February 14, 2023 • 31 mins
What are dreams? This is something scientists have been trying to discover and explain for hundreds of years. There is a lot of reference to dreams in recorded history, in philosophical studies and religious texts. So what DO we know about dreams? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This podcast contains adult content. Someof the themes or topics may include information
on murder, kidnapping, torture,dismemberment, maybe some demonic content with information
on positions and paranormal activity. Thispodcast will also include explicit, horrible,
(00:26):
and foul, socially unacceptable, totallyuninhabited adult themes language. So, if
you're easily offended, if you're easilytriggered, then I highly suggest you turn
this off now, and if not, just keep in mind parental discretion is
(00:47):
advised. What exactly are dreams?All right? This is something that scientists
have been trying to discover and explainfor hundreds of years. There is a
(01:14):
lot of reference to dreams and recordedhistory, philosophical studies, and religious texts.
What do we know about dreams?We know there are many types of
dreams, such as absent minded transgression, dreams, day dreams, hallucination,
nightmares, night terrors, deja vous, lucid dreaming, and just typical nighttime
(01:38):
dreaming. Dreams of absent minded transgressionknown as damt They happen when someone dreams
about something they have been trying toquit or not do. A lot of
times it will be a smoker oralcoholic who quit the habit, or even
a spouse dreaming of an affair,and typically the dreamer wakes up with intense
(02:04):
guilt. One study actually found thatthere was a positive association between having these
dreams and successfully stopping the behavior.Then we have daydreams. Those are a
visionary fantasy, especially one of ahappy, pleasant thoughts, hopes, and
ambitions imagined as happening in real lifeand experienced while awake. Think the Secret
(02:30):
Life of Walter Mitty or any movieor TV show where something happens and then
it rewinds and shows that it wasonly in their mind. Now, daydreaming
is thought of as healthy and goodfor your brain. It's actually important to
just think for pleasure sometimes now,although daydreaming in the extreme can also be
(02:53):
a sign of mental illness when itinhibits concentration, so people who suffer from
depression anxiety, PTSD, and ADHDcan sometimes have issues with daydreaming too often.
Research by Harvard psychologist dear Drew Barretthas found that people who experience vivid,
(03:15):
dreamlike mental images use the word daydreamto describe it, whereas many other
people refer to milder imagery, realisticfuture planning, review of past memories,
or just spacing out. Daydreaming usedto be considered lazy or useless, but
(03:36):
it's now actually acknowledged as being helpfulbecause a lot of artists like authors and
filmmakers and painters and people like thatthey use daydreaming to come up with new
ideas. Even scientists and mathematicians haveadmitted to use daydreaming in their research as
(03:57):
well. Now let's move on tohalluations. By definition, a hallucination is
a perception in the absence of anexternal stimulus that has the qualities of a
real perception. It really is justlike a full blown dream while you're awake.
You often see these referred to ina desert setting where everything around someone
(04:21):
looks the same the brain creates somethingin your mind. It can also happen
to people in absolute darkness or asensory deprivation tank. One major theory though
about hallucinations is that they are causedwhen something goes wrong in the relationship between
(04:42):
the brain's frontal lobe and the sensorycortex. And this is from a neuropsychologist,
Professor Flavy Waters from the University ofWestern Australia and for example, Research
suggests auditory hallucinations experienced by people withschizophrenia involve an overactive auditory cortex, the
(05:05):
part of the brain that processes sound, and that's what the professor said.
This results in random sounds and speechfragments being generated. Healthy people without any
underlying issues experienced this as well.Have you ever thought you heard something or
(05:25):
perhaps your name being called when nothinglike that actually happened. That is technically
a hallucination, or seeing something outof the corner of your eye and thinking
it was something else, or maybeafter a pet of yours passes away,
you sometimes think you see it runningthrough the house, or you can feel
(05:45):
it laying on on you, likeon your legs or something while you're in
bed, So you know, there'sa couple of little examples. Nightmares are
obviously unpleasant dreams, and they causea strong negative emotional response from the mind,
now typically fear or horror, butalso despair, anxiety, and great
(06:10):
sadness or some of these emotions.One of my personal favorite depictions of a
nightmare is the painting Woman having aNightmare by Jean Pierre Simone. It shows
an actual tiny demon sitting on thechest of a woman sleeping, and sometimes
a nightmare can truly feel that way. So after a nightmare, a person
(06:31):
will typically be awakened by the dreamand remain in a state of distress for
a while. Often they stay awakefor a little while afterward, unable to
fall back asleep because they are afraidof having another nightmare. Sometimes recurring nightmares
can be so bad they cause sleepdeprivation and require medical attention. The prevalence
(06:55):
of nightmares and children aged five totwelve years old is between twenty and thirty
percent, and for adults it's betweeneight and thirty percent. So a similar
type of dream to a nightmare isa night terror. Now, though it
is not actually a dream, itis a parasomnia disorder that mostly affects children.
(07:18):
It is basically just a disorder thatcauses you to feel extreme terror,
panic, or dread during the firsthours of stage three four non rim sleep.
It usually only lasts one to tenminutes, but it can last longer
than that. An exact cause isunknown because it's believed sleep deprivation, nocturnal
(07:43):
asthma, indigestion, central nervous systemmedication, stuffy noses, and having a
fever can increase likelihood of experiencing nightterrors. Moving on to last on our
list is deja vu. It isa French word that expresses the feeling that
one has lived through or dreamt ofthe present situation before. Although some interpret
(08:09):
deja vu in a paranormal context,mainstream scientific approaches do reject the explanation of
deja vu as precognition or prophecy.Two types of deja vu are recognized,
the pathological deja vu, usually associatedwith epilepsy, or that which, when
(08:31):
usually prolonged or frequent, or associatedwith other symptoms such as hallucinations, may
be an indicator of neurological or psychiatricillness, and the non pathological type characteristic
of healthy people, about two thirdsof whom have had deja vous experiences.
(08:52):
So it's also said that people whowatch more movies and TV or travel often
experience it's deja vu more frequently,which makes sense because you see more things
and have more memories of stuff inyour head. Chances are you feel like
you've experienced things more than once moreoften so. People who are in high
(09:18):
stress situations, under extreme pressure,or are in fragile conditions seem to report
these experiences more as well, andthe research shows the older you get,
the less deja vu people have.So there are a number of medical explanations
that can possibly explain deja vu,as well as many paranormal ones as well.
(09:41):
I really don't want to go morein depth with this because we're mainly
here to discuss dreams in general todayand that has to cover a lot of
different kinds. So let's talk aboutlucid dreaming. It is a conscious perception
of one's state while dreaming, basicallyknowing you are in a dream while dreaming,
(10:03):
now even to the point of beingable to control your dreams. In
some cases. Dream control has beenreported to improve with practiced, deliberate lucid
dreaming, but the ability to controlaspects of the dream is not necessary for
a dream to qualify as lucid.A lucid dream is any dream during which
(10:26):
the dreamer knows that they are dreaming. I know, we said that we're
a dream a lot, but Iknow you guys followed along. I have
a smart audience. So anyway,now, this may sound pretty crazy or
out there, or you know,just weird to some people, but lucid
dreaming has been scientifically verified all right. In fact, in nineteen seventy five,
(10:52):
psychologist Keith Herne successfully recorded a communicationfrom a dreamer experiencing a lucid dream.
They had decided on an eye movementcommunication where the dreamer would move his
eyes left to right when he becamelucid in that dream, and on April
(11:13):
twelfth, nineteen seventy five, AlanWarsley successfully carried out this task. And
it turns out Worsley was Hearne's partnerand research and co author of his article,
so you may think he was fakingit, But years later psychophysiologist Stephen
(11:33):
Laberge conducted similar work. Laberge wasactually able to use eye signals to map
the subjective sense of time and dreams. He was able to map the brain
when a subject was in singing ina dream and compare it to a brain
map of singing while awake, andhe, of course he used this to
(11:56):
compare in dream sex arousal and orgasmto the same happening while awake. Now
taken from an article called Sang Highthrough a Dream How the Internet could make
Sleeping More Social by Parme Olson,where it was laid out how communication between
two dreamers was documented. The processesinvolved included EEG monitoring, ocular signaling,
(12:24):
incorporation of reality in the form ofred light stimuli, and a coordinating website.
The website tracked when both dreamers weredreaming and sent the stimulus to one
of the dreamers, where it wasincorporated into the dream. The dreamer,
upon becoming lucid, signaled with eyemovements and this was detected by the website,
(12:50):
and that's when the stimulus was sentto the second dreamer, invoking incorporation
into the dreamer's dream. That isfucking why old shit. So now we
have a basic overview of types ofdreams, but what the fuck are they?
Do we even really know? Weknow what different types we have because
(13:11):
that shit I just read about howthey did studies and people were able to
communicate between each other during lucid dreaming, and shit, that is seriously wild.
So, by definition, a dreamis a succession of images, ideas,
emotions, and or sensations that usuallyoccur involuntarily in the mind during certain
(13:35):
stages of sleep. Humans spend abouttwo hours dreaming per night, and each
dream lasts around five to twenty minutes. Dreams occur mainly in the rim stage
of sleep when brain activity is highand resembles that of being awake. Because
research has shown that animals also experiencerim sleep stages, and dreams have been
(14:00):
successfully linked to RIM, it isnow believed animals must experience dreams as well,
and this obviously cannot be proven though, but it is an interesting concept.
Now, studying dreams is extremely difficultbecause we have no way to see
(14:24):
a dream and experience it or recordit as an outside source. We have
to rely on people waking up andreporting their dreams. So as we know,
eyewitness accounts can be super unreliable,as can the retelling of any memory,
let alone a memory of a madeup sequence of events in your mind.
(14:46):
It does seem that people recall dreamsmore vividly when woken during RIM sleep
compared to waking up on their own, though it is believed that waking to
an alarm clock or other stimulus mayinterrupt the pattern, causing you to remember
better than going through all the phasesof sleep before waking up. Naturally,
(15:09):
I must explain my ships. Inever remember my dreams, but I also
don't really wake up to an alarmclock, so that might explain in some
of that all right. So,when you look back at ancient texts,
including the Bible and other writings fromBC eras many people used to see dreams
as a message from beyond. GoodeyI think that's how you pronounce a Goodey,
(15:33):
who is the king of the Sumeriancity state of Lagash twenty one forty
four to twenty one twenty four BCrebuilt the temple of Ningrissu as a result
of a dream in which he saidhe was told to do so. In
the Bible, you had Jacob's Ladder, which is a reference that still used
(15:54):
today, and it was a dreamin which Jacob saw angels ascending and descending
a ladder between heaven and Earth.There is also a story of an angel
telling Joseph not to divorce Mary becauseshe was pregnant with a child that was
the savior in one of his dreams. And this, I mean, there's
(16:15):
a ton of them, Okay,we can't just narrow him down a few.
There are also many prophecies that camein dreams to Joseph, or that
Joseph interpreted. It is said thathe actually dreamt he would be a ruler,
and no one believed him, andeveryone laughed at him, and he
landed in jail, where where heinterpreted some prisoners dreams. Word got to
(16:40):
the pharaoh, and he interpreted hisdreams and was so accurate that the pharaoh
put him in the second highest positionin the kingdom, which meant he was
a ruler. Later in history,though, some of these narratives gave way
to visualized narratives in which the dreamerhim self or herself became a character who
(17:02):
actively participated. From the nineteen fortiesto nineteen eighty five, Calvin S.
Hall recollected more than fifty thousand dreamreports at Western Reserve University. In nineteen
sixty six, Hall and Robert vande Castle published the Content Analysis of Dreams,
(17:23):
in which they outlined a coding systemto study one thousand dream reports from
college students. The Hall study showedthat people from all around the world had
similar dream content. The most commonemotion experienced was anxiety, with abandonment,
anger, fear, joy, andhappiness behind it, and it was in
(17:47):
that order. Negative emotions were noticeablymore common than positive. Sexual dreams only
occurred ten percent of the time andmostly in young to mid aged teens.
The visual nature of dreams is generallyvery fucking wild, all right, and
different locations, objects and people canblend into each other and change without reason.
(18:14):
For example, one article by RebeccaSpencer had this story about her daughter's
retelling of a dream when she waseight. My daughter told me about one
of her dreams. She was ina spaceship with some animals, although she
knew she was in a spaceship andher dream. When telling me about the
dream, she realized the spaceship wasactually a washing machine. At times,
(18:37):
she and the animals would be outin space, but they also came back
to Earth. Now. Typically dreamsare some sort of extension or a recreation
of an event the person experienced,but there are also reports of people dreaming
of entirely new, complex worlds withelaborate stories, which have even sparked ideas
(18:59):
for novels or movies. And here'sa wild one for you. I've actually
always wondered this. People who areblind from birth do not dream visually,
but they do experience similar dreams justwith their other senses, such as hearing,
touch, smell, and taste.Dream study is popular with scientists exploring
(19:22):
the midbrain problem, which is adebate concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness
in the human mind and the brainas part of the physical body. So
there is no real hard science ondreams since most nations restrict human brain research
(19:44):
to non invasive procedures, and EGvoltage cannot identify small but influential neurnal populations,
and fMRI signals are too slow toexplain how brains compute in real time.
Scientists have attempted tests on animals,but as we cannot confirm animal dreaming,
(20:07):
it is not a hard science.So that brings us to what is
the reason for dreaming? So ancientEgyptians believed that dreams were the best way
to receive divine revelation, which ledthem to inducing dreams, and they even
had special sanctuaries with dream beds thatthey hoped would give them dreams in which
(20:30):
they would receive advice, comfort,or healing from the gods. But it
was not just ancient Egyptians. Forhumans in the pre classical era and continuing
for some populations up into modern times, dreams are believed to have functioned as
revealers of truths sourced during sleep fromgods or other external entities. So if
(20:56):
you examine and consider dreams from aDarwinian perspective, they would have to fulfill
some kind of biological requirement. Theywould have to provide some benefit for natural
selection to take place, or atleast have no negative impact on fitness.
Sigmund Freud believed dreams were a necessity, but in a different way. He
(21:19):
wrote that dreams serve the purpose ofprolonging sleep instead of waking up. Dreams
are the guardians of sleep and notits disturbers. So since the discovery of
RM sleep stages in nineteen fifty three, we have been able to dive a
bit deeper in some of this.Scientists and researchers have discovered that sleep is
(21:45):
an important for memory. Memories movefrom the temporary storage in the hippocampus.
I think that's how say it,which is a brain structure very important for
short term memory, moving from thereto permit a storage in other parts of
the brain, which ultimately makes iteasier to recover memories later on down the
(22:07):
road. So these two people,Crick and Mitchison, in nineteen eighty three,
they came up with the reverse learningtheory, and this states that dreams
are like the cleaning up operations ofcomputers when they are offline and they remove
suppressing parasitic nodes and other junk fromthe mind during sleep, which is I
(22:32):
think kind of a fascinating theory really, But humans do not have to be
in rim to dream. In fact, dreams that happen in non rim sleep
are when most memory replay happens.But sometimes when we switch cycles, dreams
can go from realistic to bizarre andthen back again. We don't have to
(22:55):
dream to store memories either. Evenwhen we're not dreaming, memories are being
filed away by the brain. Dreamscan also help us process events or decisions,
improving creativity and problem solving. Oneexperiment done was when scientists gave people
three words to find how they arecommon, one example being heart, sixteen
(23:21):
and cookies. It was discovered thatpeople actually did much better if they had
a nap that included rim sleep.And then we're asked again the words are
all related to the sweet sweetheart,sweet sixteen, and cookies are sweet.
This gave them the theory that rimsleep, when the most bizarre dreams occur,
(23:45):
can help promote finding creative solutions.Another theory for the reason of dreams
is that it helps us process emotionsor even prepare for something emotional. This
is called threat simulation, and it'sa theory of dreaming that says that threats
are simulated or practiced in your dreamsto prepare you for those situations when you
(24:10):
are awake. This is pretty interestingbecause Lindsay, who did the phenomenal research
on this super interesting topic, shesaid that she personally experienced this particular thing
when she was pregnant and she wasterrified of her upcoming C section. She
(24:30):
said she dreamed the situation was muchworse and more stressful than it actually was,
so perhaps she actually was better preparedemotionally by dreaming about it beforehand,
which has kind of gotten em fascinating. You know. Another example could be
dreaming of an upcoming test going badlyto mentally prepare you and convince you to
(24:55):
study more. In another theory,a very recent one, and it's the
Eagle and Vaughn twenty twenty one defensiveactivation theory, and it says that given
the brain's neuroplasticity, dreams evolved asa visual hallucinatory activity during sleep's extended periods
(25:15):
of darkness, busying the occipital lobeand thereby protecting it from possible appropriation by
other non vision since operations. Sobasically dreams have been explained, which I
barely understand. All right, ohman, Like I learned so much in
(25:37):
this episode, and I understand Idon't know, maybe seventy five percent of
it. That one. They couldhave worded a lot fucking better. But
basically, dreams have been explained injust so many ways, you know,
from being necessary to prophetic, toemotionally preparing to just simply being away for
(25:59):
the brain to keep itself busy.And of course you know we can't end
this without putting in a dream argument, all right. The dream argument is
the postulation that the act of dreamingprovides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust
to distinguish reality from illusion should notbe fully trusted, and therefore any state
(26:26):
that is dependent on our senses shouldat the very least be carefully examined and
rigorously tested to determine whether it isin fact reality. Basically believing we are
living in a simulated or dream realityand not the real world, kind of
(26:47):
like the matrix. And this argumentgoes that while we are dreaming, we
typically do not realize it as adream, and on some occasions we dream
in a dream, the act ofone realizing they are dreaming itself being only
a dream that one is not awareof having. These are some fucking confusing
(27:10):
discussions, all right. This argumenthas actually led philosophers to wonder whether it
is possible for one ever to becertain at any given point in time that
one is not in fact dreaming.It has also been discussed if someone could
remain in a perpetual dream state,never to experience the reality of wakefulness at
(27:34):
all. For example, could someonebe in a coma for thirty years but
be living in their own dream realitythe entire time and not realize that they
are actually in a coma for thirtyyears in a hospital bed. In Western
philosophy, this whole puzzle was referredto by Plato, Aristotle, and the
(27:57):
academic skeptics, and it is nowbest known from Renee Descartes meditations on first
philosophy. The dream argument has becomeone of the most prominent skeptical hypotheses.
I'm not a huge Descartes fan,to be honest with you. I mean,
he's considered one of a great modernphilosophers, but at the same time,
(28:22):
I don't know he's famous for mathand shit, he like connected algebra
geometry for those of you who arecurious. Like I said, I've always
gotten into philosophy for some fucking weirdreason. But yeah, he also is
the one that brought the idea ofwe're all born with a certain knowledge from
whatever brings us into this fucking world. But I mean, he was an
(28:47):
interesting dude, don't get me wrong. Definitely not my favorite though. All
Right, so this is a prettyinteresting quote from the Zooozy paradox. He
who dreamed of drinking wine may weepwhen morning comes. He who dreams of
weeping may in the morning go offto hunt. While he is dreaming,
(29:10):
he does not know it is adream, And in his dream he may
even try to interpret a dream.Only after he wakes does he know it
was all a dream. And somedaythere will be a great awakening when we
know that this is all a greatdream. Yet the stupid believe they are
awake, busily and brightly, assumingthey understand things, calling this man ruler
(29:37):
that one herdsman, how dense confucious. And you are both dreaming. And
when I say you are dreaming,I am dreaming too. Words like these
will be labeled the supreme swindle.Yet after ten thousand generations, a great
sage may appear who will know theirmeaning, and it will still will be
(30:00):
as though he appeared with astonishing speed. So there you go. I hope
you guys enjoy that, a deepdive into the mystery of the human brain
creating dreams and what the fuck itcould actually mean. It's one of those
fascinating topics just because science really hasn'tnailed anything down. I mean, they've
(30:26):
nailed certain things down, but thewhole theories of a dream within a dream
and the fact that they were ableto do the whole lucid dreaming experience fucking
awesome, man. I love thatshit. But anyway, I hope you
guys enjoyed, and until next time, we see you, guys living
This podcast contains adult content. Someof the themes or topics may include information
on murder, kidnapping, torture,dismemberment, maybe some demonic content with information
on positions and paranormal activity. Thispodcast will also include explicit, horrible,
(00:26):
and foul, socially unacceptable, totallyuninhabited adult themes language. So, if
you're easily offended, if you're easilytriggered, then I highly suggest you turn
this off now, and if not, just keep in mind parental discretion is
(00:47):
advised. What exactly are dreams?All right? This is something that scientists
have been trying to discover and explainfor hundreds of years. There is a
(01:14):
lot of reference to dreams and recordedhistory, philosophical studies, and religious texts.
What do we know about dreams?We know there are many types of
dreams, such as absent minded transgression, dreams, day dreams, hallucination,
nightmares, night terrors, deja vous, lucid dreaming, and just typical nighttime
(01:38):
dreaming. Dreams of absent minded transgressionknown as damt They happen when someone dreams
about something they have been trying toquit or not do. A lot of
times it will be a smoker oralcoholic who quit the habit, or even
a spouse dreaming of an affair,and typically the dreamer wakes up with intense
(02:04):
guilt. One study actually found thatthere was a positive association between having these
dreams and successfully stopping the behavior.Then we have daydreams. Those are a
visionary fantasy, especially one of ahappy, pleasant thoughts, hopes, and
ambitions imagined as happening in real lifeand experienced while awake. Think the Secret
(02:30):
Life of Walter Mitty or any movieor TV show where something happens and then
it rewinds and shows that it wasonly in their mind. Now, daydreaming
is thought of as healthy and goodfor your brain. It's actually important to
just think for pleasure sometimes now,although daydreaming in the extreme can also be
(02:53):
a sign of mental illness when itinhibits concentration, so people who suffer from
depression anxiety, PTSD, and ADHDcan sometimes have issues with daydreaming too often.
Research by Harvard psychologist dear Drew Barretthas found that people who experience vivid,
(03:15):
dreamlike mental images use the word daydreamto describe it, whereas many other
people refer to milder imagery, realisticfuture planning, review of past memories,
or just spacing out. Daydreaming usedto be considered lazy or useless, but
(03:36):
it's now actually acknowledged as being helpfulbecause a lot of artists like authors and
filmmakers and painters and people like thatthey use daydreaming to come up with new
ideas. Even scientists and mathematicians haveadmitted to use daydreaming in their research as
(03:57):
well. Now let's move on tohalluations. By definition, a hallucination is
a perception in the absence of anexternal stimulus that has the qualities of a
real perception. It really is justlike a full blown dream while you're awake.
You often see these referred to ina desert setting where everything around someone
(04:21):
looks the same the brain creates somethingin your mind. It can also happen
to people in absolute darkness or asensory deprivation tank. One major theory though
about hallucinations is that they are causedwhen something goes wrong in the relationship between
(04:42):
the brain's frontal lobe and the sensorycortex. And this is from a neuropsychologist,
Professor Flavy Waters from the University ofWestern Australia and for example, Research
suggests auditory hallucinations experienced by people withschizophrenia involve an overactive auditory cortex, the
(05:05):
part of the brain that processes sound, and that's what the professor said.
This results in random sounds and speechfragments being generated. Healthy people without any
underlying issues experienced this as well.Have you ever thought you heard something or
(05:25):
perhaps your name being called when nothinglike that actually happened. That is technically
a hallucination, or seeing something outof the corner of your eye and thinking
it was something else, or maybeafter a pet of yours passes away,
you sometimes think you see it runningthrough the house, or you can feel
(05:45):
it laying on on you, likeon your legs or something while you're in
bed, So you know, there'sa couple of little examples. Nightmares are
obviously unpleasant dreams, and they causea strong negative emotional response from the mind,
now typically fear or horror, butalso despair, anxiety, and great
(06:10):
sadness or some of these emotions.One of my personal favorite depictions of a
nightmare is the painting Woman having aNightmare by Jean Pierre Simone. It shows
an actual tiny demon sitting on thechest of a woman sleeping, and sometimes
a nightmare can truly feel that way. So after a nightmare, a person
(06:31):
will typically be awakened by the dreamand remain in a state of distress for
a while. Often they stay awakefor a little while afterward, unable to
fall back asleep because they are afraidof having another nightmare. Sometimes recurring nightmares
can be so bad they cause sleepdeprivation and require medical attention. The prevalence
(06:55):
of nightmares and children aged five totwelve years old is between twenty and thirty
percent, and for adults it's betweeneight and thirty percent. So a similar
type of dream to a nightmare isa night terror. Now, though it
is not actually a dream, itis a parasomnia disorder that mostly affects children.
(07:18):
It is basically just a disorder thatcauses you to feel extreme terror,
panic, or dread during the firsthours of stage three four non rim sleep.
It usually only lasts one to tenminutes, but it can last longer
than that. An exact cause isunknown because it's believed sleep deprivation, nocturnal
(07:43):
asthma, indigestion, central nervous systemmedication, stuffy noses, and having a
fever can increase likelihood of experiencing nightterrors. Moving on to last on our
list is deja vu. It isa French word that expresses the feeling that
one has lived through or dreamt ofthe present situation before. Although some interpret
(08:09):
deja vu in a paranormal context,mainstream scientific approaches do reject the explanation of
deja vu as precognition or prophecy.Two types of deja vu are recognized,
the pathological deja vu, usually associatedwith epilepsy, or that which, when
(08:31):
usually prolonged or frequent, or associatedwith other symptoms such as hallucinations, may
be an indicator of neurological or psychiatricillness, and the non pathological type characteristic
of healthy people, about two thirdsof whom have had deja vous experiences.
(08:52):
So it's also said that people whowatch more movies and TV or travel often
experience it's deja vu more frequently,which makes sense because you see more things
and have more memories of stuff inyour head. Chances are you feel like
you've experienced things more than once moreoften so. People who are in high
(09:18):
stress situations, under extreme pressure,or are in fragile conditions seem to report
these experiences more as well, andthe research shows the older you get,
the less deja vu people have.So there are a number of medical explanations
that can possibly explain deja vu,as well as many paranormal ones as well.
(09:41):
I really don't want to go morein depth with this because we're mainly
here to discuss dreams in general todayand that has to cover a lot of
different kinds. So let's talk aboutlucid dreaming. It is a conscious perception
of one's state while dreaming, basicallyknowing you are in a dream while dreaming,
(10:03):
now even to the point of beingable to control your dreams. In
some cases. Dream control has beenreported to improve with practiced, deliberate lucid
dreaming, but the ability to controlaspects of the dream is not necessary for
a dream to qualify as lucid.A lucid dream is any dream during which
(10:26):
the dreamer knows that they are dreaming. I know, we said that we're
a dream a lot, but Iknow you guys followed along. I have
a smart audience. So anyway,now, this may sound pretty crazy or
out there, or you know,just weird to some people, but lucid
dreaming has been scientifically verified all right. In fact, in nineteen seventy five,
(10:52):
psychologist Keith Herne successfully recorded a communicationfrom a dreamer experiencing a lucid dream.
They had decided on an eye movementcommunication where the dreamer would move his
eyes left to right when he becamelucid in that dream, and on April
(11:13):
twelfth, nineteen seventy five, AlanWarsley successfully carried out this task. And
it turns out Worsley was Hearne's partnerand research and co author of his article,
so you may think he was fakingit, But years later psychophysiologist Stephen
(11:33):
Laberge conducted similar work. Laberge wasactually able to use eye signals to map
the subjective sense of time and dreams. He was able to map the brain
when a subject was in singing ina dream and compare it to a brain
map of singing while awake, andhe, of course he used this to
(11:56):
compare in dream sex arousal and orgasmto the same happening while awake. Now
taken from an article called Sang Highthrough a Dream How the Internet could make
Sleeping More Social by Parme Olson,where it was laid out how communication between
two dreamers was documented. The processesinvolved included EEG monitoring, ocular signaling,
(12:24):
incorporation of reality in the form ofred light stimuli, and a coordinating website.
The website tracked when both dreamers weredreaming and sent the stimulus to one
of the dreamers, where it wasincorporated into the dream. The dreamer,
upon becoming lucid, signaled with eyemovements and this was detected by the website,
(12:50):
and that's when the stimulus was sentto the second dreamer, invoking incorporation
into the dreamer's dream. That isfucking why old shit. So now we
have a basic overview of types ofdreams, but what the fuck are they?
Do we even really know? Weknow what different types we have because
(13:11):
that shit I just read about howthey did studies and people were able to
communicate between each other during lucid dreaming, and shit, that is seriously wild.
So, by definition, a dreamis a succession of images, ideas,
emotions, and or sensations that usuallyoccur involuntarily in the mind during certain
(13:35):
stages of sleep. Humans spend abouttwo hours dreaming per night, and each
dream lasts around five to twenty minutes. Dreams occur mainly in the rim stage
of sleep when brain activity is highand resembles that of being awake. Because
research has shown that animals also experiencerim sleep stages, and dreams have been
(14:00):
successfully linked to RIM, it isnow believed animals must experience dreams as well,
and this obviously cannot be proven though, but it is an interesting concept.
Now, studying dreams is extremely difficultbecause we have no way to see
(14:24):
a dream and experience it or recordit as an outside source. We have
to rely on people waking up andreporting their dreams. So as we know,
eyewitness accounts can be super unreliable,as can the retelling of any memory,
let alone a memory of a madeup sequence of events in your mind.
(14:46):
It does seem that people recall dreamsmore vividly when woken during RIM sleep
compared to waking up on their own, though it is believed that waking to
an alarm clock or other stimulus mayinterrupt the pattern, causing you to remember
better than going through all the phasesof sleep before waking up. Naturally,
(15:09):
I must explain my ships. Inever remember my dreams, but I also
don't really wake up to an alarmclock, so that might explain in some
of that all right. So,when you look back at ancient texts,
including the Bible and other writings fromBC eras many people used to see dreams
as a message from beyond. GoodeyI think that's how you pronounce a Goodey,
(15:33):
who is the king of the Sumeriancity state of Lagash twenty one forty
four to twenty one twenty four BCrebuilt the temple of Ningrissu as a result
of a dream in which he saidhe was told to do so. In
the Bible, you had Jacob's Ladder, which is a reference that still used
(15:54):
today, and it was a dreamin which Jacob saw angels ascending and descending
a ladder between heaven and Earth.There is also a story of an angel
telling Joseph not to divorce Mary becauseshe was pregnant with a child that was
the savior in one of his dreams. And this, I mean, there's
(16:15):
a ton of them, Okay,we can't just narrow him down a few.
There are also many prophecies that camein dreams to Joseph, or that
Joseph interpreted. It is said thathe actually dreamt he would be a ruler,
and no one believed him, andeveryone laughed at him, and he
landed in jail, where where heinterpreted some prisoners dreams. Word got to
(16:40):
the pharaoh, and he interpreted hisdreams and was so accurate that the pharaoh
put him in the second highest positionin the kingdom, which meant he was
a ruler. Later in history,though, some of these narratives gave way
to visualized narratives in which the dreamerhim self or herself became a character who
(17:02):
actively participated. From the nineteen fortiesto nineteen eighty five, Calvin S.
Hall recollected more than fifty thousand dreamreports at Western Reserve University. In nineteen
sixty six, Hall and Robert vande Castle published the Content Analysis of Dreams,
(17:23):
in which they outlined a coding systemto study one thousand dream reports from
college students. The Hall study showedthat people from all around the world had
similar dream content. The most commonemotion experienced was anxiety, with abandonment,
anger, fear, joy, andhappiness behind it, and it was in
(17:47):
that order. Negative emotions were noticeablymore common than positive. Sexual dreams only
occurred ten percent of the time andmostly in young to mid aged teens.
The visual nature of dreams is generallyvery fucking wild, all right, and
different locations, objects and people canblend into each other and change without reason.
(18:14):
For example, one article by RebeccaSpencer had this story about her daughter's
retelling of a dream when she waseight. My daughter told me about one
of her dreams. She was ina spaceship with some animals, although she
knew she was in a spaceship andher dream. When telling me about the
dream, she realized the spaceship wasactually a washing machine. At times,
(18:37):
she and the animals would be outin space, but they also came back
to Earth. Now. Typically dreamsare some sort of extension or a recreation
of an event the person experienced,but there are also reports of people dreaming
of entirely new, complex worlds withelaborate stories, which have even sparked ideas
(18:59):
for novels or movies. And here'sa wild one for you. I've actually
always wondered this. People who areblind from birth do not dream visually,
but they do experience similar dreams justwith their other senses, such as hearing,
touch, smell, and taste.Dream study is popular with scientists exploring
(19:22):
the midbrain problem, which is adebate concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness
in the human mind and the brainas part of the physical body. So
there is no real hard science ondreams since most nations restrict human brain research
(19:44):
to non invasive procedures, and EGvoltage cannot identify small but influential neurnal populations,
and fMRI signals are too slow toexplain how brains compute in real time.
Scientists have attempted tests on animals,but as we cannot confirm animal dreaming,
(20:07):
it is not a hard science.So that brings us to what is
the reason for dreaming? So ancientEgyptians believed that dreams were the best way
to receive divine revelation, which ledthem to inducing dreams, and they even
had special sanctuaries with dream beds thatthey hoped would give them dreams in which
(20:30):
they would receive advice, comfort,or healing from the gods. But it
was not just ancient Egyptians. Forhumans in the pre classical era and continuing
for some populations up into modern times, dreams are believed to have functioned as
revealers of truths sourced during sleep fromgods or other external entities. So if
(20:56):
you examine and consider dreams from aDarwinian perspective, they would have to fulfill
some kind of biological requirement. Theywould have to provide some benefit for natural
selection to take place, or atleast have no negative impact on fitness.
Sigmund Freud believed dreams were a necessity, but in a different way. He
(21:19):
wrote that dreams serve the purpose ofprolonging sleep instead of waking up. Dreams
are the guardians of sleep and notits disturbers. So since the discovery of
RM sleep stages in nineteen fifty three, we have been able to dive a
bit deeper in some of this.Scientists and researchers have discovered that sleep is
(21:45):
an important for memory. Memories movefrom the temporary storage in the hippocampus.
I think that's how say it,which is a brain structure very important for
short term memory, moving from thereto permit a storage in other parts of
the brain, which ultimately makes iteasier to recover memories later on down the
(22:07):
road. So these two people,Crick and Mitchison, in nineteen eighty three,
they came up with the reverse learningtheory, and this states that dreams
are like the cleaning up operations ofcomputers when they are offline and they remove
suppressing parasitic nodes and other junk fromthe mind during sleep, which is I
(22:32):
think kind of a fascinating theory really, But humans do not have to be
in rim to dream. In fact, dreams that happen in non rim sleep
are when most memory replay happens.But sometimes when we switch cycles, dreams
can go from realistic to bizarre andthen back again. We don't have to
(22:55):
dream to store memories either. Evenwhen we're not dreaming, memories are being
filed away by the brain. Dreamscan also help us process events or decisions,
improving creativity and problem solving. Oneexperiment done was when scientists gave people
three words to find how they arecommon, one example being heart, sixteen
(23:21):
and cookies. It was discovered thatpeople actually did much better if they had
a nap that included rim sleep.And then we're asked again the words are
all related to the sweet sweetheart,sweet sixteen, and cookies are sweet.
This gave them the theory that rimsleep, when the most bizarre dreams occur,
(23:45):
can help promote finding creative solutions.Another theory for the reason of dreams
is that it helps us process emotionsor even prepare for something emotional. This
is called threat simulation, and it'sa theory of dreaming that says that threats
are simulated or practiced in your dreamsto prepare you for those situations when you
(24:10):
are awake. This is pretty interestingbecause Lindsay, who did the phenomenal research
on this super interesting topic, shesaid that she personally experienced this particular thing
when she was pregnant and she wasterrified of her upcoming C section. She
(24:30):
said she dreamed the situation was muchworse and more stressful than it actually was,
so perhaps she actually was better preparedemotionally by dreaming about it beforehand,
which has kind of gotten em fascinating. You know. Another example could be
dreaming of an upcoming test going badlyto mentally prepare you and convince you to
(24:55):
study more. In another theory,a very recent one, and it's the
Eagle and Vaughn twenty twenty one defensiveactivation theory, and it says that given
the brain's neuroplasticity, dreams evolved asa visual hallucinatory activity during sleep's extended periods
(25:15):
of darkness, busying the occipital lobeand thereby protecting it from possible appropriation by
other non vision since operations. Sobasically dreams have been explained, which I
barely understand. All right, ohman, Like I learned so much in
(25:37):
this episode, and I understand Idon't know, maybe seventy five percent of
it. That one. They couldhave worded a lot fucking better. But
basically, dreams have been explained injust so many ways, you know,
from being necessary to prophetic, toemotionally preparing to just simply being away for
(25:59):
the brain to keep itself busy.And of course you know we can't end
this without putting in a dream argument, all right. The dream argument is
the postulation that the act of dreamingprovides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust
to distinguish reality from illusion should notbe fully trusted, and therefore any state
(26:26):
that is dependent on our senses shouldat the very least be carefully examined and
rigorously tested to determine whether it isin fact reality. Basically believing we are
living in a simulated or dream realityand not the real world, kind of
(26:47):
like the matrix. And this argumentgoes that while we are dreaming, we
typically do not realize it as adream, and on some occasions we dream
in a dream, the act ofone realizing they are dreaming itself being only
a dream that one is not awareof having. These are some fucking confusing
(27:10):
discussions, all right. This argumenthas actually led philosophers to wonder whether it
is possible for one ever to becertain at any given point in time that
one is not in fact dreaming.It has also been discussed if someone could
remain in a perpetual dream state,never to experience the reality of wakefulness at
(27:34):
all. For example, could someonebe in a coma for thirty years but
be living in their own dream realitythe entire time and not realize that they
are actually in a coma for thirtyyears in a hospital bed. In Western
philosophy, this whole puzzle was referredto by Plato, Aristotle, and the
(27:57):
academic skeptics, and it is nowbest known from Renee Descartes meditations on first
philosophy. The dream argument has becomeone of the most prominent skeptical hypotheses.
I'm not a huge Descartes fan,to be honest with you. I mean,
he's considered one of a great modernphilosophers, but at the same time,
(28:22):
I don't know he's famous for mathand shit, he like connected algebra
geometry for those of you who arecurious. Like I said, I've always
gotten into philosophy for some fucking weirdreason. But yeah, he also is
the one that brought the idea ofwe're all born with a certain knowledge from
whatever brings us into this fucking world. But I mean, he was an
(28:47):
interesting dude, don't get me wrong. Definitely not my favorite though. All
Right, so this is a prettyinteresting quote from the Zooozy paradox. He
who dreamed of drinking wine may weepwhen morning comes. He who dreams of
weeping may in the morning go offto hunt. While he is dreaming,
(29:10):
he does not know it is adream, And in his dream he may
even try to interpret a dream.Only after he wakes does he know it
was all a dream. And somedaythere will be a great awakening when we
know that this is all a greatdream. Yet the stupid believe they are
awake, busily and brightly, assumingthey understand things, calling this man ruler
(29:37):
that one herdsman, how dense confucious. And you are both dreaming. And
when I say you are dreaming,I am dreaming too. Words like these
will be labeled the supreme swindle.Yet after ten thousand generations, a great
sage may appear who will know theirmeaning, and it will still will be
(30:00):
as though he appeared with astonishing speed. So there you go. I hope
you guys enjoy that, a deepdive into the mystery of the human brain
creating dreams and what the fuck itcould actually mean. It's one of those
fascinating topics just because science really hasn'tnailed anything down. I mean, they've
(30:26):
nailed certain things down, but thewhole theories of a dream within a dream
and the fact that they were ableto do the whole lucid dreaming experience fucking
awesome, man. I love thatshit. But anyway, I hope you
guys enjoyed, and until next time, we see you, guys living
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