
to shape the story and also the ending. That might also serve as a therapy for
those people who have nightmares usually, teaching them on how to be able to
control their dreams.
b. better motor skills. Limited
studies suggest that it may be even possible to improve even the simplest
things like being able to tap your fingers more quickly by “ practising “
during your lucid dream. The same part of your brain turns active even if you
imagine the movements while awake or run thought them during a lucid dream.
c. Improved problem solving.
Researching was able to find some evidence which said that lucid dreams are
able to help people to solve problems that deal with creativity more easily (
for example like a conflict with another person ) more than with logic ( such
as a math problem ).
d. More creativity. Some people which
were part of a lucid dream studies were able to come up with a new ideas or
insights, and sometimes with the help of the characters in their dreams.
5. The Dangers of Lucid Dreams
Lucid dreaming may also be able to
cause problems, including:
a. Less sleep quality. A vivid dream
can also be able to wake you up and making it harder for you to get back to
sleep quickly. And you might not be able to sleep well if you are too focused
on lucid dreaming.
b. Confusion, delirium, and
hallucinations. In people who have a certain mental health disorder, then lucid
dreams may blur the line between what is real and what was imagined in your
lucid dream.
6. How to have Lucid Dreams
a. Small studies have found that you
may actually be able to raise your chances of lucid dreaming lucidly. Another way
to do it might be to prime your mind t o notice unusual details in your dream
to alert yourself that it’s not real.
b. Most research is needed to know if
any method can actually be able to trigger a lucid dream. Some things
researchers have also tried including:
c. Reality testing. This is when you
pause at different times of the day to see whether you’re dreaming. You can try
to do something impossible, like push your finger through your palm or inhale
through a closed mouth. Or you can be able to do something it is usually hard
to do in a dream, like read a page in a book.
d. Dream diary. Some studies have been
able to show that people had more lucid dreams when they had kept a log of
their dreams, because they were more focused on them. While other research
found that these journals didn’t help at all on their own but might be useful
if they are combined with other different methods.
e. Wake back to bed. You wake up after
5 hours of sleep, stay awake briefly, and then go back to bed after to be able
to try to enter the REM sleep period.
f. Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams
( MILD ). You wake up after sleeping for 5 hours just like the Wake back to bed
method and then tell yourself that you’re in a dream several times so that the
next time you dream, you will be able to remember you’re dreaming. This uses
prospective memory -- the act of remembering to do something in the future – to
trigger a lucid dream.
7. Most people have actually already
experienced Lucid Dreaming
Many studies were able to point out
that the majority of people have actually had a lucid dream at some point
in their life, but the experience isn’t
common for most of us. Due to the growing popularity, there are now tons of
people trying to lucid dreams, and an industry had now made a product which
supposedly make you experience lucid dream even more common!
8. Time “ Moves more slowly “ in a
Lucid Dream
Researchers have studied the amount of
time that a person are able to complete tasks whilst lucid dreaming and whilst
awake. When an individual is in a Lucid dream, they can indicate to the
researchers how long a mental task takes. And it appears that for an individual
in a Lucid dream, appears that time moves more slower in the Lucid world. This
may be caused by the brain processing more slowly, or just a lack of normal
muscle movement whilst asleep.
9. Regular Lucid dreamers have a
different brain structure
A study was conducted to see if dream
lucidity was connected to differences in important areas of the brain. It
showed that people with a high and a low dream lucidity are different – people
with a high lucidity showed by a greater grey matter volume in the frontopolar
cortex to those who were compared by people with low lucidity.
10. A lucid dream starts out as any
other normal dream
Dreams are unconscious visual
manifestations of information and memories that are already floating around in
our heads. That's why all the imagery in our dreams is familiar. There can
technically be new characters or places in a dream, but they're really an
amalgamation of things you've already seen before, says Breus.
The neural mechanisms that allow our
brain to " see " our dream reality are probably the same ones at work
when we imagine the future. The only difference is that in our dreams, it seems
like what we're " seeing " is reality. " Dreams are illusions “ --
we are seeing a reality which doesn't exist, but we also can't tell the
difference between this and actual reality," Martinez-Conde says.
11. When you start to Lucid Dream,
your brain suddenly feels aware that it is not in the real world and your dream
world isn’t real.
And when you become aware or “ lucid
“, you can then suddenly be able to control and be able to manipulate aspects
of the dream reality, says Breus
Lucid dreaming was first described a
over a century ago in 1913 by a Dutch psychiatrist named Frederick Van Eeden to
recount a dream in which he would be able to act voluntarily and had full
awareness of his waking life – but he so still so deeply asleep that no
external stimuli or bodily sensations entered into his dream perception. That’s
what makes a lucid dream so much more different from a hallucination - your physical body is in such a deep sleep,
and you actually can’t feel anything that you are doing, even though you are
fully aware and do have full control.
Here are the sources to the facts:
1: 15
Lucid Dreaming Facts That Will Make You Question Reality (buzzfeed.com)
2: Lucid
Dreams: Definition, Benefits, Dangers, How to Do It (webmd.com)
3: 3
Fascinating Facts You Didn’t Know About Lucid Dreaming
(thehealthsciencesacademy.org)
Lucid Dreams:
A lucid dream is a type of dream that
the dreamer becomes aware that their surroundings aren’t real, and they are
just lucid dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may be able to gain some
controls over their dream characters, narrative, or the environment; however,
this is not actually necessary for a dream to be described as a lucid dream.
Lucid dreaming has actually been studied and reported for many years before.
Prominent figures from the ancient times to nowadays during the modern times
have been fascinated by lucid dreams and have been trying to find ways on how
lucid dreams work or their purpose for the dreamer.
Many different theories have emerged
as a result of a scientific research on the subject of lucid dreaming and have
even been shown in pop culture. In further developments in psychological
research have been able to point ways in which this form of lucid dreaming may
be utilized as a form of sleep therapy.
Etymology
The term “ lucid ream “ was coined by
the Dutch author and psychiatrist named Frederik van Eeden in his 1913 article
named: “ A Study of Dreams, “ though the descriptions of the dreamers being
aware that they are in their own dream predate the article. Van Eeden decided
to study on hi own dreams between the time of January 20, 1898, to December 26,
1912, and decided to only record the ones he deemed the most important in a
dream diary of his own. 352 of the dream that he had wrote were categorized as
lucid.
Van Eeden created names for the seven
different types of dreams that himself had experienced based on the data that
he had be able to collect from his experience:
1. initial dreams
2. pathological dreams
3. ordinary dreams
4. vivid dreams
5. demoniacal dreams
6. general dream sensations
7. lucid dreams
He said that the seventh type, lucid
dreaming, is “ the most interesting and worthy of the most careful observation
and study. “
Definition
Paul Tholey laid the epistemological basis
for the research of lucid dreams, proposing seven different conditions of
clarity that a dream must fulfil in order for it to be considered a lucid
dream:
1. Awareness of the dream state ( orientation )
2. Awareness of the capacity to make decisions
3. Awareness of memory functions
4. Awareness of self
5. Awareness of the dream environment
6. Awareness of the meaning of the dream
7. Awareness of concentration and focus ( the subjective clarity of that
state ).
Later, in 1992, a study by a person named: Deirdre Barrett decided to
run an experiment and decided to examine lucid dreams if they contained four “
corollaries “ of lucidity:
1. The dreamer is aware that they are dreaming
2. They are aware that their actions will not carry over after waking
3. Physical laws do not apply in their dreams
4. The dreamer has a clear memory of the waking world
Barrett has also discovered that less than a quarter of lucidity
accounts exhibited all four.
Subsequently, Stephen LaBerge studied the prevalence of being able to
control the dream scenario among the lucid dreams and was able to find out that
while dream control and dream awareness are correlated, neither requires the
other. LaBerge found dreams that exhibit one clearly without the capacity for
the other; and also, in some other dreams where the dreamer is lucid and aware
that they could exercise control, they simply just choose to observe it.
History
Ancient
Cultivating the dreamer’s ability to be such aware that they are
dreaming is central to both the ancient Indian Hindu practise of Yoga nidra and
the Tibetan Buddhist practise of dream Yoga. The cultivation of such awareness was
such a common practise among the early Buddhists.
Early references to the phenomenon were also found in the ancient Greek
writings. For example, the philosopher Aristotle wrote: “ often when one is
asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents
itself is but a dream”. Meanwhile, the physician Galen of Pergamon used lucid
dreams as a form of therapy. In addition, a letter written by Saint Augustine
of Hippo in 415 AD tells that the story of a dreamer, Doctor Gennadius, and
refers to lucid dreaming.
17th century
Philosopher and physician Sir Thomas Browne ( 1605 – 1682 ) was
fascinated by dreams and described his own ability to lucid dream in his
Religio Medici, stating” ‘ . . . yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy,
behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh my self-awake at the coneits
thereof “.
Samuels Pepys in his diary entry for 15 August 1665 records dream, stating that: “ I had my Lady
Castlemayne in my arms and was admitted using all of the dalliance I desired
with her, and then dreamt that this could not be awake, but that it was only a
dream “.
19th century
In 1867, the French sinologist named: Marie-Jean-Leon, Marquis d’Hervey
de Saint Denys anonymously published “ Les Reves et Les Moyens de Ls Diriger,
Observations Pratiques (‘ Dreams and the way to direct them; practical
observations’ ), in which he describes his own experiences of lucid dreaming
and proposes that it is possible for anyone to learn to dream consciously.
20th century
In the 1913’s, Dutch psychiatrist, and writer Frederik ( Willem ) van
Eeden ( 1860 – 1932 ) coined the term ‘ lucid dream ‘ in an article entitled “
A study of Dreams “.
Some have suggested that the term is a misnomer because Van Eeden was
referring to a phenomenon more specific than a lucid dream. Van Eeden intended
the term lucid to denote “ having insight “, as in the phrase a lucid interval
applied to someone in temporary remission from a psychosis, rather than as a
reference to the perceptual quality of the experience, which may or may not be
clear and vivid.
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