Dreams and auditory hallucinations, and a poll, oh my!

[capri0mni]

A couple of weeks ago, on the radio, I heard an interview with a scientist talking about what dreams are for and what actually happens in our brains while we're dreaming.

...It turns out, about 70% of our dreams are sad/bad, and brain scans done while people are sleeping show something of the reasons for that, or at least, they show the mechanics of it.

Turns out that the limbic part of the brain, the part that processes emotion, is highly active, especially that part of the limbic system that deals with threats and fears, and our reasoning part of the brain is completely shut down. Also, that part of the visual cortex that interprets what we see is highly active, even though the part of the brain that takes in visual information is shut down. And since there's no logic happening, there's no editor saying: "No, hold on, your Aunt Matilda never did have three heads, or wings... You're probably just seeing a wierd shadow; look again, and get back to me."

The theory is, now, according to this interviewed scientist, since all mammals dream, this wierdness must help with our survival, somehow, and that it's some way of actually practice for ways to deal with threats and fears without actually putting ourselves in harm's way -- sort of like phobia therapy, where people get over their phobias by exposing themselves to it. Dreams may also work for our subconscious a bit like the liver works for our blood, filtering out those fears that aren't really important, so that we can concentrate on what is important in our waking lives.

---

The night before last (actually, it was well into the morning, since I was suffering from insomnia), as I was drifting off to sleep, I was having auditory hallucinations in my right ear, only. It wasn't like my usual, imagined voices, as when I'm daydreaming about fictional characters, and what they say to each other: I was physically hearing the voices in my right ear, and they were loud enough to drown out the radio I was trying to listen to with my left ear. FWIW, I was hearing a crowd -- like there was a party going on, and people were laughing and talking loudly to be heard over each other, and there might have been some spirited discussion (or three) going on, but I didn't recognize any particular voice as that of someone I knew, or make out what the general subject(s) of conversation might have been. It was a bit disconcerting, but it didn't particularly scare me, or anything, because I knew it wasn't real. And there weren't any fights or threats of violence, or anything; a good time was being had by all (And I was definitely awake, I've done enough lucid dreaming exercises to recognize that difference).

...But I guess now, I know where my story ideas come from: there's a crowded convention hall in the back left corner of my brain, three doors down, next to the snack bar.

When I finally did slip into real dreaming, we were in a spaceship that was also a suburban house, with paisley-patterned wall-paper and lace curtains on the windows, and we had a portable rocket engine, that, while cumbersome, could be carried from place to place as long as you had 4 to 6 strapping people to manuever it. We would steer by pointing it out the different windows of the house. And it somehow pulled us in that direction, rather than pushing us away from it...

And here's where the fear and that active limbic system comes in:

We had to make an emergency landing on the surface of a mostly volcanic planet-- what land masses there were were floating on the surface of flowing lava, and then, I spied what looked to be like a flat, grey, surface of granite, rising out of a lake. Just as I'm about to land on that stone, however, it turns out to be a shark who lunges up and tries to take a bite out of our ship... And then, I wake up for a second, before drifting back to sleep.

And here's where my limbic system shows its sense of humor: one of my crew members meets up with a little alien creature that's shaped just like a human hand: it's little legs are where the wrist would be, the face is in the "palm," and it has five appendages growing out of the top of its head, that are exactly like our five fingers. And it played a bamboo-like flute instrument on its "pinky." And it was rather friendly and nice.

---

I had another dream, this morning, that had sad/scary bits (revolving the death of an uncle that changed from something that happened decades ago to something that just happened recently), that somehow involved an epic battle between a dragon king and an ice queen, and ghosts and spirits living deep in the earth, and hauntings, and such, and it was all some tangled up with family politics and inheritance, and there was a black mourning wreath we were making, to hang over the door of the house, and I was defending my decision to decorate the wreath with pink and white dried flowers...

Frankly, If it's pretty much a given that 70% of our dreams are destined to be sad/bad, I vastly prefer those that at least show some imagination, and have me confronting dragon kings and alien lava sharks to those that simply leave me dealing with a lack of elevators, and doorways that are too narrow, you know?

---

And now, the poll:
[Poll #1175467]

Comments

[alto2.livejournal.com]

I didn't answer the freakiest dream image because there have been so many, and a lot of the images are lost to me eventually, unless I write them down (in which case, they'll often come back to me as I read through the dream). The Cybermen stalking me is obviously one, though, and another comes to mind where two guys were digging graves out behind my building, one of which was for a friend of mine, and then came around and upstairs to attack me with a drill and I don't know what else. I somehow managed to fend them off with a folding ruler. That one really freaked me out. There was also one where I was running from the police, who suspected me of my brother's murder, even though he was still very much alive, and things threatened to get violent.

They're all far enough removed from me now, though, that I don't know that I could judge one over the other (unless we give the Cybermen more points since they've appeared more than once?).

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I think any Doctor Who-related dreams always get bonus points, if only for the sheer entertainment-while-hiding-behind-the-sofa factor... ;-)

[alto2.livejournal.com]

In all honesty, "entertainment" was not remotely a word I was considering at the time! Those dreams scared the hell out of me to where I was afraid to open my front door because part of me honestly thought I'd find them outside waiting for me!

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Have you tried practicing lucid dreaming? That might help...

[alto2.livejournal.com]

I haven't. I've never really known how, in spite of occasionally looking it up online to see what people are writing/saying/etc. I'm not very good at giving myself directions for sleep, whether it's asking for story inspiration or that a certain object or symbol will tell me I'm dreaming (which is the one I seem to recall reading about).

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

The one that worked for me, just briefly, was looking around myself periodically during waking hours every day, and asking myself whether I was dreaming. Don't look for a specific symbol, just anything out of the ordinary that suggests that it isn't reality.

After I'd done that for a few weeks, I had a dream where I was being chased up the driveway of the family home by a bulldozer monster with claws and fangs and angry eyes. As I was running from it I thought "this can't be happening", and I looked around myself and realised that things were not quite right -- the houses nearby were not in the right orientation, there were parts missing from them as if they were just vague sketches of themselves. (Apparently living construction equipment was not a clue.) So I stopped running, turned around, and said "You can't hurt me, you're just a dream!" and the dream ended.

Then it backfired. I dreamed that I had been out camping with friends who owned an island on the lake where the family home was, and they brought me back in a boat. I got out of the boat onto the dock wearing my lifejacket, and walked up to the house where my mother told me my cat had died. She pointed to where the cat was lying in the grass. I went and sat beside her and thought "This can't be real -- maybe it's a dream!" but when I looked around myself I thought that every little detail was absolutely perfect, so it must have really been happening. Then the dream ended. ^^;;

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

but when I looked around myself I thought that every little detail was absolutely perfect, so it must have really been happening. Then the dream ended. ^^;;

Oh, dear.

I like the check, done every once in a while, of looking for printed/reading material, looking away, and looking back. If it stays the same, you're awake, and if it changes, you're dreaming.

I very rarely direct my dreams, per se, when I dream lucidly, or pull myself out of them, but just knowing that "it's only a dream" helps me to observe them without panicking -- like watching a thriller movie, or something.

Though once, I dreamt I was being chased by someone armed with a plastic fork, and I turned around and showed him that I wasn't a threat, and we ended up getting into a deep conversation about our plans and hopes for the future, and the threat ended up being a friend.

Usually, I find asking a question of my dreams is more effective than telling them what I want. The same is generally true for waking life, ftm.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I've never come anywhere close to the point of asking, during the dream, if it could really be happening, so I don't know that it would work (though that tends to be my general stance just because I get SO deep into the freakiest dreams that waking up requires some serious effort). Might be worth a shot, though.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Well, it does take several weeks to months of practice (during your waking life) to get to the point of even recognizing that you are in a dream. The practice I like is the reading test I described above, because you can do it pretty much anywhere, and no one else will know you're doing it. Then, once you've determined that you're awake, remind yourself: "I'm awake. This is what 'awake' feels like. If something I read changes, then I'll notice what that feels like, too, and know I'm dreaming, and pay attention."

Things I've read during a the waking practice test: covers of books on my desk, cans of soup in my pantry, junk mail on my table, etc.

Things that to read that have shown up in my dreams: fortune cookie messages, pages of diaries, t-shirt messeges, treasure maps, letters from dead relatives. And yup. Every time I've glanced a second time, the words have always changed. Usually, it's the same idea with differnt wording, or an idea that follows in some weird logical way.

I find waking myself up from a bad dream to be counterproductive, though, in the long run, and as that scientist that was interviewed said, we dream for a reason, so it's better if we don't try to fight them.

That's one argument people make against the practice of lucid dreaming. Though as I see it, being aware and involved in any learning experience makes that experience more effective. How effective would a driving lesson be, after all, if we just let everything wash over us, and didn't ask questions when we're confused by something?

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Does the reading work even if you're rarely ever reading in your dreams? I dreamed about trying to read a short story last night, but I don't think I ever actually GOT to look at the pages, and that's one of the rare times I ever recall actually having reading material at hand.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

In general, it works better the more you use that particular exercise to practice when you're awake, because it's an image that you've primed your mind to recognize.

The best explaination I've come across of how this whole thing works is that it's like reminding yourself, throughout the day, to pick up a carton of milk, after work: if you keep reminding yourself periodically through the day, you'll remember even without writing a grocery list.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Okay, I think that might not be the best example, because I'll remind myself all day to get something at the grocery store, and then walk out with six things, none of which are the one I went in for. I take your point anyway, but it makes me even more skeptical that something like that will work for me. I know there's only one way to find out, but...if that's the criteria, I could be up a creek!

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Well, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You don't have anything to lose by trying it...

Different strategies work for different people. Now, all the advice I've ever come across say that you must keep a notebook and pencil by your bed, and write down the dreams the very second you wake up. But that backfires for me, because rolling over and sitting up, and reaching for the notebook takes more physical concentration than for easily mobile people, and the very act of picking up the notebook makes me forget the dream.

I do better by lying still after I wake up, and replaying the dream in my head, as much as I can, even if only one image sticks out (such as that black mourning wreath with the pink and white dried flowers). So I focus on that one image and kind of mull over it. And I may put that image into a story (or draw a picture of it).

The more you let your brain know that you think your dreams are important (by whatever means works for you), the more likely it will be to keep them out of the mental garbage disposal and stick them in a filing cabinet, somewhere.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

You're quite right that there's nothing to lose by trying. It was more your example that made me laugh a bit because I have been known to be just that kind of clueless. Don't mind me, I've been feeling stupidly contrary recently and I was definitely in that sort of mood this morning, for absolutely no good reason (except possibly that it was morning and I didn't want it to be!).

I tend to replay the dreams in my head before I get up, too. I try to write them down as quickly as possible, but that's not always practical, and replaying them does help to firm them up in my mind. Of course, sometimes I still manage to forget them--but by the same token, if I write things down when I'm still half asleep, I often can't read what I wrote, so it's six of one, half a dozen of the other! ;)

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

If that's an example of you as crabby, I'd say you were exceptionally well-tempered.

Often, I think a dream is totally forgotten, and then I'll catch sight of something that brings it all back, like the angle of sun in the kitchen window, and once it was the way a torn corner of my shower curtain was hanging.

It leads to quite a bit of odd deja vu feelings...

[scarfman]

I once dreamt I was the Doctor and my stepchildren were my companions. This was when they were young. It only lasted a moment, or I only remembered a little of it. I also remember recently waking up and remembering I'd dreamt I was the Doctor, but I don't remember the dream.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I'm more likely to dream of being a companion, or a general, hovering pressence that is watching the Doctor and companions.

Now that I think about it, I think I'm very rarely the figure of authority in my dreams.. usually, I'm having to deal with/negotiate around the authority figures in my dreams...

*sigh*

[scarfman]

The dream I wanted more space to describe in than a textbox in a poll:

Several times when I was a teenager I'd have this dream that was a documentary or a docudrama. The scene was a dramatization of one man's last encounter with another man, from the first man's point of view. Though there was a narrator, I don't recall that I was watching the scene on a screen, but more like actually experiencing it. The second man walks up to the point of view and starts to speak. But then the shot is intercut rapidly with a shot of the second man dying in screaming pain, and I/the point of view can't hear what he's saying in the present over the screaming of the flashing vision. Then the second man is walking away utterly casually and the narrator says, "And he never saw him again."

This dream would wake me up, the three or four times I recall having it. The last time I was about seventeen, and I must have called out in my sleep, because my dad knocked on my door to make sure I was all right.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

That's one detail from that interview with the dream scientist that I forgot to include in my original post:

The official difference between a simple sad/bad dream and a nightmare is that nightmares are the ones you wake up screaming from...

I'm grateful that I don't have those very often. I usually just startle myself awake, and lying there thinking a moment: "Boy, that was weird..." before drifting back to sleep for the next chapter.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Oh, WAIT!!! It didn't come to me until you mentioned waking up screaming, but there is one dream that scared me more than any other, and it wasn't all that long ago, either. I could have sworn I posted about it, but can't find it--so maybe I didn't because it was so incredibly horrible. I know I emailed it to a few folks so if you want the details, I could provide them, but the basics were that my brother and I were in our grandparents' house--this dream happened a few months after we emptied it to get ready to sell it, and the place was mostly empty in the dream.

We were in the kitchen, and heard this godawful horrific deep laugh from hell coming up from the basement. Somehow, I knew whatever was down there was non-corporeal, but I slammed the door shut and flipped the dinky little lock anyway. I knew for absolutely dead certain that whatever this thing was, it was coming to kill us. I started looking through the kitchen drawers for a knife, but then decided that was a bad idea in case the whatever-it-was could get into my head and make me do its dirty work for it. I don't remember now if I just closed the drawers or if we tried to get rid of that stuff, but I think we just closed them up. Never did it occur to us to run like hell--we just stood there in the kitchen waiting for it to come get us.

I woke up in an absolute panic--I don't think I screamed, and I never even turned on the light, but I know I lay there with my eyes peeled open for several minutes as I tried to get my breath back, and I was terrified beyond words. I couldn't even manage to convince myself that it had just been a dream. The weird thing is that it didn't take too long for me to get back to sleep, which makes no sense at all considering how scared I was.

That dream not only scared me half to death in the middle of the night, it followed me around for the rest of the day until I finally exorcised it by writing it into a story. My face burned all day and I literally felt haunted by it until then. I talked to my friend Ann about it a few nights later and she speculated that it might have been a banshee, but beyond that, I have no idea.

What I do know for sure is that it hands-down wins the prize for the freakiest, most terrifying dream I have ever had.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Good for you for writing about that dream, and putting it in a story. Taking control like that usually helps most of all.

[alto2.livejournal.com]

I don't think I had much choice. It wasn't going to let me go otherwise. I was none too keen on the idea of going to sleep that night, so I had to do something to get rid of it.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

It's been a long time since I had an actual nightmare, but I used to be a martyr to them when I was a kid. I was a bit worried when I read the warning on my medication, but it turns out the dreams it generates aren't scary as much as, well, odd.

I mean, really odd. The one that sticks in my mind for some reason, is one I had quite early on. I was a character in Blackadder, arguing with Colonel Melchett. And then things gradually shifted, so that Stephen Fry was himself, rather than Melchett, and I was interviewing him over a cup of tea. He kept glaring at the non-drip teapot, and insisting he'd invented them, but never got any credit.

See what I mean? Odd.

(BTW, there's been a few occasions when I've *thought* I was lucid dreaming, but on waking realised that, no, that was just the dream making me *think* I was making concious decisions. Almost as annoying as the few seconds after waking when I think "That dream would make a great story". And as I gain full conciousness, I either forget it completely, or realise it was total nonsense.)

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

You know, it didn't occur to me until just now, but in light of the "new" information about the role of the limbic brain in our dreams, it makes sense that medications that affect the chemistry there would also affect our dreams.

And having tea with Stephen Fry sounds like kinda fun.

As for the lucid dreaming: it does not necessarily involve control over what happens, so much as the simple awareness that it is, in fact, a dream.

And yeah, I've had seed of story ideas come from dreams, such as a central premise, or one key image. But for stories that really work, you need that rational editor of the frontal cortex to come in and put everything into a logical sequence of events, and say: "No, that idea is just a bit too weird for readers to swallow."

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

I've had dreams that made me wake up thinking 'this would make a great story!' But when I try to write down the plot elements, they aren't as spectacular as I thought they were, and don't even really make a logical sequence of events. I've concluded that sometimes I dream about feelings -- fear, pain, anger, comfort, relief, joy -- and my brain makes up some token 'situations' to insert as an excuse for those feelings. In other words, the scenario itself is not something that would generate those feelings in a reader's mind at that level of intensity.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I've said before that I rarely write stories directly from my dreams, but center one central image that sticks in my mind, because of its vividness or uniqueness.

I've been looking for a short story I wrote years ago, for The Art Garden, that uses such an image. But, unfortunately, it seems to have been before I got into the habit of putting my stories in some online forum (either here, or on Mudcat (http://www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm)), so I fear the only copy is on the computer now stored on the floor of my office closet.

Anyway, the dream in question was, in fact a lucid dream, where I'd asked for inspiration for my Art Garden story. The one image I remember on waking up was a silver coin being tossed into a well, directly under a full moon, and the coin being reflected in the water, and the surface of the water being reflected in the coin as it tumbled down.

So, I put the image of a man throwing said coin into said well, at midnight, while he wished he had a son. And that was the only part of the dream I wrote into the story. The rest of it, I built on the plot of Hans-my-hedgehog (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm108.html), except instead of getting a hedgehog-human son, the father got a son whose face was a perfect mirror, which I used as a metaphor the parental sin of only seeing your child as a reflection of yourself, and resenting him for it.