Dreams

Can someone tell me if when one is asleep the brain is always dreaming or not? Is their ever a state of quietness in the mind when one is asleep? I think I remember reading that durring deep levels of REM the mind is more active then when it is awake. But I forgot whether or not the mind is ever not active. For example, though we may not have a dream is it because we don’t remember having it or because the mind was truly quite?

Interesting point and if perhaps there were moments of blankness, would they be worth remembering?

I tend to feel there are moments, perhaps even when awake, in which we have a level of blank consciousness. We really are not thinking about anything. In buddhist meditation, this point may even be considered “nirvana” although it is something that is very difficult to attain willingly.

I do think the brain does take time-outs just for brief moments. Maybe in between thought scenarios. These moments may not be worthy of rememberence because there really isn’t mush there to relate to or maybe even want to relate to.

I think that the brain is always active. however this activity differs from waking to sleeping hours and it could be responsible for many things. the reason we don’t always remember our dreams is that they may not be very intense… dreams are often related to what our emotions have been through during the day, they help us let off some ‘emotional steam’ if you like when we sleep. for example, participating in a fight with a coworker allows you to express your feelings and emotions of anger, but to keep thoes same emotions pent up inside will cause you to dream about the fight… whether you will remember parts of that dream in the morning or wake up in a cold sweat at night depends on how much that coworker scores on your anger meter.

I read about some studies carried out where they monitored the brain’s activity of sleeping individuals, there was always some brain waves calculated…but that doesn’t mean they are all dreams. and, one more thing, did you know that no matter how long the dream seems, it only lasts for a few seconds in our time?!

Are dreams and REM sleep synonymous?
Of people awakened during REM sleep, as many as 70-95% of them report dreams in contrast to 5-10% of awakenings during non-REM sleep. This led neuroscientists (particularly Hobson and McCarley) to assume that REM and dreaming are synonymous and that dreams are meaningless conscious images triggered by signals sent by the brain stem.
apsa.org/pubinfo/remqa.htm

Shalom
Bob

While we are awake, our mind thinks ONLY in terms of images. Think something right now and you’ll know what I mean. And while we are asleep, the mind cannot stop thinking or we would wake up very disoriented, perhaps we would not even know who we are anymore. And the brain only thinks in terms of images, so in the night that comes up as dreams (images) I believe. I think we dream all the time but don’t remember or recall most of that dreaming. :smiley:

Your brain is always active. It goes through different phases. You always dream, but usually don’t remember them.

You talk of dreams but firstly i ought to talk of sleep. Sleep is a part of life that all animals such as ourselfs require, i think sleep nessecity may possibly vary when looking at different forms of animals. Wildlife animals require sleep for energy, tigers and lions use lots of energy and survie through preying on other animals, so i assume their sleep is required to build up their energy…but anyway.

The humans sleep is so important because it also recharges our energy level and information is stored and sorted in our brains whilst we are asleep. The reason for dreams could be the fact that as our brains are storing information, we are catching a quick glimpse of what is being stored. This obviously happens everynight but we probably only remember the more important information, everything else we don’t remember because it doesn’t mean much to us. Dreams that do not reflect your previous day probably reflect some kind of thought that you had previously.

Feel free to reply.

From my psychology classes i can remember the books describing the different levels of sleep. Something about the different types of waves your brain releases when your asleep. From my personal perspective I dont believe that there is any time when your brain is “asleep”, but definetely a time when it is resting, or not as active. But back to the dream part of your question, while we are asleep we dont dream the entire time. Only when we reach the deeper level of sleep; REM sleep. This is the only time we dream. Its something like when you go to sleep its a pattern that occurs in which you go to one level, then the next, and then the next and so on. When you reach the final level, REM sleep, you dream for like five minutes. The the process restarts. The next time you reach REM, the dream or dreams last longer. You dream many times throughout your sleep cycle, but we usually only remember the last one we had.

I once told myself (in a trance) to wake up after every dream I had, and I woke up 12 times that night and wrote down the dreams I’d had.

I’I remember reading you only dream during the REM-fase, and there are times during sleep when there is very little activity registered from your brains, but there is always a little bit of activity.

Underground, I didn’t read everyones post so if someone already said this, I apologize for reiterating.

There are brain waves called EEG that always have activity in sleep or wakefulness. So by the brain not thinking or resting its doing something because its active in resting. Before REM sleep the body’s voluntary muscles are paralyzed, this would be the nothing sleep. The Rem sleep, the body is then free to move, and oddly when we have dreams.
Rossi (1973) argues that biochemical activity “serves as the organic basis for new developements in the personality.” OTher research has demonstrated that when you learn something difficult, you spend more time in REM, however its more difficult to enter REM.

Freud suggested that dreams provide a psychic safety valve, or harmless expression to disturbing thoughts. And I think that does happen some of the time but I think there are so many different things sleep and dreams do for the body,mind, and spirit.
Oh, I’ve pretty much gotten off topic. I’ll be quiet now.

Who are these scientists to decide what is meaningless? These conscious images of symbols are us in a sense. In my opinion, dreams are as much of a reality as awakened life. There is an importance, I feel, in examinging the coherent metaphors that live inside dreams. They certainly reflect our most recent thoughts that have traversed the wiring of our brain.

I wonder why these signals are sent by the brain stem in the first place.

Also, has anyone here had a positive experience with lucid dreams?

Thank you all for the responses, all very interesting.

i-zachariah asked:

I have. It was a lucid dream of me flying like superman through the streets. I had control of whether to turn left or right at every block and a little control over my alltitude. I ended up flying home where I was met by my father with open arms (he died several years ago) and woke up exhilarated with my heart pounding, drenched in my own sweat.

TheUnderGroundMan said:

Interesting you had this type of dream. I also can remember having a lucid dream experience recently in which I was in like a gym of some sort. At first I was just walking around, but then suddenly without having the slightest thought I just lifted my hands in front of me and began to fly. It was quite exhilerating(spelling), I mean I can still feel the wind blowing past me. I only flew in circles, and I woke up quickly, because the dream actually kinda spooked me out after flying around for a few seconds. Other than the spooky feeling I had afterwards, it was okay. I think I was more scared of the idea that I could control the dream, and I had not been able to with such ease. Either way it was a very interesting experience.

Close but not the whole picture.

Actually you do have a bit of preload on the muscles when in normal sleep, preload that is needed for the muscles to be opperational. That preload is turned off while in REM by active suppression of certain centres in the brain by the centres in the brain-stem controlling REM-sleep.
This is needed in order to stay asleep and safe while a burst of pseudo-behaviour is invoked by a stream of PGO wawes. PGO waves are traveling from pons in the brain-stem, through geniculatum and resulting in the occulomotor-centre that gives “rapid-eye-momevents”.
This is all compensatory for the general mechanism of continuously build drive that needs to be “released” into behaviour. REM is at its higest in the womb where there is no scope for behaviour and is decreasing through out life. Its also higher in mamals with concentrated behavioral bursts - like lions and other predators - and lower in species which have continous appetite behaviour - like sheep and cattle.
REM should mainly be seen as a drive-dump function, used when and where the actual behaviour would only lead to problems. There are very likely comon structures in use for REM, hibernation, depression and the “freze-reaction”.
Dreaming takes place in deep sleep as well as in REM but not as regularly and intensive as in REM.

That is very interesting illativemindindeed. I wonder if other peoples dreams where they flew were also lucid expriences.

I’ll assume that the abonormality of the feeling of flying will get your consciousness aware that it’s a dream.

I also want to share something interesting which I recently read in some article. The article stated that we dream all the time even when we are awake. It stated that our psychic activity is always active so that even now while I’m fully awake sitting typing this, on another level I’m dreaming. I’m going to look further into this and try to find if there is anything to this claim. I would like to add this though. The other night I was very tired and just dozing of when I remembered this article and in a state of I would say half-asleep half-awake I began to notice just dream like images floating around my mind. Lot’s of voices and images just started to come to awareness and it was quite amazing and frightening at the same time. I mean imagine piece of classical music playing in your head and at the same time some rock song, and a guy yelling, a girl talking, and I’m hearing all this and seeing bizzare images like in dreams.

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TheUnderGroundMan wrote:I also want to share something interesting which I recently read in some article. The article stated that we dream all the time even when we are awake. It stated that our psychic activity is always active so that even now while I’m fully awake sitting typing this, on another level I’m dreaming. I’m going to look further into this and try to find if there is anything to this claim. I would like to add this though. The other night I was very tired and just dozing of when I remembered this article and in a state of I would say half-asleep half-awake I began to notice just dream like images floating around my mind. Lot’s of voices and images just started to come to awareness and it was quite amazing and frightening at the same time. I mean imagine piece of classical music playing in your head and at the same time some rock song, and a guy yelling, a girl talking, and I’m hearing all this and seeing bizzare images like in dreams.
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Yes, very interesting, and what is even more interesting is that a simple thought of an article will yield to this certain type of reaction. Similarly, a few weeks ago, after reading this post, and thinking of it before sleep, my dreams that night were extremely vivid. I remembered them all, which is rare, and what is even more interesting is that I was also in this half sleep, half awake type state. I stayed that way the entire night, dreaming what seemed like, the entire time. It almost felt as if I was lucid dreaming, but I could not control the dreams. It was a weird feeling, kinda creepy and I must say, something about it I enjoyed because I felt I found out something new about myself, but at the same time it was kind of scary.