Dreams. Why?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 พ.ย. 2023
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Why on earth does your brain take you on wild adventures when you sleep? What purpose does dreaming serve? Well, come take a deep dive into the mysterious world of dreams with me. From ancient beliefs about divine messages to Freud's kookie theories, I'll explore the cultural and scientific perspectives on what dreams might mean - everything from Egypt's dream books to Jung's dream symbology. I'll also explore the latest scientific insights into the biology of dreams (including brain imaging of the stages of sleep) and discuss some of the most popular theories about dreams (including the possibility that it's a survival tactic), which might give insight into why our brains concoct these surreal scenarios.
And hey, before you go, jump into the comments and spill the beans about your weirdest or favorite dreams! Ever flown like a superhero or danced with dinosaurs in dreamland? Share the dreamy details!
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#dreams #brainscience #dreaminterpretation #neuroscience #sleepscience
I think dreams are the combination of two phenomena. One is the rehearsal of actions and concepts learned during the day to consolidate memories. The other phenomena is the excitation of random pathways from white noise due to sensory deprivation. I think that the two mechanisms are related. Now let's unpause and see how wrong I was.
I like to think I'm living alternate realities. I hope so because I have good times in my dreams. I'm a popular guy in the multiverse
My understanding has always been that dreams are the retroactive narrativizing of unrelated brain impulses while you sleep. Like, your brain is firing various neurons in order to organize information, but then when you wake up some of those signals are still floating around and your pattern-matching brain tries to figure out what it was thinking about, constructing a coherent(-ish) story out of largely random images. No idea how true that actually is, though. I guess I'll find out!
I’ve been a Lucid Dreamer my entire life. I’ve published a few How-To books on the subject. Lucid Dreaming eventually teaches you that we’re sort of dreaming most of the time, even while awake.
I am surprised you didn't mention lucid dreaming. Yes, it is a real phenomenon. I have very vivid dreams, in which I am not only aware that I am dreaming but in some cases I can even change the direction of the dream. When I mean vivid I mean all my senses are involved, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. I also have a sense of direction and even location in my dreams so if the dream involved movement I am aware of am I headed north, south, east or west; locations involve real-life towns, cities, states, buildings, highways even if the dream locations differ from their real-life counterparts I am aware of where they are supposed to be taking place and what those differences are. I also dream about people and animals. I'd like to say that on whole I do enjoy my dreams.
me too - city parts, my houes but with a twist. Different layout, etc etc. I love it. Though, I am not aware of being in a dream. Only had that about 3 times in my life. SO FAR
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i think another interesting thing is that we can have like sort of half dreams while not being fully asleep yet. like i often have this sort of vivid mental "hallucinations" while struggling to sleep. and while in that state its more like stream of consciousness thinking instead of fully dreaming, but it looks the same as dreams in my mind. also sometimes you get the same completely hallucinated senses like in dreams, like a sudden loud bang or explosion that shakes you up, even though in reality that didn't happen
Lucid dreaming is so interesting to me. I've had many times where I have become aware of dreaming but every single time as soon as that happened it became less real-feeling to me.
@@HoneyDoll894also exploding head syndrome! It’s not as scary as it sounds but it’s when you’re falling asleep when you hallucinate a sudden loud noise and you question whether it was real or not. It used to scare me until I realized it was a thing and there’s a name for it. With me it’s sometimes someone shouting or a big crash.
In my opinion, I think dreams are a recreation of life the subconscious mind makes when the conscious mind is absent. The subconscious mind is constantly being fed, images, feelings, and thoughts every second your awake. But it’s in the background. When you’re asleep, it is able to produce thoughts in the foreground. That’s why dreams can be strange and confusing because you’re seeing things you’ve imagined or seen before. And running off memory makes things a bit hazy. This is also why dreams can have “meanings” because it’s a reflection of the things you feel during waking hours.
When my dreams get strange or if I have a recurring dream, I become lucid. I almost always wake myself up, but I recently started trying to control my dreams. It’s starting to work a little. My lucid dreams are spontaneous, I’ve never tried it intentionally.
I have been interested in dreams for my whole life. For the last few years, I've been writing about my dreams, and I try to analyse and interpret them as well. For the last two years especially, my dreams have been getting even crazier than they already were (even though dreams were already the strangest part of life for me). I mostly attribute this to the fact that dream content seems to reflect what happens to you during the day. Since I spend a lot of time thinking about dreams, my dreams started to be about dreams, or dreaming, and that just pulls out a whole new level of craziness in dreams.
Here's an example from last week (crazy dreams also happen really often for me):
I was laying in bed, reading about a very old dream (SPOILER: this was already inside the dream). This dream I was reading about really didn't seem familiar, but as I was trying to remember the dream, I found myself experiencing it. I was driving on the highway, when people started driving in the wrong direction. I found out that the road was full of arrows, all in different directions, some of them even telling you to turn around, even though this was in the middle of the highway. Then I found myself back in bed, reading. The highway part felt like an ordinary dream, even though it was nested inside another dream, it was supposed to be a really old dream, and I didn't remember it. I read further but I still couldn't remember it. Then I arrived at a part where I started interpreting (this old dream that I still couldn't remember). I saw a lot of descriptive words, some of them I didn't even know, even though I was supposed to have written this myself. But it also was hard to read because it was dark. I turned on my light, then I closed my eyes. This was one of those lamps that takes a second to turn on, but after three seconds I still didn't see anything. If it had turned on, I would have seen light through my eyelids. I opened my eyes to see what was going on. But at that moment, when my eyes opened, in a snap, I was fully awake. My light was not at all turned on, and my diary was nowhere near my bed.
Dreams on this level of craziness happen to me pretty irregularly, but on average, I would still say multiple times a month. I think it's very fascinating how strange dreams can get, and I definitely recommend writing about your dreams if you're interested in these kinds of things (writing dreams down also helps with remembering them more often and more clearly).
I think when we sleep, our brains are reorganizing the information stored in our brains since the last time we slept like moving memories from short term to long term. Our dreams is partly a side effect. In the old days, we used to Defrag hard drives. If you paid attention to the process, you would realize that Defragging is very messy process. And that is why we don't used that process anymore. Can you imagine parts going from one side of the brain to the other side, and it had to pass through or effects the visual part of the brail. I'm pretty sure that the brain tries to prevents trauma by giving context to what you are seeing. if the brain didn't do this, the things that you dream about will give you trauma.
I think dreams are a way for our brains to organize information and memories. Maybe they also help us confront anxieties fears in a safe way as well.
I see dreams as a consequence of brains that can consider counterfactuals; we've got this equipment that can say 'yeah but what would I see if I were standing here tomorrow?' and that is some wild mechanisms we've got running. And then I suspect that we sort of 'exercise' these systems when we sleep, for some reason. I would love more of a model of why!
I see dreams as being akin to art, and assign them meaning accordingly, but no more... and sometimes they can be super blunt art.
Edit to add: I think human dreams are so weird because of the systems for counterfactuals; animal dreams may well be replays/rehearsals in a more direct sense, like young human dreams.
I have PTSD and my dreams feel like preparation for the future. I'm taking my days' worth of information, new and old, and I'm reorganizing it to better prepare for future situations. All of my dreams feature "flight" as an overall theme if we can call it that. It feels like an AI generated animation with the input: present memories to better protect myself in the future. This vagueness creates a slightly unhinged but fluid interpretation.
(End of the vid comment. Again, sorry for length.)
My first vivid lucid dream was a crash course. All my senses working, no idea where I was, freaking out a bit.
The sky was purplish-blue of rolling storm clouds, some multi-colored flashes.
Really shortened version of events: I was forced outside a castle where hooded figures tied me down and vivisected me. I'll never forget the hollow feeling of my organs outside my body. I woke up crying in the dark of my room not wanting to get up thinking what's left of my organs could fall out. Since then, I've had lucid dreams almost every time I sleep. A lot of crazy nightmares I'd never want to go back to, a lot of places I wish I could've stayed. A lot of pain. If there's one thing I'd like to turn off it's feeling pain. A year or so after I started having them, one dream I ended up skydiving with someone and my parachute didn't open. I landed next to a kids playground and was mangled. The few minutes I was crawling before I died/woke up was horrible.
Many hundreds of deaths, amazing places, different planets and alien races, past, future, alternate realities, magic, advanced tech, ancient civilizations, traveling through the cosmos watching things form. Some dreams lasting years in dream-time despite only being asleep for 5-10 minutes, but it still takes me a moment to remember who and where I am afterwards. Kept dream journals, tape journals recording by voice, lost 7 years worth of them due to a family member not paying (pocketed the money) for our family storage unit after moving to another state. I rarely wrote out any of them down after the move.
The rarest dreams are ones where a story plays out with several people. I'm each person up to one certain point, then it restarts and I'm one of the others going through the same story. Get hit when someone dropped something from a glider above me. Hear them scream down but can't hear them. Wave sand yell back. Move on. Restarted, I was the person with the glider trying to grab a water pouch attached to the frame, it dropped, see the person below get hit, yell that I'm sorry, person waved and yelled back. That's when it dawned, that was me and what I did before. Each interaction was what I said and did for each person.
I wish my mental health wasn't all bleh. I get easily frustrated and overwhelmed (PTSD from family stuff.) I could write so many damn books and short stories. It's annoying.
Thanks for reading if ya did. Hope you have a great week, stranger-people.
Just found this channel and am loving the content! I have been able to lucid dream since I could remember, with a distinct memory of my first lucid dream happening from a recurring nightmare that I was being chased. One day i kinda just realized I had been through this and needed to do something different so called for and basically summoned my grandpa to fight the monster. From this perspective of me just being able to do this for so long, I’ve always just seen dreams as our minds running away with our lived experiences and influenced by our imagination.
Dreams are the best and worst parts of my subconscious going through preconceptions, imagining things without bound, occasionally mingling with other dimensions (yes I realize it’s not entirely scientific)
I always thought dreaming was just a way our living bodies have learned "hey you kniw how i could add a whole 1/3 length to my life span? If we just lay still so i dont need to hunt and gather 24/7"
I feel like it’s pretty simple to conclude your brain doesn’t just turn off just because you’re asleep, and since you’re not actively conscious your brain conjures random tidbits from recent memories and it uses those to supplement not experiencing an active consciousness. Idk it doesn’t seem to crazy to me, sometimes dreams can be interpreted as having meaning but also the one dream I’ve never forgot was when I shot a rocket launcher at a giant shark after watching jaws and constantly playing goldeneye.
I had for years, a reoccurring dream that I had purchased an old derelict house that was in dire need of repair.
During said repairs I discovered an entire second level that could not be seen from the street outside.
I would cautiously explore this level that was often (in dreamland) a living quarters.
I would find a static-filled television on, or a simmering frying pan on the stove-but never did I find the occupants.
On other occasions I would find rooms full of antiques, and look through drawers full of miscellaneous junk while always aware of a presence in the quarters-ghost like.
It haunted me.
It actually led me to write a book called Fade to Pale in 2007, if for no other reason but to cure me of the nightly anxiety that came with the nocturnal return to this house…
Dreams are amazing and important.
They led me to becoming a published writer…as disturbing as they were.
Don’t dismiss them, embrace their insistence and involve them in your evolution.
They’re you, after all.
Sometimes I find it useful to think of a dream and say to my own mind, "Don't send me this dream. Tell me what you want me to know." Then I go into a calmly expectant attitude and wait. Sometimes I get an insight that feels like it's what my mind was trying to tell me.
I had an idea that our souls are bored at night when our bodies have to sleep. So they wander off to the other side of the planet to inherit the bodies of waking people and have total different lives and adventures. Then they leave those bodies as the sun cycles back. They return to their old host body and some of those memories transfer over. Thus when waking up, the host remember those as dreams.
I regularly experience dreams where I'm not even a character, they're about as common as the alternative... is that strange? 😮
Lively before bed video 😴
Dreams are indeed strange. Most of the time I don't remember my dreams but occasionally I do. The wild thing is, the ones that I can vaguely remember were so vivid and interesting and seemed to demonstrate easy confidence and abilities that I can't seem to come close to in my waking hours; it's just so bizarre and it's an endless source of befuddlement to me. The scenes and processes I'm able to create in my dreams while asleep, while not even trying, aren't remotely available to me in my waking hours. I mean, I just find this bizarre. No matter what I dream about, I can barely remember them ever, with vague impressions at the absolute best.
What a mystery. I don't have any disturbing dreams that I can recall, I just have unusual dreams- some realistic and some very fantastical experiences. Hell maybe it is astral travel, who the hell knows???? I mean, folks believe me when I tell you some of this shi* is bizarre....
I just wish I could retain a tiny percentage of this kind of creative ability when I'm awake. It blows my mind what I do in these dreams. I give huge speeches, I've painted great pictures, I've created incredibly detailed scenarios with full dialogue and absolute reality sense. Every time I've been under in one of these scenarios that I can vaguely remember afterwards, it was completely real to me. I've never been able to lucid dream. When I was in these alternate realities I buy it hook line & sinker, I've never ever felt it wasn't my true reality, and when I woke up it was a very, very fast but and momentarily bizarre change.. but within that moment I'm already starting to forget it. I can't understand any of this so maybe others can 😭.
I don't know frens.... I don't know how to explain it. It's like a whole other part of my brain suddenly comes alive the moment I'm fully asleep, which transports me into an alternate reality, completely vivid and detailed, sometimes identical to this world here and sometimes pretty different.... I just wish I could remember more of them.
Oh.. okay. No one's having dreams of spider dogs and flesh based suits fighting in a shifting environment with fireworks going off?
The hypothesis I have believed the last decade or so: The mind is sorting through the memories of the last few days trying to decide what is important. But they tend to get jumbled together and my (conscious?) mind is trying to make it seem like a story.
This makes sense when you consider how dementia works. Basically since your brain doesn't remember what's happening, it tries to cobble something together based on context. Ex a man who used to work at a hospital but later became a patient there for his dementia, would see himself in the hospital and "figure out" that he was working there. One woman who needed to be fed soft foods saw the food, heard "feeding" and figured she was feeding her baby daughter, because she couldn't remember that her daughter had grown up and was now the one feeding her.
Dreams, to me, often feel like a mishmash of things that happened recently and worries I have tor the near future
I think dreams are a way of processing events that you’ve been shoving to the side and avoiding thinking about. They’ve been on your mind alot but you’ve never sat down and processed these thoughts, memories and/or emotions
I think dreams are a subconscious way for your brain to express emotions, worries, or stresses that may be bothering us without our knowledge. It's a way to work its way through things or maybe just a way to keep the mind from boredom while we sleep. As someone who remembers my dreams in detail almost every morning, I find some are manifestations of deep-rooted feelings or worries and others are an adventure into I don't know what.
How amazing it is that whereas we have figured out how to make AI, the best minds _still_ do not know what dreams are.
I can remember two specific childhood dreams, and I'm also pretty sure both of them occurred before the age of 7.
My last dream tonight (or while napping around noon, I'm not sure) was basically a combination of a vacation I just came home from and university-related traveling I'll do soon.
I also had no nightmares in years. I do occasionally (once to thrice a year, I'd say) dream things that unsettle me when thinking about them after waking, but I do not experience fear in dreams or waking up from them.
Also I have a friend who's only dream is the same recurring nightmare of being chased through a building with two staircases.
Very good video, a lot of reference and different ideas.
I think we just have to dream, I don’t believe we can just shut our brains off so we have no choice but to let our brains do their thing
Interesting, so you think our brain has to do *something* in order to not die and dreams are the result?
You're a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you.
I think dreams may be the consistent activation of neural pathways to prevent atrophy.
I’m convinced lately that dreams are the brain’s attempt to construct reality without the “control” or validation from sensory stimuli. In essence, wakefulness is a controlled hallucination, and dreams are uncontrolled hallucinations. (This is inspired largely by Being You, by Anil Seth.)
To me, Dreams a like, being awake with sleep paralysis, sneezing in bright light, cilantro tasting like soap, optical illusions etc. Just small inconveniences that do not effect you ability to survive until propagation.
The brain also do weird stuff when lacking oxygen, if you hit you head or you have a low blood pressure.
Paused in the beginning response: I’ve read they’re a way for your subconscious to kind of fine tune your emotions. Like either processing emotions you’re struggling with already or putting you through your paces for theoretical scenarios. I don’t necessarily attribute much direct meaning anymore but sometimes if I can recall certain bits, I might analyzes if they’re tied to my waking life in way.
One function of dreams is probably to process and calibrate our experience of reality to even out extreme and banal experiences, as the brain is constantly adapting, which we take for granted.
I've always had really vivid dreams & nightmares.
I think it's your brain processing thoughts & feelings that happened that day. I feel like it tries to explain things similar to religious stories where they're messages behind the event(s) happening in the dream. Even if you don't remember the dream itself, the feeling will stick with your new understanding. (This is my current thoughts, and subject to change 😅)
2:23
“I want your unbiased opinion, what do you think dreams are?”
- Animals like us have died since the beginning of time (as we know it), it could likely be a rehearsal process of this death phenomenon.
The universe and nature is bigger than a particular species survival.
Yeah, which begs the question of why we would hallucinate about it regularly.
The universe is bigger than our species, but we're not.
I came up with the hypothesis that my brain is just playing with ideas/memories/whatever and I only seem to remember the dreams that make a bit of sense. The ones that are completely nonsensical I can't coalesce a sentence around to describe them, so they evaporate. I've heard that we form memories in our sleep, so this could come out of re-running events and trying to connect them with "hooks" or associations so we can remember them later.
Most of my dreams are boring dreams about work, even thought I don't work anymore. Sometimes I know what I'm doing and feel secure, other times not and feel lost.
From ages ~25 to ~60 I I had awareness of dreaming and could interact with it in a semi-rational way. if being chased I could stop and confront the chaser.
I almost never dream about people that are alive, but after death they appear, from time to time for several months, as I remember them about midway through our relationship.
My dream persona is between late twenties to early thirties, I'm never older than that and I'm pushing 70.
I dream in color and can't even understand dreaming in black and white. If I think about dreams right after waking up, I have pretty good recall about the last set.
I've told hilarious jokes in dreams and wake up to find they make no sense what so ever
From my half-understood interest in machine learning, I think dreams are generally the experienced effects of the brain pruning its network to be more efficient - essentially consolidating what it's learned. Younger me also thinks that the supernatural also uses dreams to communicate in some manner. Current me has no idea what to make of this belief, but a lot of memories of experiences that seemed very profound long ago. Looking forward to the rest of the video and getting some neuroscience perspective!
Does anyone else sometimes start dreaming while falling asleep, like within minutes? Usually I also startle about falling and wake up before landing.
First? Anyway it is nice to watch an informative video about dreams just before going to sleep.
It was allllllll part of the plan.
I love the AI background! Makes so much sense for this video, but I wouldn't mind seeing it more videos :)
I personally think we could develop our "imagination" or internal eye and learn to project when we're awake, just like it does when we dream.
I remember literally seeing images flash before my eyes sometimes when I as a kid was imagining something. It looked exactly like one of those "inverted Jesus" illusions, it was even black and white for some reason.
I don't know what the purpose would be, but choose-your-own-adventure audio books would be a lot of fun :D
Hmmmm, dreaming has been a huge part of my life. like most others, I started to forget my dreams and lucid dream less. One day I found some books on Tibetan Dream and Sleep Yoga. That was an interesting time in my life, opened my mind to some strange concepts. anyway, my favorite dream experience was being lucid/aware while transitioning from waking to sleep after practicing that for a while. I'd done it lots during my first job, well on breaks occasionally and on the rides there and back (I was carpooling/not driving). One breaktime I'd layed down for a nap in the breakroom since they were ok with it, since everyone was somewhere else for break it worked for me. I heard what sounded like an incomprehensible or alien language. sounded like a whisper at the back of my neck. weirdest dream related experience of mine, and I have alot. mind you I use to be aware/lucid during that phase before as a kid, didn't quite think about it much, but it was usually a rolling sensation of somekind or imagining being on a swing or some other kinda odd sensation to slip me into dreamland, never had weird shizit like that poppin up lol. anyway, hope that's a fun tidbit. the first message was when you told me to pause :P
Can you still easily enter a lucid dream from waking or do you feel like its a skill that needs to be maintained?
@@consciouscactus it's easier if you maintain the skill/practice. there are so many methods though. with intent being one of them, I'd never discourage anyone from practicing lucid dreaming. it comes naturally to many of us.
(Sorry for the length. I'm just thorough with my thoughts is all. Also I've dealt with insomnia and vivid lucid dreams almost every time I sleep since I was about 12yo. I'm 36 now. I've thought a lot about it.)
My guess is it's the brain trying to reinforce neural pathways (or however it's named) to ensure connections between neurons are still functioning, similar to how signal are sent through the body to make sure it's still connected and receiving singal.
We've all been still for a while and our body twitches or jerks out of nowhere, or we hear about it from maybe a significant other who noticed it. Maybe they woke us up when it was clear we were having a nightmare, making noises, taking, and/or moving around.
Those connection in the brain crossing frequently used pathways can trigger both sets of memory information and try to process it. Since we're not using our senses like when awake (focus our eyes and depth perception, find cause of sounds, touch etc) it tries to reconcile that lack of information with basically daydreamed "what ifs" triggering other pathways to suit the new information with previous experience mixed in.
Do something too often, it takes up real estate in your brain. Since it can't defrag like a computer, it just reinforces that pathway connection to fire when others with something related is recognized. Like hmm.. which is more efficient: building a electric station for each house with one pole, one line each or one big station with intermittent poles with multiples lines breaking of down the line. Think of each time you've been obsessed with something, a hobby, a TV/book series, a song and EVERYTHING even remotely similar or familiar from that thing triggers memories of it.
i think dreams are a combination of our memories and feelings, as well as our subconscious desires and fears
2:34 Based on what types dreams I've had, I don't see them as much more than a mashup of recurring thoughts and fears.
Whatever it is that the brain does during sleep, maybe sometimes that process activates both the centers that control memories and synthesis? This also leaves me with the question of whether "sleep activity" is random noise (which would make sense as a means of unstressing and re-stressing all parts of the brain equally) or something more specialized.
I think dreams are our way of figuring things out and healing sometimes. Other times I think they're meaningless.
I had a dream that my family was rich and we had a whole room just filled with stacks of money and loose gold coins. My dad was a snake when I went into the money room and he chased me and tried to hurt me. I had that dream reoccurring for about 5 years til I just stopped having it. It wasn't an every night dream but probably once a year at least.
I never wanted to analyze it and I was only 4 when I started having the dream.
It's very memorable to me. Definitely not a good one.
Does anyone else not see faces in their dreams? It’s hard to explain, it’s like someone might be right next to me talking to me in a dream. Then when I remember the dream I knew it was them by all the other context but I never actually remember seeing their face. 🤷♂️🤣🤣
I think I have a parallel life in my dreams. And I have predicted the future in my childhood dreams. Might be a communication between my parallel realities. Or it's just the garbage of my thoughts, where I get to experience weird, akward, scary, magical happenings in my dreams, instead of having to experience them in reality. I almost always remember my dreams and I have them every night.
Dreams are: Spinal fluid gushing through the brain to flush out old neurotransmitters. Either some of them trigger a second time on the way out, or newly produced transmitters are flushed off course and hit unintended synapses - creating random images and ideas.
The brain is never without activity. For example, during sleep the glymphatic system which actually organize waves of activity to help shunt wastes into the perivenous space. I imagine some of this activity can result in sensory experiences. However, more significant is that before these periods of deep clearance occurring in the deep stages of sleep, REM sleep causes heightened brain activity. Some of the literature I've read has suggested that this REM activity is actually important for stimulating the clearance during these other stages of sleep. This activity could also produce sensory experiences.
tl:dr Dreams are a byproduct of normal sleep processes related to waste clearance.
my dreams are largely a mashup of the most interesting things i did in the day, which is usually whatever game i've been playing most recently, such as vrchat with everyone being fursonas with meta conversation about avatar customization
Occasionally it's been games that have no way of making sense in first person perspective like FTL: Faster than Light, or a cycle of waking up late for work, sometimes in a cycle like Groundhog Day, but in a home I haven't lived in in years (this is probably unhealthy)
I'm a believer of collective unconscious. Our dreams I feel do speak to us, but those interpretations I think are up to ourselves. I'm not sure if there's another world or anything like that, but it kinda shows how our psyche can manipulate our perspective, like our waking life is much like the dream world, we just aren't as aware of that aspect of our consciousness. Maybe it's just us reprocessing our days though, idk.
my dream understanding is that its a part of the brain sort of disconnecting the conscious from the body and senses outside. then theres also disconnecting some other parts like critical thinking or checks. then what happens is the brain somehow does its memory pruning thing, where neuron connections are disconnected or strengthened.
however what I dont know is why the brain needs to have consciousness for that. my little hypothesis is that that dream state is required for the memory pruning
There's a theory that I find pretty compelling - that we sort of create dreams only after we wake up.
There was _something_ going on in your brain while you slept, sure, and some of it probably involved sensory neurons firing up, as well as "activating" your memory - so for example, you may have never have met that celebrity, but you know of their existence, as well as things about them (even something as simple as their look is technically a memory), and those make it possible to dream about them.
But whatever goes on in your brain during sleep doesn't actually result in you experiecing your dream _while you slept._ Instead you get those really random sensations during that time - and then after you wake up, your mind and brain try to make sense of them and involuntarly create images, emotions, a story... that you feel must have been there during sleep and you're now remembering them - when in fact, your "dream" was something else entirly, that even our brain doesn't have a way of conveying and has to translate it for us.
I don't believe that because sometimes I can tell when I'm dreaming and even when I'm close to waking. I have even perceived my physical surroundings while dreaming and known it was from the real world. If anything my understanding and knowledge of my dream rapidly fades once I'm out of it.
I think in life we blindly climb through time, with feelings finding things to latch on to like associations.
My dreams definitely let me know how to live and help me process things.
To me its Earth and 1 human lifespan that is small, and my dreams are coming from something bigger, something connected to other lives I am/will/have/could have lived, could being potentials. I wouldn't call either meaningless but my dreams are the biggest part of what makes things in life feel meaningful to me anyway.
Just last night I dreamt of how I want to be a good husband for my wife, im about to turn 32. I still dream often but I don't remember as much as I used to.
Im not sure what comes first, dream or feeling but it seems to me, dream.
People don't know where their motivations come from and most of the mapped brain is subconscious, well, I think dreams are a part of what gives us motivations. With feelings than being like a thermometer of if we are going in the right direction. If anything I think sleep is the most important part and the awake part comes as a result.
It seems to me conscious free will doesn't exist and one is most truly themselves deep in their subconscious.
I sure know I just had a good sleep and feel great, better than I can make myself feel with waking actions.
Well my dreams really want me to practice being in a public place where all the toilets are broken.
For me, dreams are, in a way, a recombination of elements that are crucial in comprehending problems which a given subject is facing. I would call it brainstorming (if I was a brain, that's what I would --taking hallucinogens-- I mean, sleeping). "A problem" in this case would be anything that involves attention - on one hand, things like our thoughts on a prevalent topic, or a noticeable experience. Some "combinations" stick better than others - so, kind of like the problems we face when we are awake, we can be sent on a strike of ideas (daydream-ish dream), or a strike of obstacles (nightmares). Or neither, and just go through the day - in this analogy, have a less coherent dream.
When I recall my dreams, I usually can make sense of it only if I remember the entire thing, and I also need to adjust for changing sleep phases - my guess is that some areas manage the information, and others do what humans are best at - making stories out of unrelated things.
Onward to section 2!
The wildest ones I have are purely geometric
A line, a square, white, black. Oddly, they are PACKED with emotions - a black line is in a field of white surrounded by endless dark... but it's getting longer! it almost tears into the void... THE ANXIETY SKYROCKETS
until the line turns into a circle out of the blue, and the tension drops entirely... huh
AM I THE ONLY ONE?? I NEED TO KNOW
Sometimes I get dreams that are *like* an idea, but the visuals are very limited - if I am working on a task, but I can't figure it out, I might just get a dream that *feels* like I'm working on it, a little backstage - a feeling of solving an equation, a feeling of struggle to imagine a model... but the visuals are popping in and out, swapping between eachother - but I usually wake up after an 2-3 hours of such sleep.
The way that the most metabolically demanding organ goes crazy each night and how this can cause stark emotional changes seems to indicate that they either a) have an adaptive value or b) must be the result of an adaptation. Now, given that much of the brain is geared towards processing memories and goal directed efforts, maybe it is using simulations to test predictive processes and process possible solutions to 1, consolidate memory and 2, enhance more robust motivational systems. In other words, your subconscious processing your life.
I believe that dreams are an expression of the subconscious mind.
Dreams are another reality that is different from waking reality, with its own rules and principles. From the perspective of dream reality, the waking world is the weird place.
I think dreams are the combination between our imagination and emotions
I think the purpose of dreams may fall in the realm of preparing the psyche to new situations. But it only can do this using memories and common thought paths. The weird and incoherent aspects of dreams are probably related to brain chemistry during sleep. This guess is based on nothing.
I think dreams are the brain releasing dmt exciting the sensory overload of the world around us while the brain is simultaneously trying to interpret information and solidify memory
I had a dream I was making coffee, and someone in my dream told me "the inventor of the coffee filter was a woman" as I reached for the filter. when I woke up, I looked it up and it was indeed a woman. I've never known that. dreams are something else that's for sure.
I think dreams are our operating systems emptying their trash bins
I view dreams as our brains just wandering through thoughts and especially memories that are distributed across our brains. It’s hard for me to see them as having any function, really. Maybe nightmares might help people be more cautious and social (as we often like to share our dreams), so perhaps there is some social benefit to dreaming?
Dreams are part of the brains washing itself. Or we dream while while it washes. Dreams for the mind are just a defrag of the memory. These are the theory’s i think are most reasonable.
Okay, I paused to tell you what I think dreams are. I think the best idea is that they're the brain trying to integrate new experiences and memories into the rest of your memories. This explains why some dream subjects recur in similar but not exact dreams. It also helps explain why we need to sleep in the first place. Sleep gives both the body and the mind a chance to recuperate, heal, grow, and build.
Okay, after completing the video. You want to know about my dreams? Of course I don't remember all of them. One of the ones I remember the most was when I was in a car crash and died. I became a ghost and was able to fly around That was fun, but the longer it went on, the harder it became to fly. I kept bouncing off the ground, trying to fly higher, but it wasn't working. And then I went to my mother's house and saw her, but she couldn't see me, and I became very sad about it.
Some of my recurring dream subjects is going back to school. In one dream, I dreamed about being back in my grade school, and roaming around the halls with all the other kids in the halls and classrooms. And then alien spaceships come along and attack the school! ;-) Other school dreams specifically rotate around high school or college days. Haven't had a grade school dream in a long time. But I did have a recent dream or two about going back to college, and living in an off-campus apartment/dorm.
Another recurring motif in my dreams is about getting to work on time. But this is about my experiences as a call center person, and more recently my work-at-home job as a help desk agent. These dreams are often about large, ridiculous call centers with long rows of tables and people working at computer workstations on those tables, instead of being separated in cubicles, and I have trouble finding my computer so I can start work. Or the work-at-home variation has me going off somewhere, and then struggling to get back home to start work, often with a ridiculous mode of transportation like sliding on a sled or even a piece of cardboard down the roads or sidewalks, even though there's no ice or snow on the roads. Even if I make it back home, I have trouble getting the computer to boot up and let me log into work like I need to.
Another particularly memorable dream I had involved going to a large metal building, like at the fairgrounds or a flea market, and I'd be in this big cafeteria-style room with tables and benches for people to eat at. I wandered away from that room and found smaller booths and businesses along very narrow hallways. But as went deeper into the building, all the people and booths disappeared, and I found endless layers of fabric like sheets or vertically-situated carpets closing in on me, making it harder for me to get out as I pushed through them. And then I woke up. I haven't repeated that dream, but I still remember it. Brrr...the ending was so claustrophobic.
One of my high school/shopping mall dreams ended by me being chased by ghosts in a country field while I was driving some kind of antique car. But near the end, I realized I was dreaming, so I turned the car around in the field to face the ghosts, and they disappeared!
Another dream I recently had was about me going to this hospital. I wanted to see someone who was at the hospital. But there weren't any actual hallways in the hospital. You had to go through room after room, as each room was connected to another room, much like some sort of maze. That one ended weird, too. I made it to a back door of the building, and when I went through that door, I find spaceships in the classic rocketship-style, pointing towards the sky with fins at the bottom, and these were big ships, but I had also been transported to some time in the future, hundreds or thousands of years, not exactly sure how far. Going back through the door brought me back to the present.
I had this dream on 8/24/23. It is very dark, but I see a left hand holding a set of keys. There is a key fob which is rectangular and seems to be make of clear plastic.
ChatGPT and Bard AI both give dream interpretations. Here’s is part of Bard’s interpretation: Because it is dark means you are exploring something unknown to you. The keys represent your ability to access different parts of your life. The left hand indicates you are exploring your subconscious mind. The key fob represents your sense of control. The clear plastic key fob suggests that you are feeling confident and secure in your ability to do this. The fact that you are left-handed in real life suggests that this dream is particularly meaningful for you.
Overall, the dream suggests that you are exploring your subconscious mind or intuition and that you are looking for clarity or understanding about something in your life. You may be feeling a sense of empowerment or control as you explore these hidden parts of yourself.
I have kept a dream diary since the early 1980s.
What do I think about dreaming? The same I think about experiencing the world... It's all just part of the living and I have no idea if it means something beyond that... I'd love to know though.
Perhaps it's meant to reinforce memories to keep them in storage, or maybe it's a process we evolved to exercise or refresh systems responsible for neurotransmitters and hormones and involves the synapses in the brain. I'm sure it's part of a necessary maintenance for the nervous system.
I think dreams can do all of the above and more we just need to train and practice it.
I always heard they are a way our brains process information that wasn't processed properly during the day, but I don't really get what that means functionally tbh.
Also, this is so interesting. I'm 32 and still have super vivid dreams. I'm fully aware I'm dreaming and can make decisions in my dreams, I just have trouble exicuting my decisions, i.e. trying to walk in a dream being like trying to walk through mud.
I often find it terrifying because my dreams are normally nightmares. I also get occasional sleep paralysis, sleep talking/screaming/panic attacks/crying etc, and while having sleep paralysis I get hearing hallucinations as well. Its like people are speaking to each other in my room. It is so scary. Always feels like I'm loosing my mind.
I think dreams are your brain assuming a reality behind the noise happeningw hile your systems are shutting down. I think dreams are useful and analyzeable in that your brain will use it's own beliefs and information base to interpret random noise. If you're scared and stressed as you go to sleep, you may dream of being chased. If you're angry, you may dream of fighting. People I think interpret this as their brain "trying to tell them" something, but I think it's more that your brain is literally in the state of fear or stress regardles of your own awareness, and then interprets things through that lense. It doesn't have some seperate intent and isn't actively and intentionally sorting information for you, I don't think.
return to the "waiting room" in 4th dimension - to a "sandbox", that is closer to your real one than in 3rd dimension, during daytime. So, actually we are not unconscious, on the contrary.
You're living an alternate reality. Those times where you seem to be running on autopilot means that you are being controlled in someone else's dream.
lol
So, some AI company ( I forget which one) recently figured out how to reconstitute brain signals into images using a neural net type thing. I am simultaneously intensely curious to see the results of this process on the dreaming mind, and deeply unsettled by the potential cosmic horror of what we might see in this portal to an area of nature that feels 'off limits'. What do you think? Would you look?
Oh dear, it's Meta...
Left out that Buddha means " The Awakened" i.e. from the dream
Don't use AI for the backgrounds as of yet, searching images still works way better...
Is lucid dreaming harmful?
Nah, you’ll be okay
why so less views? shadow banned?
1:49
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Is sleeping unconscious?
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I see dreams as very, let's say "primitive" teachings
When a child asks where babies come from, you can tell them about the bees and the birds and pumpkins seeds in your belly, or you can read a medical book to the child
Humans are more complicated than that however(be it a good or bad thing)
We don't work solely on emotions, or on technical things
Emotions are too vague and personal, while technical explanations are too cold, not that they are wrong, but books have covers for a reason
Hey look at me I typed a bunch and said nothing, neat.
While I like to think dreams are meaningful I have no reason to believe it. its kind of subjective
🤪😴💤
i hate dreams
why do all these video start with a history lesson, who gives a shit what ancient peoples thought about it
Does understanding the mechanisms involved require people to view dreams as meaningless? Nihilism is lazy.
I have had dreams predict my future home & job a couple years before it even happened! I also dream of my dead loved ones. I asked my uncle “are t you supposed to be dead?” He didn’t answer me
Maybe that's silly to ask this question in a yt comment section, but there is one aspect of my dreams, or rather falling asleep, that always fascinated me.
Im a very 'visual' person - im able to picture anything in my mind, i think with images, i learn visually, remeber very distant memories with precise visual details, love to draw or paint so on.
I also have an anxiety disorder and one of symptoms that i suffer from is issues with falling asleep. I think thats why i learned to monitor my body and mind carefully, when i lie awake, trying to sleep.
Sometimes, when i'm trying to fall asleep but feel my brain is too active and i get a stream of words in my mind, i try to quiet them and focus on some image. If it works, my brain seems to turn that image into a dream? The image 'comes to life' starts to change its elements, like characters or sth move. Its like watching a movie inside my mind, i cant affect the image with my consciousness but i am conscious and aware that... Something is streaming images into my awake mind. And then, I slowly slip away, losing the awareness and fall asleep.
I talked with some people about it, but none seem to have similar experiences as i. However, my partner, who is a musician, says that sometimes, when they are about to fall asleep, they hear sounds or music.
Is this a named or/and studied phenomenon in neurology? I'd love to read about it more. Does anyone else also experience something similar?
I get similar "dream movie stream" experience from a different source! In my case, it can be anything - music, image, scenario, ambient sounds or speech (different parts of the brain for each of those)! If I focus mainly on one of those through the day, sometimes a general idea "comes to life", as you put it.
But each obeys different rules - some variants are really detailed, while others are incredibly vague... and they never happen both at once!
I wonder how it feels to have a visual *movie* going on like that - they're the vague ones for me!
though, too bad on your anxiety part... looks like you got workaround for some parts though! gj