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[Mister D Nomms]

I was in my old house and there were gangsters who were also vampires in my front yard and I kept telling everybody to stop looking out the windows because if they feel uncomfortable, they might come in. Eventually they left and I had to put one of the bodies on top of a coffin (the vampire gangsters had ripped all the crosses off of it) and push it down a river. Then I was in a warehouse where my friend's step-dad was trying to kill me, so I hid in a round shipping container hanging from the ceiling full of old HP laptops. There was a dog in there that kept humping me and when he did, numbers would appear in the air. Eventually his mom joined us and got mad at me for something. Then I woke up because Twitter vibrated my phone.

[Is it cold in here?]

That beats the one I just had where Marigold was directing traffic using two lit torches as signals.

A while back I had one where Akima made a mistake in English.

Apparently my subconscious doesn't do realism.

[Welu]

This is partially copypasta from another forum I post in once in a while so it's worded differently to how I usually speak in this forum.

I have never had a single puff of a cigarette.

Once in a while, months ago, I would have dreams where I smoked. Sometimes it was a point of the dream, spending the whole dream smoking or trying to find cigarettes. Although, most of the time, it was just a normal dream about flying, killing zombies, serving on till with a never-ending line (I hate this recurring dream so much) and I had a cigarette in hand as well.
The last few weeks there have been a lot more cigarettes. I have even woken up craving a cigarette.  I've been buying stuff at the shop and nearly asked for a pack. In my dream it's always the same brand and size, so I know which one I would get too. That said, it's a type my local shop doesn't even sell. It's like my brain is going out of it's way to come up with the hardest thing for me to get, even though consciously I don't want it.

[Carl-E]

That actually makes a type of sense... your conscious brain is interfering in the dream eough to make sure this is something you can't  practically achieve by making the dream-desire something difficult to attain...

That being said, it is  a bit weird that you'd dream this.  Perhaps your exposure to smokers has changed recently, and the idea has snuck into your brain's back door? 

[LTK]

That actually makes a type of sense... your conscious brain is interfering in the dream enough to make sure this is something you can't  practically achieve by making the dream-desire something difficult to attain...

I wouldn't say that. That sort of higher-level thinking is impossible without you being aware of it.

Although I don't doubt that your dreams are creating a convincing experience of what smoking is like. And if you're paying attention to that dream specifically, that could be making it recurring. But unless your brain somehow knows how to activate nicotinergic receptors without ever having had nicotine, you're just imagining it.

I don't have to tell you that smoking is bad and you shouldn't do it, right?

[Welu]

I've grown up in a smoking household. Both my parents have always smoked, so have most of older relatives and family friends. I've seen the effects so I definitely don't want to smoke.
The only change I can think of is my parents have been sort of trying to quit. So I've been more strict with telling them off for smoking in the house and I won't buy them cigarettes when they ask me. Thinking about it, I've remember I tried an electronic cigarette ages ago once but the filter in it was just a flavoured one with no nicotine. Maybe it's just as simple as a forbidden fruit thing.

I've had both unaware and lucid dreams with this if that means anything.

[Elysiana]

I used to be able to lucid-dream pretty readily, but not so much anymore. It's easiest during dreams of flying or about having sex. I also get sleep paralysis pretty regularly, though again, not as much in recent years. I remember a lot of my sleep paralysis dreams:

I see a man standing in the corner of my room. He's wearing lumberjack-type clothes. He's as tall as the room, about 8 feet, and massive. He's facing the corner so I can't see his face, but I know he's about to turn around and look at me, and I don't want him to find me. I try to move but can't. As he turns around, I wake up.

I see a chair floating in the middle of the room. For some reason I know deep-down that this is an omen of something horrible. I actually woke up my ex by sitting bolt upright in bed and screaming, "Oh my god, what is that?!" haha.

I see four rugs encircling my bed, standing up like people. They're all black and they're looking over me like they're discussing my fate. I feel like I'm on an examining table. One of them leans over to smother me, and I wake up.

There's a metal shopping cart next to the bed. It's full of rolls of those little blue tear-off tickets like they have at raffles. They start to unravel and long lines of the tickets float above me to the other side of the room.

My husband opens the door to the room. A red frothing substance comes through the door and travels into the room along the ceiling. I ask, "What's all that red stuff?" He says, "What?" I say, "Nevermind, I'm sleeping," and fall back asleep. Later, when I actually did wake up, he told me that except for the red stuff, all of that actually happened. He was using his cell phone to see and accidentally shined the light in my eyes.

[alienatedduck]

I have now had a second dream revolving around discovering new flavours of Ben and Jerry's at really low prices.

I literally have no idea why.

[TheEvilDog]

My dreams tend to be benign (talking to someone I know, or travelling somewhere, or looking out of a plane's window to watch the clouds). The few nightmares I do have tend to be somewhat tame too, they're usually more freaky landscapes than anything else (occasionally there are zombies or something, but that's more like "Oh noes! Zombies!.....Wait, I have a shotgun....BOOM!HEADSHOT!, repeat ad nauseum")

But the one nightmare that I always hated, and stuck with me for years, is me sleeping in bed (yes, I'm dreaming I'm asleep) and I feel something on my face. Its nothing I think. Then I feel it again and again and again on different parts of my face. I wake up in the nightmare and my face is covered in insects, in fact they're everywhere, all over my body and they're biting and stinging me. I know its cliched, but it was one of those nightmares where I woke up bolt upright and gasping in a panic.

[bainidhe_dub]

I had a dream that I went grocery shopping with Sherlock Holmes and Irene whatserface from the BBC Sherlock series. Irene whatserface was planning a dinner party-slash-potluck and the security guard from my office building was there too for a minute, discussing who was bringing what and what they still needed to get. Sherlock was being especially distractable by Irene whatserface but also by glazed donuts which we opened and ate while walking around the store.

But then my sister called and that was that.

Also Irene whatserface was naked the whole time like the first time she shows up.

[Zingoleb]

I'm really bad with directions and I get lost very easily and when I am lost I have a tendency to get upset (read: flip my goddamn shit), and I've been having lots of dreams lately where I'm lost in a city and I don't know where I am or where I'm going and I end up having to spend all my money for someone to give me a ride to somewhere familiar, and then I wake up freaking out because I think I've lost all my money and argh

[Mister D Nomms]

My friend texted me last night and woke me up from a sex dream. I thanked him. I was having sex with a torso- no arms, legs, or head. I was using guitar effect pedals somehow to do things to her to make it more pleasurable. She was very fat and there were great big creases where the amputation scars were.

[Welu]

I was almost having a sex dream too. Then I got intimacy issues and it turned into a dream about watching bad action B-flicks.

[Sorflakne]

So I had my first "losing-my-hair" dream last night (which is apparently a very common dream, but I've never had it before).  I kept reaching up every few seconds and pulling out my sideburns.  Not because it was painful or anything, I just kept feeling a ticklish itch on them and kept scratching and hair kept coming off, though it didn't seem to deplete itself. 

Strange thing is, though, it wasn't my hair.  I have short brown hair; the hair I was pulling out was blond and several inches long.  Thing is, its length and shade matched my ex-girlfriend's hair (and as far as I know, her hair's perfectly healthy, though it is a tad thin).

Did...did I have a dream about being my ex?

[Zingoleb]

I never have the 'losing your hair' dream. I do have the 'oh fuck I just shaved my head out of boredom why did I do that again' dream regularly.

[Mister D Nomms]

I had a dream that kept coming back for a while where it would be a normal dream, but then my hear would teleport from my chest and into my hand and I'd freak out. Usually my first thought is something like "I can't grow a new one! I'm going to die!"

[Redball]

My wife of 40 years died a year ago January. Understandably, I had no idea what the grieving would be like, or that it would remain kind of fresh for so long. I've shared some of my experience in the forum and in messaging.
For most of my adult life I remembered few dreams. They began surfacing after waking as I got into my late 60s and early 70s.
Last October, I woke in tears from a dream.
By way of setup: Clara and I both held amateur radio licenses. For 10 years starting in the late 1980s, we drove 125 miles from Detroit to our cottage on most weekends, and sometimes, for one reason or another, we drove two cars, keeping in voice contact on our VHF radios. This was before cell phones were commonplace.
In the dream, we're in separate cars on a freeway somewhere out west. The freeway is four lanes, divided, blacktop, with vivid green grass in the median and alongside, and no shoulders. We're headed up a tall mountain. It's looming ahead of us.
Clara's out of sight behind me. She's trying to tell me something, anxiety in her voice, but not panic. Her voice is breaking up. I keep going up the mountain, assuming, hoping she's following.
The road goes into the mountain, and becomes the inside of a parking structure. Someone stops me to tell me Clara's waiting for me ahead. I drive out of the structure, into a little residential area, and Clara's standing there, waiting for me. She has tears in her eyes, and she's telling me she was worried because we were so far apart.
End of dream.
I dictated the dream into my computer. I thanked her for stopping by.
She's appeared in several since. Each time, I thank her. Last night, she was there, and for the first time I can remember, I could see her face.
Sometimes, before dropping off to sleep, I invite her to come by during the night.

[Kenyahp]

redball- God, you always have the most beautiful stories. Thats a gorgeous dream experience. I, personally, don't believe in the afterlife. But, sounds like shes just trying to keep in touch with you.

To lighten the mood: About two weeks ago I had a dream about a guy screaming at me. He was yelling at me about how I was a secret agent and he a bad guy, so we couldn't be together. Then he ran off. About 15 dream minutes later, he came back and was like "Well. I thought it over. IF you have a lesbian threesome, I will totally give up my bad-guy facade and be with you forever, my love". And I responded with "yeah, okay, sure". And...then my dream ended. Awake me was strangely disappointed. Also, I never did anything secret agent worthy. I just stood there.

[Redball]

Yeah, I guess your disappointment is understandable; maybe more so because it's not like there was a second woman present in the dream to lead his threesome wish toward "reality."
As for afterlife, I've been close to Protestant religion most of my life, but not a real believer. In the last year, though, I've concluded that if mankind had never encountered or invented or experienced a higher power and religion, that grieving spouses, children, parents, friends and siblings would have demanded an afterlife, i.e., the feeling that there must be one.

[Kenyahp]

I'm bound to agree with you on that final point. Are all your dreams about her exactly the same with minor details different or are they all different?


Whats even weirder about my dream is that there were like twenty men in his evil lair...

[Redball]

I'm bound to agree with you on that final point. Are all your dreams about her exactly the same with minor details different or are they all different?

Whats even weirder about my dream is that there were like twenty men in his evil lair...

20 guys in the evil lair (great word in this context!) and it wasn't scary? Would have scared me.

That's the only "message" dream I can remember, in the last year or any other time in my adult life. The others since that one have been more random, like where the hell did that come from, yet comforting because she was present. Le'ssee, she found bedbugs in my hair (I'm scared I'm going to bring some home with me from somewhere). A windstorm blew down major trees around our home. We were trying to get a car repaired and the shop made it disappear. So: mildly threatening, but not frightening, and the wakeup feeling was pleasure she had visited. The only other strange one: We were looking for something in a room, perhaps parts in a box. But we were both aware that the scene would not be experienced until she had died.

[TRVA123]

Last night I had a dream about square roots and how twins were somehow a part of the worldwide solution because they could represent both positive and negative answers.

[Redball]

Last night I had a dream about square roots and how twins were somehow a part of the worldwide solution because they could represent both positive and negative answers.

To stray from dreams for a moment, that reminds me of a fantasy in my late teens: I was sitting at Infinity, as if it was a place or a point, watching students drawing graphs whose lines stretched out toward me, but never got there. A year or two later, I wrote a short poem describing it, probably ending with my trigonometry teacher's words: "Well, it's really undefined." Come to think of it, the image may have connected with my enjoyment of "space music," slow New-Agey electronic, in which I imagine myself sitting cross-legged in space, watching the fantastic sights of stars, comets and planets.

[Redball]

The earliest dream I remember:
In downtown Detroit in the 1940s, the biggest department store was J. L. Hudson. There were beaucoup elevators, with human operators, and the women operated the interior door/gate manually. In my memory, interior gates were built of vertical brass bars, linked so they could be drawn back, looking a little like jail bars. And as a kid, standing on the floor outside the elevators, you could look through the glass outer door into the elevator shafts, with the cables, counterweights and elevators moving in adjacent shafts. The dream for a 3 or 4 year old was simple: I was falling in one of those shafts, with the brass interior gates lining the shaft. And at the bottom was a huge gas burner with a very large blue flame. Just like a burner on our kitchen stove. I think that dream was while I was still in a crib, and I don't think I attached any serious horror to it.
I don't know how we retain memories like that for so long, more than 70 years in this case. Is it a memory of a memory of a memory of a dream? I don't know.

[Elysiana]

I've sometimes wondered that - how many things do I actually remember, and how many things are just a memory of a memory that I already had?

[Kenyahp]

Well thats confusedly distressing.

My first memory, I swear to God, is of me being a baby and waking up from a dream where I was also a baby. I don't even know if this is possible, but its totally what I remember.

[Redball]

I think my dream represented a little package of fears: Falling, flame -- but the bars, whether elevator or crib? Probably not fear of captivity. Safety? A shrink when I came in with a dream would ask, "How did that make you feel?" In my memory of a memory of a memory of a dream, not frightened. But there are several opportunities there to misremember.

[LTK]

Don't think that dreams are meaningful in any way. They're just what you get when you jumble up your memories with whatever is on your mind lately, somewhat guided by how you think the world works. I frequently have dreams where I need to be on time for an appointment, but find myself in a completely different place. Last night, in fact. But that doesn't mean anything other than 'don't forget your appointment'.

Also, I had an antique pistol at some point during a different dream last night. Must be cause I watched Pawn Stars recently.

[Elysiana]

Ha! Was it the one with the knuckleduster grip?

Wait, no, that was Storage Wars or whatever it's called. Damn.

[Kenyahp]

Actually, dreams serve a very useful purpose. They allow the brain time to rest and make sense of everything that occurred during the day. So, in a way, they are meaningful. Its just interpreting them that gets tricky. I don't think dreams show hidden fears or whatever. I think they, instead, show you something about yourself you knew but didn't want to admit.

[Redball]

Actually, dreams serve a very useful purpose. They allow the brain time to rest and make sense of everything that occurred during the day. So, in a way, they are meaningful. Its just interpreting them that gets tricky. I don't think dreams show hidden fears or whatever. I think they, instead, show you something about yourself you knew but didn't want to admit.

Aha! That I liked falling down a shaft into a gas flame!

[Dollface]

Last nights dream is pretty hazy but thing i can clearlly rember that everyone spoke french me included and i dont even know to how to speak it.

[LTK]

Actually, dreams serve a very useful purpose. They allow the brain time to rest and make sense of everything that occurred during the day.

What you're describing is sleep. And you're right; sleep serves to consolidate memories in the association areas of the brain. Some studies with brain recordings in rats show that a sort of 2x-speed neural playback occurs of the things the rat learned while he was awake. Even though you can't do this (often) in humans, I'm pretty sure that our enhanced self-awareness is the cause of us making such a big deal out of dreams.

So, in a way, they are meaningful. Its just interpreting them that gets tricky. I don't think dreams show hidden fears or whatever. I think they, instead, show you something about yourself you knew but didn't want to admit.

Nope. Completely unrelated.

[Barmymoo]

I've definitely had dreams which were directly related to a thought or event from the day before, but I think it's more that my brain kept on thinking about what I'd been thinking about during the day, rather than revealed any repressed desires or anything. I generally think psychoanalysis is a load of hooey anyway, when I had counselling she kept trying to tell me that I'd been neglected as a child and that my parents were abusive and awful, and I just came out thinking "I'm going to go home and tell my mum I love her".

[idontunderstand]

LTK I don't think you can separate sleep from dreaming quite that easily. In fact it has been shown that you always dream while sleeping, only that you don't always remember it. I think Kenyahp was pretty on the spot.

[LTK]

I wasn't seperating the two. I'm saying that sleep serves to consolidate memory (among other things) and dreams are indicative of that process. Dreams are not the causal factor, and the fact that the dream-state is so far removed from regular, waking operation of the brain makes finding any hidden insight into aspects of your personality in them a fool's errand.

[Carl-E]

The dream state is the deepest state in sleep, and doesn't last very long.  There's some argument that the memory consolidation thingy goes on through all sleep, but we're just aware of it while dreaming (which I would think is why they seem to start out of nowhere), or whether it goes on only in the dream state. 

The impression that we wake immediately from a dream is also (usually) false, it's very difficult to wake a dreamer because of the sleep-paralysis chemicals that prevent sleepwalking.  Coming out of dream state can take several minutes (around 20, IIRC) and so what's happening is that we are already (imperfectly) remembering the dream as we wake up.  It's the waking memory of the dream's climactic moments that make us sit up in bed suddenly...

and forget the rest of the dream. 

[Kenyahp]

Sleeps main goal is to replenish chemicals in the brain throughout the night and to let the body restore what we used up. Thats why it has to be dark in your room, because the chemicals replenish best in the dark. It doesn't do anything for the actual thoughts during the day, its main goal is purely biological.

Dreams, on the other hand, are what consolidate memory and thoughts, not actual sleep. They go hand-in-hand, though. I don't believe there is hidden insight in dreams. I do believe that they can make sense of things we couldn't during the day, however. But, the human psyche is so vast and mostly unknown, still, that how can someone say our dreams know something we don't at the forefront of our mind? For every study that says that dreams can't do that, there are a thousand saying they can. Its easier to prove something than disprove it.

The stage where you dream is REM sleep. Sleep is a cycle, starting at 1 and ending on the fourth part, called REM. The cycle takes about 40 minutes. Also, the idea that if you wake a sleepwalker they die is completely false. So totally not true at all. Every psych class I've ever taken has said this again and again.
I kinda wanna see the studies that went into this...

[Redball]

I do believe that they can make sense of things we couldn't during the day, however.

In the mid-1970s, I spent a year creating what became a neat kitchen out of a 9x20 screen porch. The initial enclosure required some skills I learned as I went and took about 10 days, two weekends surrounding a one-week vacation from work. Each night, I went to bed frustrated by a problem I'd been unable to solve. Each morning the solution was sitting in front of me. Since, the same with writing: I'll leave something mostly written at night. In the morning it's far easier to finish. None of this involves remembered dreams, just the appearance that some part of my brain continues to work on the problem.

[LTK]

Sleeps main goal is to replenish chemicals in the brain throughout the night and to let the body restore what we used up. Thats why it has to be dark in your room, because the chemicals replenish best in the dark. It doesn't do anything for the actual thoughts during the day, its main goal is purely biological.

Chemical replenish best in the dark...? Honestly, I have no idea where you got that from. Maybe you're confusing animal metabolism with that of plants. Replenishing energy reserves is indeed one of the hypothesised functions of sleep, but it doesn't have to be dark for that. Nocturnal animals sleep during the day, and they get by just fine.

Dreams, on the other hand, are what consolidate memory and thoughts, not actual sleep. They go hand-in-hand, though. I don't believe there is hidden insight in dreams. I do believe that they can make sense of things we couldn't during the day, however. But, the human psyche is so vast and mostly unknown, still, that how can someone say our dreams know something we don't at the forefront of our mind? For every study that says that dreams can't do that, there are a thousand saying they can. Its easier to prove something than disprove it.

The stage where you dream is REM sleep. Sleep is a cycle, starting at 1 and ending on the fourth part, called REM. The cycle takes about 40 minutes. Also, the idea that if you wake a sleepwalker they die is completely false. So totally not true at all. Every psych class I've ever taken has said this again and again.
I kinda wanna see the studies that went into this...

You can't dream without sleep, and you can't sleep without dreams. We know that sleep consolidates memories from experiments, and we know that dreams happen in your sleep from personal experience, but the two are really hard to reconcile scientifically. It's intuitive to think that the two represent the same process, but proving this is another matter entirely.

It's been a long time since the human brain was universally considered a 'black box', and the functions that we consider 'vast and unknown' are becoming less and less numerous. Although I admit that sleep and dreams are still poorly understood, I still find it dubious that dreams themselves have some mysterious power that's unrelated to the memory processes that we see in other animals.

I think your information is a bit out of date. The common belief that REM sleep is the dream sleep stems from the fact that in a normal sleep cycle, you wake up from REM sleep, and thus the dreams you've had in that stage are the most vivid. But Idontunderstand is right; dreaming occurs in every stage of sleep. Wake someone up at any point during the night, and most of them will be able to tell you that they were dreaming.

No one said anything about sleepwalkers that die. But if you want to see studies I can look some up. You can also look at Wikipedia, Scholarpedia or search for articles in scholar.google.com. I bet there's a ton of sleep-related stuff out there that I don't know about either.

[Kenyahp]

Sleeps main goal is to replenish chemicals in the brain throughout the night and to let the body restore what we used up. Thats why it has to be dark in your room, because the chemicals replenish best in the dark. It doesn't do anything for the actual thoughts during the day, its main goal is purely biological.

Chemical replenish best in the dark...? Honestly, I have no idea where you got that from. Maybe you're confusing animal metabolism with that of plants. Replenishing energy reserves is indeed one of the hypothesised functions of sleep, but it doesn't have to be dark for that. Nocturnal animals sleep during the day, and they get by just fine.

Dreams, on the other hand, are what consolidate memory and thoughts, not actual sleep. They go hand-in-hand, though. I don't believe there is hidden insight in dreams. I do believe that they can make sense of things we couldn't during the day, however. But, the human psyche is so vast and mostly unknown, still, that how can someone say our dreams know something we don't at the forefront of our mind? For every study that says that dreams can't do that, there are a thousand saying they can. Its easier to prove something than disprove it.

The stage where you dream is REM sleep. Sleep is a cycle, starting at 1 and ending on the fourth part, called REM. The cycle takes about 40 minutes. Also, the idea that if you wake a sleepwalker they die is completely false. So totally not true at all. Every psych class I've ever taken has said this again and again.
I kinda wanna see the studies that went into this...

You can't dream without sleep, and you can't sleep without dreams. We know that sleep consolidates memories from experiments, and we know that dreams happen in your sleep from personal experience, but the two are really hard to reconcile scientifically. It's intuitive to think that the two represent the same process, but proving this is another matter entirely.

It's been a long time since the human brain was universally considered a 'black box', and the functions that we consider 'vast and unknown' are becoming less and less numerous. Although I admit that sleep and dreams are still poorly understood, I still find it dubious that dreams themselves have some mysterious power that's unrelated to the memory processes that we see in other animals.

I think your information is a bit out of date. The common belief that REM sleep is the dream sleep stems from the fact that in a normal sleep cycle, you wake up from REM sleep, and thus the dreams you've had in that stage are the most vivid. But Idontunderstand is right; dreaming occurs in every stage of sleep. Wake someone up at any point during the night, and most of them will be able to tell you that they were dreaming.

No one said anything about sleepwalkers that die. But if you want to see studies I can look some up. You can also look at Wikipedia, Scholarpedia or search for articles in scholar.google.com. I bet there's a ton of sleep-related stuff out there that I don't know about either.

http://www.wellnesstips.ca/dark.htm Thats the basics on how light effects our sleep. The idea is that the body uses very different chemicals during the day than during the night, so when there is light on our bodies, we absorb that light and release chemicals into our system that makes us think its morning. Nocturnal animals also don't sleep in the light, they sleep in places like dark caves or in trees where the light can't reach them.

No one said anything about dead sleepwalkers, no. That was just an added thought, in case anyone brought that myth to the table.

Technically we dream throughout sleep,yes. But (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep) we remember our dreams that occur during REM. And, those are obviously the dreams we are talking about, yes? If you wake someone up in the middle of the night, they can't tell you what their dreams were during the rest of the cycle, its typically the REM cycle's dreams.

You can dream without sleep. Its called Lucid dreaming. You're in a kind of half sleep half wake situation, but it still exists. That way you can control your dreams because you are aware of them.

And, just because the two processes (sleep and dreaming) happens at the exact same time doesn't mean they cannot serve two different functions. And, we are more then able to monitor brain activities during sleep to pinpoint when the more active dreams are happening.

The brain may not be completely unavailable, but we still have plenty of theories that need proving. We still aren't 100% sure on quite a few things. Its a lot harder, psychologically, to get information because of human bias and the inability to see some of the things we are experimenting. We may know a lot, but there is still tons more to learn.

[Carl-E]

http://www.wellnesstips.ca/dark.htm Thats the basics on how light effects our sleep. The idea is that the body uses very different chemicals during the day than during the night, so when there is light on our bodies, we absorb that light and release chemicals into our system that makes us think its morning. Nocturnal animals also don't sleep in the light, they sleep in places like dark caves or in trees where the light can't reach them.

Sorry, but some better references would be good.  That website has the work "QUACK" written all over it.  Especially the references to the CHEK institute, a glorified chiropractic school.  I have nothing against chiro, they are wonderful, and have helped me with a lot of physical issues over the years, but when they try to go and explain everything  in their own terms, without scientific backup, I have to stop listening...

[LTK]

http://www.wellnesstips.ca/dark.htm Thats the basics on how light effects our sleep. The idea is that the body uses very different chemicals during the day than during the night, so when there is light on our bodies, we absorb that light and release chemicals into our system that makes us think its morning. Nocturnal animals also don't sleep in the light, they sleep in places like dark caves or in trees where the light can't reach them.

Ah, you mean the effect of light on the body! I agree with you there, but it's not really the same as 'replenishing chemicals'. I mean, I sometimes take a nap with the lights on, so the effect is not especially strict, but of course it's true that the light/dark cycle, whether natural or artifical, affects how you sleep.

Technically we dream throughout sleep,yes. But (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep) we remember our dreams that occur during REM. And, those are obviously the dreams we are talking about, yes? If you wake someone up in the middle of the night, they can't tell you what their dreams were during the rest of the cycle, its typically the REM cycle's dreams.

Sure, but I don't believe REM-sleep dreams are more relevant or more important than deep-sleep dreams just because people remember them more often. Why should there be a difference between REM-sleep dreams and deep-sleep dreams?

You can dream without sleep. Its called Lucid dreaming. You're in a kind of half sleep half wake situation, but it still exists. That way you can control your dreams because you are aware of them.

Haha, no, that doesn't count. When you find yourself having some degree of consciousness or agency while in a dream, it doesn't mean you're not still sleeping, aka lying limp on your bed with practically zero situational awareness.

And, just because the two processes (sleep and dreaming) happens at the exact same time doesn't mean they cannot serve two different functions. And, we are more then able to monitor brain activities during sleep to pinpoint when the more active dreams are happening.

Yeah, that's the thing. I think that sleeping and dreaming are just two sides of the same coin, and dreams are just reflective of the consolidation and recovery processes that are necessary for a good night's rest. And if I'm interpreting correctly, you think that dreaming is its own process that takes place on top of the aforementioned processes as a complementary function. Whether it's one or the other is pretty damn hard to find out. I'm having trouble thinking of an experiment that can tell. Maybe if I sleep on it I'll know.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by 'more active dreams'; I assume those are the dreams in REM-sleep, but how can you tell if it's the dreams that are active, or just the brain itself that's in a more excited state in REM-sleep, compared to other cycles?

This might also be interesting: A researcher at my university specializes in the role of sleep in memory. She gave a couple of lectures in the Learning & Memory course I followed. Some of her publications could be relevant. Really nice lady, too; she was voted the faculty's best teacher two years ago.

Sorry, but some better references would be good.  That website has the work "QUACK" written all over it.  Especially the references to the CHEK institute, a glorified chiropractic school.  I have nothing against chiro, they are wonderful, and have helped me with a lot of physical issues over the years, but when they try to go and explain everything  in their own terms, without scientific backup, I have to stop listening...

The website may be dubious (COMIC SAAAAAANS) but you'd do better to check out the book they're referencing. According to the reviews on Amazon, the book really does have the right ideas about sleep, nutrition and health, but the author just doesn't know what she's talking about in other respects. So, good message, bad messenger. Still better than a bad message coming from a good messenger.

But this isn't DISCUSS, so feel free to talk about the time you were riding a giraffe through a field of daffodils. Or just split this bit off, I don't care.

[Kenyahp]

Okay, okay, I'll concede to your argument simply because this is the wrong forum.

As for the reference, it was honestly just the shortest one I could find. Most of the other, more reputable sites, say the exact same thing, but I didn't want to have to put "well, its the 94th paragraph down under the third heading" because...well, I was strapped for time.

Next: Weird dream I had last night. It was just a dude looking at me in my sexual psych's classroom, for like an hour dreamtime. Like, literally just staring me down for a really long time. I kept asking him what he wanted, but he just kept looking at me. It made me uncomfortable, because I hate when people look at me. Then I woke up to my cat staring at me, also. Not a good night.

[pwhodges]

(There's nothing wrong with a serious discussion of dreams here.  The underlying reason that most real discussion goes in its own area is that it is a place that certain subjects can be raised that are forbidden in the rest of the forum, such as politics, religion, or guns.  In return, behaviour in that section is more strictly moderated - though in recent months this has not been visibly necessary, as it happens.  And when I raised the possibility of doing away with the separate Discuss! area, people expressed a preference for keeping it this way.)

[idontunderstand]

I remember reading a scientific article which basically had the idea that sleep actually comes from a need to dream, rather than dreams being a side-effect of sleeping. Really interesting, tried to find it but no luck.

On another note I dreamt I peeled a banana and it slowly turned out the banana actually was the head of Bruce Willis.

[LTK]

It takes a special kind of idiot to stay up past 1 AM talking about the value of a good night's sleep.

So last night I was apparently a bald, bearded Arabian man in a country that looked Arabian. I went into the men's room, and a woman chased me in, presumably not without malicious intent, so I punched her squarely in the face. She then attacked me with all sorts of exotic stealth assassin weapons, most of which I was able to disarm by pure chance. Then some people had me disguised as a woman, with make-up, a wig, and a weird fancy crown thingy which were glued to my bald head. Not sure what they did with the beard though. At the point where I assume I was safe, I went into a beauty salon to get it all removed. After that I think I had to flee upstairs where an escape route was being made for me... in a house with classic Asian architecture among rolling green hills. Around that time I woke up. Psychoanalyse that.

Okay, okay, I'll concede to your argument simply because this is the wrong forum.

Well, it's okay with Paul, so I'd really like to know if you can answer my other questions.

[Welu]

Had a dream I went to see my old German teacher, who I hated but respected, to relearn German. Then it turned into a Wizard of Oz, "The language was inside you all along!" moment when he'd point at things, ask a question in German and I'd answer in German. Then I was moving into the new place and the phone wouldn't stop ringing and every time I answered it was an elderly person dialing the wrong number.

Not really the weirdest dream but it is the first dream in a long time where I can know where pretty much all the elements came from during conversations I had yesterday.
- Currently relearning German.
- Applying for next course of college so thinking about old school.
- Starting to move next week.
- Gotta activate the phoneline.
- Had two missed calls to our house, which is rare, both from elderly people.

So yeah, one of the most transparent dreams I've had in a while. I think it's a nice change from the complicated mindscrews I've veen having lately.

[Kenyahp]

LTK- If you send me a PM with your questions, we can chat more. I was just doing a quick catchup on some of the threads before I leave for the weekend for a Public Speaking competition. Won't be back til Sunday.

I also have dreams that involve German. But, its typically my German teacher telling me I'm really stupid and am going to fail.
Even though she would never say that and I'm doing okay-ish...

[Stryc9Fuego]

I've been having this same recurring nightmare for quite some time now. I'm in a corner office late at night, and there are two light sources: a desk lamp, and a hall light outside my office. For some reason, I'm working on a spreadsheet by hand in pencil. In from the hallway steps the classic figure of the Grim Reaper; dark cloak, skeleton body, scythe... the works. He slowly steps into my office, turns, walks up to my desk, and holds up these black long-stemmed roses, and says:

"Flores para los muerto."

Then the flowers wither, shrivel, and die in his hand. I usually wake up with my pulse just POUNDING, and I can't sleep for the rest of the night.