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Author | Topic: Consciousness and Dreams | |||||||||||||||||||||||
randman  Suspended Member (Idle past 4929 days) Posts: 6367 Joined: |
I've had lucid dreams, and frequently have partially lucid dreams, where it is lucid and then spins out of control.It is a little upsetting in the dream because I know it's a dream but start feeling responsible anyway even if it gets out of my control and I fall deeper into sleep or something...often it seems it goes on to a point it becomes not so lucid again.
I thought everyone dreamed this way.
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Trump won  Suspended Member (Idle past 1270 days) Posts: 1928 Joined: |
I would suggest the film "Waking life"
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U can call me Cookie Member (Idle past 4984 days) Posts: 228 From: jo'burg, RSA Joined: |
I stumbled upon lucidity while dreaming in my mid-teens. I enjoyed it so much that i kinda taught myself the skill, to the point that i could initiate a lucid dream, or turn a normal dream into a lucid one. I've since lost the skill but it was fun while it lasted.
one thing i noticed though, when i did it, the state of sleep waas quite tenuous. If i pushed control just a little too far, i would instantly wake up, sometimes forgetting the contents of my dream totally; just knowing that i did dream. Does anyone know how common sleep paralysis is? I've experienced it a few times thro'out my life, but hardly any that i've spoken to about it have even had one episode. Its a truly disturbing phenomenon. "The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine
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melatonin Member (Idle past 6239 days) Posts: 126 From: Cymru Joined: |
I think studies show sleep paralysis is fairly common, I guess people just don't want to talk about it. I know it's very common in narcolepsy.
The reason it's usually frightening is that the emotional areas of the brain are very active during dreaming. edit: here's an newspaper article about it...they talk of 40-60% suffering one or more sleep paralysis event. It's a good read if you're interested... In the dead of the night | | The Guardian This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-20-2006 09:14 AM
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
Are you sure dolphins don't dream? I apprehended that they sleep their brains in hemispherical sequence. They are always awake, so the activity of dreaming may be masked.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
When you wake up, you should find that your memory of the dream situation (or person you were talking to) is just as fuzzy as a mental image.
I recall once being blown away with how real it felt to talk to Cpt Kirk and Mr Spock once in a lucid dream. It was SO real. Now however it's fuzzy, but it felt more real than an imagination. During a dream the incomplete image our visual cortex puts out to our association cortex (I think thats right) is all we have to go on (to put into a narrative). As this is the whole of the data, it 'feels' like it's a full image. It's not. Be damned if I can remember where I read that though, uni was some time ago. P.S. Anything psychoanalytical is bollocks; ignore it.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
Yep, heard of it, done loads when I was a teenager. Have not been able to do for years. I always had very bad dreams as a child (even some doozies about Freddy Krudger!). Then one night I realized it was a dream and woke my self up.
A few other times I got to be able to teleport or make huge leaps. Then it sort of went away when I got older and the nightmares stopped. Now I can't tell when I'm dreaming.....hey ho.
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3958 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
i've always known i was dreaming. sometimes i can change things but it tends to end up like groundhog day. my boyfriend is always weirded out by how bizare my dreams are and he tells me he never knows when he's dreaming because his dreams are so realistic. i think he's just stifled.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
My experience matches yours. Nightmares may make us focus on our dreams and have more awareness of them. There for we can 'spot' when it's a dream or not.
Dreams became a big part of my life too; I had a patch work 'world' that almost made sense in terms of geography but not time (funny how some places were always night and some day). I'm a bit sad I don't dream like that now. Now I just get the 'back at uni with an unexpected exam to do'.
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Silent H Member (Idle past 5850 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
Dreams became a big part of my life too; I had a patch work 'world' that almost made sense in terms of geography but not time
Have you ever read the Lovecraft stories (Silver Key mythos) based on the idea that such worlds really exist and sleepers are having as real a life there as in the waking world? I liked the Cthulhu stories better but my experiences with lucid dreaming made those stories sound plausible and I wondered if he had been a lucid dreamer as well. Thankfully I can still do it, but I have been trying to pay attention more to this world than that. holmes "What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)
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melatonin Member (Idle past 6239 days) Posts: 126 From: Cymru Joined: |
Well personally no - I'm just going by the scientific literature.
From what I know, they show the hemispheric switching during slow-wave sleep (NREM - during which humans are suggested to not dream, but it has been verbally reported) with the contralateral eye open and active, maybe they can dream within a hemisphere during this NREM phase but it wouldn't be dreaming as most mammals and birds are suggested to (i.e. REM phase with EEG comparable to normal activity and altered consciousness). Most things are possible I guess.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
If you have a fine piece of machinery, you will periodically need to realign it.
I would expect to see test signals being injected into the circuits, and used to adjust the alignment - a kind of recalibration. My hypothesis is that dreaming is just the experience of this testing/realignment phase. It seems to me highly plausible - perhaps even likely - that cetaceans would be doing this one hemisphere at a time.
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melatonin Member (Idle past 6239 days) Posts: 126 From: Cymru Joined: |
But then wouldn't we expect some deficit associated with the inability to use this recalibration/testing ability?
So far there seems no deficit associated with the inability to dream or have REM phase sleep. Of course, doesn't mean there isn't one. But NREM has consistently been shown to be important.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
So far there seems no deficit associated with the inability to dream or have REM phase sleep.
Do you have any references to that (preferably something more recent than the 1997 report you linked to in Message 3. I have been hearing reports suggesting that REM sleep is important to consolidate learning. (Sorry, no links on that at present. I heard those reports on NPR.)
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melatonin Member (Idle past 6239 days) Posts: 126 From: Cymru Joined: |
No probs, I have a quick look-see on WOS...OK here we go...
Siegel (2005)Clues to the functions of mammalian sleep | Nature We present evidence disputing the hypothesis that memories are processed or consolidated in REM sleep. A review of REM deprivation (REMD) studies in animals shows these reports to be about equally divided in showing that REMD does, or does not, disrupt learning/memory. The studies supporting a relationship between REM sleep and memory leave been strongly criticized for the confounding effects of every stressful REAL deprivation techniques. The three major classes of antidepressant drugs, monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), profoundly suppress REM sleep. The MAOIs virtually abolish REM sleep, and the TCAs and SSRIs have been shown to produce immediate (40-85%) and sustained (30-50%) reductions in REM sleep. Despite marked suppression of REM sleep, these classes of antidepressants on the whole do not disrupt learning/memory. There have been a few reports of patients who have survived bilateral lesions of the pons with few lingering complications. Although these lesions essentially abolished REM sleep, the patients reportedly led normal lives. Recent functional imaging studies in humans have revealed patterns of brain activity in REM sleep that are consistent with dream processes but not with memory consolidation. We propose that the primary function of REM sleep is to provide periodic endogenous stimulation to the Brain which serves to maintain requisite levels of central nervous system (CNS) activity throughout sleep. REM is the mechanism used by the brain to promote recover from sleep. We believe that the cumulative evidence indicates that REM sleep serves no role in the processing or consolidation of memory. Title: The case against memory consolidation in REM sleepAuthor(s): Vertes RP, Eastman KE Source: BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES 23 (6): 867-+ DEC 2000 It has been hypothesized that REM (rapid eye movement) steep has an important role in memory consolidation. The evidence for this hypothesis is reviewed and found to be weak and contradictory. Animal studies correlating changes in REM steep parameters with learning have produced inconsistent results and are confounded by stress effects. Humans with pharmacological and brain lesion-induced suppression of REM steep do not show memory deficits, and other human steep-learning studies have not produced consistent results. The time spent in REM steep is not correlated with learning ability across humans, nor is there a positive relation between REM steep time or intensity and encephalization across species. Although steep is clearly important for optimum acquisition and performance of learned tasks, a major role in memory consolidation is unproven. Title: The REM sleep - Memory consolidation hypothesisAuthor(s): Siegel JM Source: SCIENCE 294 (5544): 1058-1063 NOV 2 2001 The memory consolidation idea a persistent theory in sleep research and doesn't seem to disappear but there are good reasons to question it. Here's a recent paper that supports the memory consolidation theory...
Although the function of sleep remains elusive, there is compelling evidence to suggest that sleep plays an important role in learning and memory. A number of studies have now shown that sleep deprivation (SD) results in significant impairment of long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus. In this study, we have attempted to determine the mechanisms responsible for this impairment. After 72 h SD using the multiple-platform technique, we observed a reduction in the whole-cell recorded NMDA/AMPA ratio of CA1 pyramidal cells in response to Schaffer collateral stimulation. This impairment was specific to sleep deprivation as rats placed over a single large platform, which allowed sleep, had a normal NMDA/AMPA ratio. mEPSCs evoked by local application of a high osmolarity solution revealed no differences in the AMPA receptor function. NMDA currents recorded from outside-out patches excised from the distal dendrites of CA1 cells displayed a reduction in amplitude after SD. While there were no alterations in the glutamate sensitivity, channel open probability or the single channel conductance of the receptor, a crosslinking assay demonstrated that the NR1 and NR2A subunits of NMDA receptors were preferentially retained in the cytoplasm after SD, indicating that SD alters NMDAR surface expression. In summary, we have identified a potential mechanism underlying SD-induced LTP impairment. This synaptic alteration may underlie the cognitive deficits seen following sleep deprivation and could represent a target for future intervention studies. Title: Sleep deprivation-induced alterations in excitatory synaptic transmission in the CA1 region of the rat hippocampusAuthor(s): McDermott CM, Hardy MN, Bazan NG, Magee JC Source: JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY-LONDON 570 (3): 553-565 FEB 1 2006 and another...
Abstract: Although the functions of sleep remain largely unknown, one of the most exciting hypotheses is that sleep contributes importantly to processes of memory and brain plasticity. Over the past decade, a large body of work, spanning most of the neurosciences, has provided a substantive body of evidence supporting this role of sleep in what is becoming known as sleep-dependent memory processing. We review these findings, focusing specifically on the role of sleep in (a) memory encoding, (b) memory consolidation, (c) brain plasticity, and (d) memory reconsolidation; we finish with a summary of the field and its potential future directions. Title: Sleep, memory, and plasticityAuthor(s): Walker MP, Stickgold R Source: ANNUAL REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY 57: 139-166 2006 I like the way this abstract calls this idea exciting - it's actually old hat and has been around for yonks. Siegel would probably accept that REM is important for plastcity and neural growth during the developmental phase, but loses it's importance once the brain is developed i.e. it is not essential for learning/memory in an adult. edit: Now here's a study I didn't know of - quite interesting in that it makes a distinction between emotional learning and declarative learning. REM deprivation may affect just the emotional component of memory, whereas slow-wave affects declarative memory...
Background Previous research indicates that hippocampus-dependent declarative memory benefits from early nocturnal sleep, when slow-wave sleep (SWS) prevails and cortisol release is minimal, whereas amygdala-dependent emotional memory is enhanced through late sleep, when rapid eye movement (REM) sleep predominates. The role of the strong cortisol rise accompanying late sleep for emotional memory consolidation has not yet been investigated. MethodsEffects of the cortisol synthesis inhibitor metyrapone on sleep-associated consolidation of memory for neutral and emotional texts were investigated in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 14 healthy men. Learning took place immediately before treatment, which was followed by 8 hours of sleep. Retrieval was tested at 11 am the next morning. ResultsMetyrapone suppressed cortisol during sleep and blocked particularly the late-night rise in cortisol. It reduced SWS and concomitantly impaired the consolidation of neutral texts. Emotional texts were spared from this impairing influence, however. Metyrapone even amplified emotional enhancement in text recall indicating amygdala-dependent memory. ConclusionsCortisol blockade during sleep impairs hippocampus-dependent declarative memory formation but enhances amygdala-dependent emotional memory formation. The natural cortisol rise during late sleep may thus protect from overshooting emotional memory formation, a mechanism possibly pertinent to the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. Title: Effects of cortisol suppression on sleep-associated consolidation of neutral and emotional memoryAuthor(s): Wagner U, Degirmenci M, Drosopoulos S, Perras B, Born J Source: BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY 58 (11): 885-893 DEC 1 2005 This could explain why there is little cognitive effect of REM deprivation. This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-20-2006 05:41 PM This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-20-2006 05:50 PM This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-20-2006 05:50 PM
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