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Anyone any good at analysing dreams...?


kill1308

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This sounds unlikely to me. People with damage to the parietal lobe don't dream. Dreaming also tends to largely disappear in old age as REM sleep declines (though there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between the two).

 

REM sleep (rapid eye movement) is caused by dreaming. It may not be a coherant dream as such but it is definitely your brain in a different state of consciousness.

 

If you cannot enter REM sleep it can be deadly.

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A lot of forgetting takes place in waking life because of displacement (short term memory) or retroactive interference (long term memory). When a memory trace is first laid down, it is very vulnerable to disruption by new material. For example, the experience of arriving in the kitchen, with no clue what you intended to do in there, is displacement: on the way to the kitchen, some distracting thought or event occurred, and the memory of your intention is lost.

 

I get this all the time :blink:

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REM sleep (rapid eye movement) is caused by dreaming.

 

It's the other way around. Dreaming is the experience that results by the brain processes in REM, not vice versa.

 

It may not be a coherant dream as such but it is definitely your brain in a different state of consciousness.

 

Don't follow this. Perhaps you are referring to non-REM dreams which do have these characteristics. But anyway, it seems to have nothing to do with your contention?

 

If you cannot enter REM sleep it can be deadly.

 

Evidence, please. I've already cited two types of individual who manage pretty much without REM.

 

I can think of four main types of sleep/REM sleep deprivation study:

 

1. Animal evidence (e.g. turntable studies of rats by Rechtshaffen - unconvincing for all sorts of reasons).

2. Correlations of insomnia with mental illness and/or depression (unconvincing - the illness may be causing the insomnia, not vice versa).

3. Case studies of extreme deprivation e.g. Randy Gardner (effects were severe psychologically, but mild physically)

4. Conditions like fatal familial insomnia (difficulties with evidence when arguing from a disease state to healthy person).

 

Overall, the evidence for restoration theories that posit REM is essential isn't that strong.

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I'm quite interested in the kind of lucid dream where you appear to be fully awake and stuff happens to you.

 

I had an incredible dream a few years ago and I felt a presence was talking in tongues in my head and I was being physically thrown around the bed. In the end I got scared and a bit p!ssed off, so I told it to f*ck off out of my body - and it did.

 

Very scary, but fascinating. However, I tend to favour the more science based reasoning of a lucid dream rather than alien possession. Pity - I thought that day I was off to see the mother ship.

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If you don't dream, you die!

 

This sounds unlikely to me. People with damage to the parietal lobe don't dream. Dreaming also tends to largely disappear in old age as REM sleep declines (though there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between the two).

 

I'm sure I saw a program on TV about that where they claimed it can make people hallucinate and become much more aggressive than they used to be. Obviously that could be a coincidence related to the brain damage though I suppose.

 

This is interesting.

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I'm sure I saw a program on TV about that where they claimed it can make people hallucinate and become much more aggressive than they used to be. Obviously that could be a coincidence related to the brain damage though I suppose.

 

 

You're quite right, Trev. Most people get more and more irritable with prolonged sleep deprivation, and they certainly hallucinate. One really peculiar phenomenon is called 'the hat effect'. I can't remember how many dys it takes, but apparently most people feel like they are wearing a very tight hat. After a while, sleep psychosis occurs, in which the whole personality breaks down.

 

I'm not disputing that lack of REM has some strong psychological effects. And it is REM that you miss, because after prolonged sleep deprivation 'REM rebound' occurs - you preferentialy catch up on REM sleep.

 

But none of that is the same as saying 'if you don't dream, you die'. The weird thing about acute sleep deprivation (and by implication, dream deprivation) is how small the physical effects are, and how easily they are recovered from. And clearly, some people who don't dream seem to have managed without it.

 

This is interesting.

 

I'll take a proper look at that article. I spotted Mark Sohms' name in there and I've come across his work a fair bit

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I tried to train myself to remote view, I only got to the very first stage, where I commanded myself to view my hands during my sleep.

 

Apparently some US soldiers were better trained and got up to all kinds of hanky panky walking through walls etc.

 

I kind of would like to have a perve around a bit, but really can't be bothered with the training. Real life is much more satisfying in the end. But then I'm no expert on this.

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I tried to train myself to remote view, I only got to the very first stage, where I commanded myself to view my hands during my sleep.

 

Apparently some US soldiers were better trained and got up to all kinds of hanky panky walking through walls etc.

 

I kind of would like to have a perve around a bit, but really can't be bothered with the training. Real life is much more satisfying in the end. But then I'm no expert on this.

 

 

You'd enjoy reading Jon Ronson's "Men Who Stare At Goats" Very funny and disturbing at the same time :)

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