Vivid Dream: A Survey
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Those of you who’ve been reading this site for some time know that I often write about the vivid dreams I have as a result of my drug cocktail. They’re fascinating and horrifying and sometimes very funny. The New York Times this week has several good article about sleep and dreams. Here’s a roundup.
Science writer Natalie Angier writes about nightmares, and their prevelence, in In the Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why We Dream at All :
A big reason bad dreams offer insight into the architecture of dreams generally is that, as a host of studies have shown, most of our dreams are bad. Whether research subjects keep dream journals at home or sleep in research labs and are periodically awoken out of rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep — the stage most often associated with dreaming — the results are the same: about three-quarters of the emotions described are negative.
My Times favorite, Benedict Carey, writes in An Active, Purposeful Machine That Comes Out at Night to Play about new research that says the purpose of sleep may not be as mysterious as we believe.
Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggest that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking — a new way to solve a math or Easter egg problem, even an unseen pattern causing stress in a marriage.
Finally, Stephanie Saul writes in Sleep Drugs Found Only Mildly Effective, but Wildly Popular , that though medications like Lunesta differ little from Placebos, people report great results.
Dr. Karl Doghramji, a sleep expert at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, agreed. “Sleeping pills do not increase sleep time dramatically, nor do they decrease wake time dramatically,” he said. “Despite those facts, we do find patients who, when they take them, have a high level of satisfaction.” Dr. Doghramji has disclosed in the past that he is a consultant to pharmaceutical companies.
liz | 12:36 PM | Uncategorized
I do have more bad than good dreams, but the worst ones that keep waking me up are those of my wife. She does two things in her dreams. One is to speak her way through them at a level of vocalization and mouth gymnastics that are just below my ability to comprehend. The emotion, usually anger, is clear but the words are like those of a bad ventriloquist – an ominous mumbling through unmoving lips. The other thing she does is quite audible and understandable. She just shouts – not a scream – a very loud shout – and she can really belt it out. I sit bolt upright wondering if I am about to be killed, realize what’s going on and start considering what I’m doing in that dream to get yelled at. I also comfort her and try to wake her up.
That is all very disturbing. Often my own dreams are about big discoveries, powerful epiphanies or imminent death and destruction at the hands of a brutal monster. My wife is often angry at me because I dream about this big stuff, and she dreams about shopping or losing her glasses or fighting with someone taking her place in a half-mile long line. That sort of content, though, doesn’t quite explain the nocturnal energy, especially anger, she pours out in those dreams. Whatever she goes through in her sleep, it has proved very helpful. I may get yelled at and scared to death in the middle of the night by this stiff-lipped threatening mumbler next to me, but during the day we get along a whole lot better. So I’ll take the bad dreams with the good.
John
Thanks for the links. Now I know where to send the bloggers who want me to expand upon my it’s the pizzatheme.
And for the more intellectual, they represent fears or wishes, No, no further clarification necessary.
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