[HN Gopher] A New Test for an Old Theory About Dreams
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       A New Test for an Old Theory About Dreams
        
       Author : Hooke
       Score  : 34 points
       Date   : 2022-08-25 23:31 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
        
       | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
       | For anyone unable to scroll: just disable JavaScript (one click
       | in uBlock Origin).
        
       | beefman wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/gbPvx
        
       | felipelalli wrote:
       | Paywall
        
       | ohiovr wrote:
       | Not all dreams are memories that are just regurgitated. On two
       | occasions this year I saw images in a dream that I had never seen
       | before but on the internet several months later I discovered them
       | on random seeming occasions. The images were so stark I don't
       | think I would not remember them if I had seen them in catalogs or
       | old searches from long ago. The two dreams were of architecture I
       | had not seen before. One of the "architectures" of the most
       | recent dream had no recognizable purpose at the time. But now
       | that I found it and understand what it was for, it gives me
       | pause.
       | 
       | It was this
       | 
       | https://www.pexels.com/photo/drone-shot-of-fort-alexander-89...
       | 
       | https://www.pexels.com/photo/the-fort-alexander-on-an-artifi...
        
         | idle_zealot wrote:
         | Consider that memory is not read-only. Later experiences cause
         | us to reinterpret old and faded memories. We experience such
         | reinterpretations as recall, but they are in fact rewrites.
         | Which is all to say, the vague and unspecific memories of your
         | dream were likely made concrete when images you later observed
         | while awake evoked a similar feeling. At that point it felt
         | like you had seen the place before in a dream, but at any point
         | in time prior if were asked to draw the place from your dream
         | you would have produced something different.
        
           | ohiovr wrote:
           | I believe rem sleep can be either increasing entropy in
           | symbols if your mind is on over drive without access to a
           | mediator such as myself without a certain medicine I take
           | nightly. But if the mind and body are ready to rest rem sleep
           | lets your mind experiment with experience as symbols so that
           | tomorrow, those symbols can be unraveled into an outlook for
           | a period of time in the future. This helps with the natural
           | flow from day to day. There is always rem sleep but not
           | always long enough or strong enough to make you consider
           | drastic changes.
           | 
           | After rem sleep the symbols that did not get integrated into
           | a series get trashed. The memory behind the symbol is still
           | there but the symbol reference is removed to free up the
           | mind. This is where the feeling of mental rest comes from.
           | Finally the actionable symbols are muted. Waking up feeling
           | like you just got out of a fight of some kind is definitely a
           | heedable warning.
           | 
           | For that there is prayer.
        
           | byproxy wrote:
           | See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia
        
         | teddyh wrote:
         | You might have seen this:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Boyard_(fortification)
         | 
         | It was, and is, used as the setting of popular TV shows (airing
         | since 1990), and is featured in the intro and incidental shots.
        
           | ohiovr wrote:
           | Interesing possibility but I didn't watch much tv since 1994
           | until I used cable tv in Nelsonvile from 2002-2003. Since
           | then I only watch tv in corporate breakrooms.
           | 
           | I was flying with my Dad in the dream and we were above what
           | looked like a river. We had a discussion and then thought it
           | would be fun to drop in to the river and walk through it.
           | Before we dropped in during the dream there were these
           | strange fortifications through out the river that looked like
           | image links I shared but does not look like the images in the
           | wiki. They weren't as tall and they were not as bright
           | looking.
           | 
           | There was no context for the dream. But the interesting thing
           | was how memorable it was. Only about 6 dreams per year are
           | memorable for me.
        
             | teddyh wrote:
             | You seem to be avoiding directly claiming to have had a
             | prophetic dream, or be capable of remote viewing in your
             | sleep, but this is what your claims imply. Did you really
             | want to be claiming this? If you did, why is this a more
             | reasonable explanation than you simply having seen the
             | architectural structure before, and have since forgotten
             | about it?
        
         | agumonkey wrote:
         | A lot of my dreams are totally fictional. Hotel in countries
         | I've never visited, with detail up to the carpets. It's mind
         | blowing because they're vibrant and full fledged resolution,
         | it's if it was a long forgotten home.
        
           | Filligree wrote:
           | A lot of mine are fictional and events that cannot possibly
           | have happened, or ever happen. Ranging from being in an
           | airplane landing _on a bridge_ , to outright Sci-Fi...
        
           | fikama wrote:
           | I am always amazed by how realistic dreams can be. I have
           | this thought that the brain simply could make us believe that
           | they are realistic. I mean something similar when the
           | ,giraffe-elephant hybrid in the tuxedo reading book, in
           | dreams seems normal. Wouldn't it be possible for the brain to
           | just fool us about the realism of our dreams?
           | 
           | On the other hand, the brain generates everything that we
           | perceive in real life what prevents it from achieving the
           | same level of realism in dreams?
        
             | jonsen wrote:
             | The recall of a dream may be realistic, but that does not
             | imply that the actual dream was realistic. If the actual
             | dream is not realistic, if could be possible, that the
             | conscious recall process is realistifying it more or less.
        
       | 1e-9 wrote:
       | Study Conclusion: Mouse brains track eye direction during REM
       | sleep.
        
         | mannykannot wrote:
         | The authors claim this correlation is likely caused by the
         | mouse paying attention to its dreams, while skeptics say no
         | such conclusion can be made. One skeptic (Blumberg) is pursuing
         | a hypothesis in which, in REM sleep, the brain is test-driving
         | the body.
         | 
         | The article was quite vague about what signals the head
         | direction neurons normally respond to, but this paper [1] seems
         | to suggest that they respond to head-rotation information from
         | the horizontal semicircular canals - in transgenic mice which
         | lack functional horizontal canals, "the neural network for the
         | head direction signal remains intact in these mice, but that
         | the absence of normal horizontal canals results in an inability
         | to control the network properly and brings about an unstable
         | head direction signal."
         | 
         | As we know that the head-direction signals in sleeping mice are
         | not caused by head movement, one of the first questions I would
         | have is whether we can figure out what, if anything, they _are_
         | responding to - or whether they are like the unstable signals
         | of the transgenic mice. Unfortunately, one cannot ask a mouse
         | to imagine that it is rotating its head and see whether that
         | triggers the head direction cells, but in a setup where the
         | mouse 's body and its visual field can be rotated
         | independently, it might be possible to figure out the causal
         | chains (For all I know, this is already well-understood.) If
         | the head direction signals are the unstable output of a network
         | disconnected from its when-awake inputs, and the eye movements
         | are in response to that, they may have nothing to do with
         | dreams.
         | 
         | If Blumberg is right, could dreams be the result of conscious
         | minds trying to make sense of the sort of test signals he
         | proposes?
         | 
         | [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26791205/
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | jesperlang wrote:
       | Linking REM-sleep eye movements to dream gaze has been tested
       | before, I don't know how the research behind this article could
       | miss this?
       | 
       | http://www.lucidity.com/slbbs/
       | 
       | In short: Pre-arranged eye patterns have been successfully
       | executed while in a lucid dream state.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-27 23:02 UTC)