Dreams are Weird
Today, I had about 3 or different topics I was potentially going to write about. I even got ready and started on some of them. Then I just took my 1:30 am nap. I set my alarm for exactly 1:55 am (25 minutes).
Now, I have previously mentioned that my remembered dreams have been getting more common and more vivid. I've even had a lucid dream (though, sadly, only one and early on). Many of the dreams that I remember are just barely sub-lucid dreams (I consciously think that things are odd, and that life doesn't normally operate that way, but don't achieve the realization that things are weird because I'm dreaming).
More notable to me, though, is that the dreams that I'm remembering now on waking are also qualitatively weirder than when I monoslept. When I monosleep, my dreams would have odd things such as odd locales, occurrences, people, broken laws of physics, etc, but usually in a minimal fashion. One or two things out of whack.
The polyphasic dreams have been decidedly weirder. More things are different. More "new" extras appear (instead of recycling people from my life, more often entirely new entities are created). And some have just been downright alien. Not scary, just completely foreign to me to the point that they're hard to describe. Things like playing the role of a being composed of a pocket of a fluid and "conversing" (if you could call it that) with other beings through Brownian Motion. Weird stuff.
Anyway, this past dream was just barely sub-lucid and was relatively normal (for a polysleep dream, anyway). I won't go into a lot of the gory details, but the basic summary was that I was visiting friends from college. Incidentally, they all now lived in a college dormitory (though not the dorms they lived in during college). I was aware that this was odd, but politeness kept me from mentioning it.
I was catching up with them, and I was telling them about this experiment. I was talking about the chances of oversleeping and sometimes missing a few hours, and it occurred to me that during the last nap that I remembered, I didn't wake up at 1:55 am as I had planned. In fact, I was internally a little scared that I had no memory from when I went to sleep at 1:30 am to when I was visiting my friends (dream time was in the early afternoon).
"Well," I thought, "I've really overslept and crashed this time." I was worried that I had run into complete memory failure and "lost time" like cornrow had. This is a terrifying idea to me. Blacking out and acting when not conscious really freaks me out. But in the dream, I didn't mention it, and conversation moved to other things.
After a few hours of hanging out and talking, my friends and I went for a walk, and the dream abruptly ended. I was decidedly disoriented, because the dream was very convincing. Then, the thoughts that I had really crashed hit me hard (just the thoughts - I felt incredibly rested, which also supported the idea that I overslept), so I checked my alarm clock, thinking how I would accommodate the large oversleep.
1:50 am.
I blinked. 20 minutes?
I closed and re-opened my phone to refresh the display... Maybe something had locked up?
1:50 am.
Wow. It really felt like it had been 3, 4 hours. And I had been convinced that I had overslept. It's almost like I'm getting more life experiences for less time spent living because the dreams are so very vivid. They're vivid to the point of being nigh-indistinguishable from wakefulness.
Now, I'm not really up on my lucid dreams research, or theories as to what exactly the control factors of dreams / dream lucidity are, but this has me wondering: What might be a cause of these more vivid and potentially lucid dreams? It's been reported by several other polynap testers... Why are we dreaming harder? Is it just that we're becoming conscious so close after our REM?
Another topic of research, I suppose.
For now, I'll just conclude with the comedically trite statement: "Dreams are weird." :)
-sean
Now, I have previously mentioned that my remembered dreams have been getting more common and more vivid. I've even had a lucid dream (though, sadly, only one and early on). Many of the dreams that I remember are just barely sub-lucid dreams (I consciously think that things are odd, and that life doesn't normally operate that way, but don't achieve the realization that things are weird because I'm dreaming).
More notable to me, though, is that the dreams that I'm remembering now on waking are also qualitatively weirder than when I monoslept. When I monosleep, my dreams would have odd things such as odd locales, occurrences, people, broken laws of physics, etc, but usually in a minimal fashion. One or two things out of whack.
The polyphasic dreams have been decidedly weirder. More things are different. More "new" extras appear (instead of recycling people from my life, more often entirely new entities are created). And some have just been downright alien. Not scary, just completely foreign to me to the point that they're hard to describe. Things like playing the role of a being composed of a pocket of a fluid and "conversing" (if you could call it that) with other beings through Brownian Motion. Weird stuff.
Anyway, this past dream was just barely sub-lucid and was relatively normal (for a polysleep dream, anyway). I won't go into a lot of the gory details, but the basic summary was that I was visiting friends from college. Incidentally, they all now lived in a college dormitory (though not the dorms they lived in during college). I was aware that this was odd, but politeness kept me from mentioning it.
I was catching up with them, and I was telling them about this experiment. I was talking about the chances of oversleeping and sometimes missing a few hours, and it occurred to me that during the last nap that I remembered, I didn't wake up at 1:55 am as I had planned. In fact, I was internally a little scared that I had no memory from when I went to sleep at 1:30 am to when I was visiting my friends (dream time was in the early afternoon).
"Well," I thought, "I've really overslept and crashed this time." I was worried that I had run into complete memory failure and "lost time" like cornrow had. This is a terrifying idea to me. Blacking out and acting when not conscious really freaks me out. But in the dream, I didn't mention it, and conversation moved to other things.
After a few hours of hanging out and talking, my friends and I went for a walk, and the dream abruptly ended. I was decidedly disoriented, because the dream was very convincing. Then, the thoughts that I had really crashed hit me hard (just the thoughts - I felt incredibly rested, which also supported the idea that I overslept), so I checked my alarm clock, thinking how I would accommodate the large oversleep.
1:50 am.
I blinked. 20 minutes?
I closed and re-opened my phone to refresh the display... Maybe something had locked up?
1:50 am.
Wow. It really felt like it had been 3, 4 hours. And I had been convinced that I had overslept. It's almost like I'm getting more life experiences for less time spent living because the dreams are so very vivid. They're vivid to the point of being nigh-indistinguishable from wakefulness.
Now, I'm not really up on my lucid dreams research, or theories as to what exactly the control factors of dreams / dream lucidity are, but this has me wondering: What might be a cause of these more vivid and potentially lucid dreams? It's been reported by several other polynap testers... Why are we dreaming harder? Is it just that we're becoming conscious so close after our REM?
Another topic of research, I suppose.
For now, I'll just conclude with the comedically trite statement: "Dreams are weird." :)
-sean
posted by Sean @ 12/08/2005 01:54:00 AM
4 Comments:
You are disturbing your brain while reshuffling memories! In a healthy sleep, the process, like HDD garbage collection, should run its course and you should remember nothing. In your present mode, you brutishly interrupt it and get surprised at what your brain's doing in the night!
Needless to say, the process don't get completed and it ain't healthy
It would be very useful to daily post some stats like: total amount of sleep and total amount of "clear brain" thinking.
In the end, I would expect you might be sleeping less (the "advantage") but suffering more and having far less fresh-mind time than a normal sleeper.
In a healthy sleep, AFTER SLEEP, you should ALWAYS experience your best time for brainwork. If there is grogginess, tiredness, dreamyhead, confusion, etc. ... something went wrong.
Naturally, everyone gets a bad night from time to time (infection, bad food, overtraining, stress, etc.), but anything beyond 10-20% of life different than "clear head after sleep" should be alarming.
"Things like playing the role of a being composed of a pocket of a fluid and "conversing" (if you could call it that) with other beings through Brownian Motion. Weird stuff."
Yoinked into my "rpg characters to play some day in the future" folder.
Anonymous: Can you provide sources for your statements?
During my research, I've found that there is still debate about the function of sleep and dreaming. I've not found anything to indicate that one should remember nothing in healthy sleep, though.
I'm intrigued by your idea of logging my current mental state over a period of time, and I may look into it (or maybe convince another new polynapper to do so while they test).
As for the grogginess after sleep being indicative of when something goes wrong... it's possible that may be true, but it depends largely on how one defines "wrong" or "abnormal". If this is true, than nearly all people have things go wrong when they sleep (which could actually be argued, according to some researchers). In that case, is it really abnormal (and thus wrong)?
Even still, could you provide some links or references to back up your claims? :)
Keep the posts coming!
-Sean
comment about dream memory:
i have a ridiculously good memory; i can remember what position of the room i was in at some place some time ago. still, it's harder to pickup a series of facts and apply a photographic memory for information.
i remember most of my dreams with respect to waking up shortly after one or two. when i have five or six, it's increasingly difficult to remember all the details. my record is remembering eight unrelated dreams in one night (10 hours of sleep). i'll sometimes get clues while i'm awake about people, places, or objects to remember the dream.
when i only sleep for 2 hours, i'll only have one dream or so. sometimes, it feels like an almost instant transition from falling asleep to waking up a couple hours later, and i won't remember any dreams. during the five or so 20-minute naps i had in an attempt to adjust, i didn't dream about anything and had a harder time understanding that i had consciously made an effort to fall asleep and that i had only slept for 25 minutes. when i slept for 2 and then 4 hours more right after, i couldn't remember any dreams; perhaps from exhaustion.
my most vivid dreams occur in the two-week period before exams and the period after awaiting my grades. when i have nothing worrisome in my life, my dreams seem more normal.
sleepwalkers/sleepactors don't remember their actions, and i'm not sure that they can even attribute them to dreams. i go to sleep every night trying to unlock the meaning of life, and it would be disappointing if i couldn't remember anything.
it takes roughly 30 minutes to become fully conscious and 100% after waking up. during that time, you should not do anything that requires 100% focus.
-duffjr
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