Too real dreams. I can't tell the difference between a dream and reality
When a person dreams about something, the same activity is observed in his brain as if these events were actually happening. Whatever he does in a dream: jumping, running, dancing - his brain understands it as if the person was doing these things in reality.
This conclusion was made by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. They studied the brain activity of dreaming people. The task was not easy - to get more accurate results, experts have long been looking for volunteers who can control their dreams.
The neurophysiology of dreams is not the most simple task. Firstly, we often forget what we dreamed. Secondly, how to correctly compare brain activity with events occurring in a dream? For this it is necessary that the volunteer is simultaneously in deep sleep, and reported to the experimenter the events occurring in this dream. The phenomenon of controlled sleep helps solve this problem. Its main feature is that the dreamer realizes that he is dreaming and can, to some extent, consciously control his actions in a dream. Only long, hard training allows you to achieve the ability to control your dreams.
So, the researchers asked six volunteers who practiced dream control to take part in the experiment. They must dream about how they squeeze their right or left hand. If practitioners fell into the right state, controlled sleep, then they had to give a sign - eye movement. Of course, special equipment scanned the brain activity of the dreamers.
Under the conditions of this experiment, only two volunteers managed to see controlled dreams. However, thanks to another pair of participants, the researchers were convinced that activity in the motor cortex, which is responsible for the left or right hand, during the movement dreamed by the volunteer, was exactly the same as if these actions took place in reality. Hence the proof: a dream is not a movie. Its perception involves not only visual analyzer, but also the entire human brain.
Then why don't we actually jump, run, or clasp our hand during corresponding sleep? Researchers say that during dreaming, the area of the brain that is responsible for making decisions is silent. That is why the activity of the motor cortex, which is directly responsible for movements, is not realized. As a consequence of this, dreamers who are able to control their dreams clearly understand that they are dreaming. Therefore, it is possible to say that the human brain does not distinguish between dreams and reality only to a certain extent.
The authors of these studies did not stop there and in the near future want to analyze the activity of the human brain during more complex movements - while the dreamer is running or flying. For this purpose it will be involved large number subjects who are able to control their dreams.
Science
Dream– the only “area” human civilization, which cannot be mapped. People have spent thousands of years trying to understand why our brain is capable of creating strange and otherworldly landscapes and situations during sleep.
Today scientists explained what happens to our body when we fall asleep, and why we need sleep at all. As it turns out, there are some strange connections between reality and surreal images of the dream world.
The dreams of lonely people are brighter and richer
All people dream, but in completely different ways. This was discovered by a neurologist in 2001. Patrick McNamara, exploring the connection between social relationships and dreams.
His team of scientists invited him for research 300 students, which were divided into groups according to their attachment abilities. They first answered questions about how comfortable they felt being in a relationship with someone, or maybe they prefer to avoid relationships altogether? Thus, the state of attachment was assessed as “reliable” or “insecure.”
Students who felt uncomfortable in relationships and therefore tended to avoid them altogether reported that saw more dreams every night than the group whose attachment state was “secure.” Moreover, the insecurely attached group had more nightmares and their dreams were more vivid than the other group.
Since the area of our brain called front temporal lobe important for feelings of attachment and for stages REM sleep , enhanced dreams, apparently replace feelings of affection.
Video games cause lucid dreams
What are lucid dreams?
Lucid dreaming– the ability to realize that you are in a dream. As soon as you realize that this is a dream, you begin to control what happens around you and do whatever you want. It is not surprising that each of us wants this when going to sleep, but we are not always able to get into lucid dreams.
Thousands of books have been written that teach how to induce lucid dreams if desired. However, as it turned out, the simplest way to learn to have such dreams is to play computer games occasionally.
Jayne Gackenbach from Grant MacEwan University believes that the ability to control actions when playing virtual reality coincides with the ability to control what happens in a dream. Thus, It's easier for gamers to learn to lucid dream.
Jane also discovered that Gamers are much less likely to have nightmares, because when they feel a threat in a dream, they immediately take action to turn it away from themselves, as in games, rather than trying to escape.
Animals see dreams and even remember them
The long-standing question of why we dream seems to have already been answered. thanks to the rats. Researcher Matthew Wilson from Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that when rats were trained to run in a circular path, their brain activity began to manifest itself in a special way. This was recorded using a scanner.
Wilson later scanned the brains of rats while they slept and found that Almost half of the animals showed the same pattern of brain activity, when they were in a stage of REM sleep that coincided with the model while moving in the wheel. This means that the rats continued to run in their sleep.
A dog runs in a dream (video):
Scientists have suggested that the brain of rats saves information, playing it again in a dream, and at the same speed as in reality. Wilson is convinced that one of the main functions of dreams is consolidation of memories. This is why we remember better the information we receive immediately before bed.
People with amnesia have the strangest dreams
If dreams help you store memories, what should you do if you have amnesia? It turns out that people who have lost their memory have very weird dreams. There are several types of memory, and amnesiacs cannot remember some events, special facts or dates. It is interesting that in a dream some things can come back to them, for example, some skills, but in real life they don't remember these things at all.
During the experiments, people suffering from amnesia were told about the game "Tetris", however they They didn’t remember at all what kind of game it was. In the middle of the night they were woken up and asked to tell what they saw in their dreams. Three out of five subjects answered that they saw "falling, overturning blocks".
An ordinary person in a dream, even with the strangest dreams, mostly sees in a dream objects familiar to him. A person with amnesia can see objects that are very strange to him, but he cannot remember where he saw them in reality.
Strange dreams are just a job of sorting through memories
Amnesia research allowed Dr. Dr. Robert Stickgold put forward another hypothesis regarding dreams. He tried to answer the question of why we see strange dreams. Stickgold revealed that amnesiacs retain an image of an event in the subconscious, even if they cannot consciously pull it out of the depths of their memory. For some reason, the brain reproduces this image during sleep.
Why do I have strange dreams?
According to his theory, strange dreams are the brain's attempt to sort different signals in search of connections. For example, you dream that you are in a restaurant with your 5th grade soccer coach, the chairs you are sitting on are made of jelly, and your dog is your waiter.
Your brain pulls out your dog memory file and compares it to what you remember about your high school trainer to figure out How do these two memories relate?. That is, according to Dr. Stickgold, your brain "looks for cross connections". Sometimes these connections coincide with reality, sometimes not.
Other studies have shown that the strangest dreams are associated with increased activity in the right tonsil, an area also relevant to the formation of memories. These studies support the idea that the stranger the dreams, the more difficult it is for the brain to find connections between different memories.
Are prophetic dreams just a coincidence?
Seeing the future in a dream
In the 1960s Medical center Maimonides held a series in New York unusual experiments. One of the experiments was related to the ability to predict the future. Participants were divided into two groups: one group stayed awake and focused on a specific image. The second group was sleeping at that time.
Scientists woke up sleeping participants while they were in the REM stage of sleep and asked them to tell what they saw in their dreams. The strangest thing is that most of the participants in the second group described the images that the first group saw.
Another example is also from the 1960s. After heavy rain, a school building in the village was damaged as a result of a coal mine collapse Aberfan, South Wales, UK. More than a hundred people, most of whom were children, died. Psychiatrist John Barker went to Aberfan and asked its inhabitants if anyone had dreamed about this event before it happened. 30 village residents said they dreamed of a disaster. There are millions of such examples, and you probably saw the future in your dreams.
What are prophetic dreams?
Some scientists claim that this kind predictions - none nothing but coincidences. Various factors come together, and there is a chance that someone has these factors in a dream will coincide with what will happen in reality.
It's one of those things that impossible to prove, so most of us will still believe in something supernatural than in a banal coincidence. Who knows, maybe someday we will learn to predict the future using dreams?
We remember only vivid dreams
It turns out that we can dream not only during the REM stage of sleep, but in any of the five stages, although Dreams are more vivid during REM sleep. Every night we may have several dozen dreams, but most of them we do not remember.
We don't remember dreams mainly because they are quite boring. A person is more likely to remember bright and strange dream than something routine. Most dreams are related to everyday activities you did the day before, for example, you may often dream about yourself ironing or checking email.
As in the case of the memories of rats who repeated their actions in their sleep, our the brain is trying to repeat what happened to us, in order to consolidate memories and learn something.
But the most crazy and scary dreams are remembered just like strange and scary events in life. For example, in a crowd of people you see naked man- this is an oddity that will stay in your memory for a long time. You won't remember hundreds of people around, but you will probably remember the face of a naked man for a long time.
How to remember dreams?
Some people claim that they don't dream, when in fact they just don't remember them. Sometimes you dream of something very interesting that you would like to remember and tell to your loved ones, but very quickly after waking up the dream disappears.
To remember your dreams, psychologists advise immediately after waking up to try do not open your eyes or move for a while, mentally replaying in your head what you dreamed about during the night. You need to train every day.
To see vivid and positive dreams, it is also recommended set yourself a proper daily routine, get a good night's sleep, do not remember all the problems of the day before going to bed, but leave their solution to the morning.
You can change your dreams with the help of smells
It is well known that external stimuli, such as lights, smells or the sound of an alarm clock, can interfere with sleep, but some factors affect overall sleep quality, turning pleasant dream into a nightmare and vice versa. Smells, for example, can have a strong influence on what exactly your dream is about.
Smells in dreams
In the study, researchers allowed participants to fall asleep and then fed different types of food through a nasal tube. chemicals with smell rotten eggs, roses or no scent at all. They then woke up the participants and asked them what exactly they had seen in their dreams.
Those who smelled rotten eggs reported that in their dreams felt a sharp decline in strength and mood, although they don’t remember any smells. For example, one person said that he dreamed of a beautiful Chinese woman, but suddenly she suddenly seemed very unpleasant to him, although special reasons for this he did not notice. The sensations in the dream changed sharply from pleasant to unpleasant.
Nightmares take a toll on your mood
Anxiety? Depression? Nervousness? You may have had nightmares. At least this is the conclusion reached by a group of scientists who asked 147 students to fill out a questionnaire every morning for 2 weeks to track how often do they have nightmares?. After 2 weeks, the researchers conducted special tests to evaluate psychological state people.
Scientists have discovered a strong connection between the number of nightmares a person has and his mood during the day. The more nightmares people had, the worse they were rated mental state. It is difficult to say whether depression was the cause of the nightmares, or whether after the nightmares the person had Bad mood, but one thing is clear that the real mental state and the nature of dreams have a strong relationship.
Dreams and schizophrenia
Some people believe that dreams are very reminiscent of delusional states that schizophrenics experience—both are associated with a specific area of the brain. In other words, the brains of schizophrenics are simply does not switch from dream to reality during the day. That is, every night when we fall asleep, we plunge into a state of schizophrenia. They even came up with a special term to describe this condition - "our nightly madness".
Illusory dreams Almost every person can see, but a schizophrenic will see such “dreams” in reality, while being awake. His brain contains a mixture of mismatched memories, which occurs not only in a dream, but also in reality.
The work of our subconscious
Our consciousness, which we sometimes consider our “I,” is only a small part of the work of the brain as a whole. Awareness of oneself as a person is only a small part of the brain’s work; most other processes occurring in the head are processed without the involvement of consciousness. These are not only automated reactions such as breathing, controlling the heart, and muscles when walking, but also more complex ones: pattern recognition, the formation of a three-dimensional surrounding reality. The brain, in fact, at a preliminary level chooses what to show to consciousness and what to omit. Some actions are performed so automatically that the consciousness is not notified of the work being performed.
Quite by accident, I recently found out that I have published new books: “Conscious exits from the body. Experience of traveling to other worlds" and "Controlled dreams. Controlled reality." They came out from a certain publishing house IPL in 2016. It turns out that this also happens, the author himself does not know that he has new books coming out.
They renamed the book in their own way and released it as a new product from the author. I have no idea what kind of publishing house this is, but after reading the reviews of the books, we can conclude: this is my first and second book published by the Ves publishing house under the titles: “Wanderer of Dreams. Part 1. The beginning of the journey" and "Wanderer of dreams. Part 2. New Millennium.”
Essentially these are the same books. If you have previously read the Dream Traveler series, then there is no point in buying new books.
Why do you dream about rats?
Interpretation of a dream in which a rat dreamed. Looking ahead, I’ll summarize the article - I’ll boldly say that a dream about a rat is bad. Depending on the variations in sleep, you can determine where the danger is coming from or what to expect in the near future, but in general sleep doesn't bode well. The only hopeful dream option is if the plot ends with the rat being killed or caught.So, to find out from which side to expect a rat bite, analyze your dream.
Let's sort it out how a thought can have power. How thoughts can generally interact with the universe, cause events not related to our direct actions. What laws of the universe allow us to fulfill our mental desires. How can our brain have the gift of seeing at a distance or sensing events happening somewhere far away that we have no idea about.
Let's assume that our body, and our brain in particular, is a machine. Complex, to some extent incomprehensible, but still a device that perceives and transmits signals to the outside. Let's make another assumption that we are somewhat similar to modern computer. Lately, more and more our brain has been compared to electronic devices, so we will not deviate from this tradition. Thus, our thoughts are a kind of program, with cycles and functions that perform certain tasks. Some thoughts are initial data, but some have power - these are programs built according to the laws of the universe.
For last month I came across several people trying to change their past. Then someone talked about memories of a non-existent past.
Most people believe that changing the past is impossible, and No accurate description how to change the past. But, one way or another, I come across mysterious stories that cannot be confirmed or refuted. Any change in the past leads to everyone around remembering new story. Thus, we cannot confidently say that such a story is not the author’s invention. Only some individuals retain memories of an alternate present. Sometimes it’s not even a memory, but only a feeling of the wrongness of the current moment; sometimes flashes of déjà vu, or false memories in my head there are some moments that never actually happened, but for some reason are stored in my memory as memories.
In my opinion, one of the main tricks psychological counseling is to see the client's problem as a type of dream- caused by confusion, which a third-party specialist helps to dispel. In this sense, the work of an intelligent psychologist is such an activity that “enlightens” the mind. It, by reducing the dope of illusions, sobers up, or in another sense, awakens from psychic sleep. I already started talking about what kind of dream this is in, and today I continue to reveal the topic from a slightly different angle. If your mind is confused by doubts about the real, you can perceive everything described below as an allegory.
Have you ever thought about the criteria of the real? What exactly distinguishes reality from illusion? How does reality become real in our eyes?
We can say that the reality of a dream is illusory because it is not what it seems. Unsteady and unstable, it seems to fool us, pretending to be the solid reality of the day, encouraging us to take a serious attitude with the entire arsenal of “adult” emotions, as long as we believe in it. In sleep, we confuse the reality of the physical world with the fragile picture of a dream.
And yet, while we sleep, the reality of the dream does not arouse suspicion; its image absorbs as all-encompassingly as the images of everyday life. And only upon awakening, the darkness dissipates - and all the problems that arose in the dream go away with it. But as long as the dream lasts, it seems real and is taken seriously.
The point that I want to emphasize here is the dreamer’s deep confidence in what is happening. Being in a dream, he seems to “know” that he is in real world. And here we have to admit that all his solid knowledge is nothing more than strong faith.
At night we believe in the reality of dreams, during the day - in the reality of everyday life. And this faith is essentially identical. We simply take what is happening for granted, as if everything is a priori clear with this world. Neither at night nor during the day do we have any questions about reality. Right up to awakening there is a similar drama and intensity of passions. One remains uncritically and selflessly absorbed in dreams.
That is, we “know” that the reality of the day is real in exactly the same way as we “know” that the reality of a dream is real while it is being dreamed. We have no objective criteria for what is “real.” We simply believe in this world. Deeply, unconsciously, with conviction. And we call our strong faith knowledge.
About ropes and snakes
In fact, sleep differs from everyday life only in its instability. Dreams are temporary. But our life in the context of cosmic terms is no more stable. Everything we know will pass. And if the stability of the world speaks of its authenticity, then our world is real in the same way relative degree, like the world of dreams.
I already voiced this idea on the site in an article about: “You can confidently “know” anything you want. But this belief itself has a mental structure. We really don’t know anything, because our confidence in anything is only a strong, unconditional faith.”
I often give clients a well-known analogy, where a person sees a rope, mistakes it for a snake and experiences genuine fear. He “knows” as firmly as he can what is in front of him mortal danger. She is real to him.
The role of the psychologist is precisely to remove the client from his restless dreams awaken. This task is not easy, because most dreams are shown to us in the “cinema” of the unconscious, from where only a certain background mood, some vague pain for oneself and one’s life “echoes” to the surface of consciousness.
And here almost everything comes down to being able to see the root of the problem. If you have experience in exploring personal mental depths and are sensitive enough to listen to your own gut, you can be your own psychologist. In a sense, this is tantamount to becoming the object of your own research.
To focus attention on the source of experiences, questions such as “What am I feeling now?”, “What am I thinking about?”, “What do I now “know” about my life) may be appropriate? Projections dissipate with their direct awareness, and reality is freed from the drama with which it was covered by dreams inspired by the mind.
Where are all these “real” events?
Examples of dispersion psychic dreams there is plenty in everyone's life. In such a dream-inspired “reality,” separations become the end of the world, or an empty, meaningless future. Someone else's death is mistaken for one's own. Behind someone's uninvolved calm one dreams of cold, treacherous indifference. Small victories bring dreams of your own greatness. The fleeting encourages one to believe in hallucinations of personal inferiority. Etc., etc.
In this vein, our entire everyday life is still the same illusion, because, like a dream, it is not what it seems. We take the chimeras of our minds for real events. We can make a reservation and say that only our attitude towards life is illusory, and life itself is real. But the fact is that we do not know life beyond our own relationship to it.
Upon awakening, we realize that the dream is an illusion, because we brought it to ourselves. What is different about everyday life? Where are all these “real” events? Here and now, at this present moment, all our confidence in the events of the current reality is still the same dreams. We sleep in reality and we dream about our lives - we dream about events, relationships, we dream about ourselves.
No one is obliged to expose life, as Buddhist monks and yogi hermits do, up to the stage of enlightenment. Everyone is free to choose the intensity of practice independently. Some people are destined to rush ahead of the locomotive, while others find it easier to “not bother” at all. But, as I see it, the current stage of development for everyone is the same household events and experiences that are perceived as problematic.
And even a thousand sobering reliefs from hacked illusions are not enough for most of us to feel this glaring instability of personal conviction about what is real and what is not. We only exchange one dream for another - in best case scenario more or less realistic. Somehow this is how the “local” apparently runs earthly path mental maturation. From childhood illusions we move to sophisticated ones, and then to “lucid dreams.”
