Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!cmcl2!husc6!panda!genrad!decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw From: throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: sci.misc,sci.med Subject: Re: Dreams as a reaction Message-ID: <733@dg_rtp.UUCP> Date: Sat, 6-Dec-86 10:12:53 EST Article-I.D.: dg_rtp.733 Posted: Sat Dec 6 10:12:53 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 7-Dec-86 05:26:35 EST References: <43@wjh12.UUCP> Lines: 67 Summary: dreams aren't super-speed, and one is paralyzed in dreaming sleep Xref: mnetor sci.misc:117 sci.med:359 (Note: sci.med added to the newsgroups line.) > lotto@wjh12.UUCP (Jerry Lotto) > I seem to remember that the time scale for a dream is much faster than > reality. Perhaps the ENTIRE dream can be a reaction to a particular > external stimulus? This is a popular mythology surrounding dreams that incorporate "real world" events, to be sure, but it is not well substantiated. In fact, I recall some research reported in Science News a coupla years ago that indicated that dreams happen in more-or-less real time, not faster. This basic method (if I remember correctly) was to let people sleep, and annoy them after they had experienced various amounts of REM sleep. The ammount of time spent in REM corresponded closely to the ammount of time that the dream "seemed to take" when they were prodded awake and asked about what was going on. > Furthermore, I believe that you are not able to > move during a dream (assuming that the duration is a fraction of a > second or so. I am shakey on the detail here, will experts please > comment?). I'm no expert, but (I think from the same source) studies show that in REM sleep, one is indeed paralyzed and CANNOT move. Some intermediate sleep states bordering on REM are what tend to promote the "cannot move and danger approaching" or "stuck in molassas" type dreams that many folks experience. Once the chemical nature of this suppression was known, it was artificially prevented in cats, which then thrashed around during REM sleep, as if they were really running, jumping, playing, or whatever cats dream about, but with no co-ordination with the real world. So, your body is paralyzed in dream-state sleep so that you don't thrash around and hurt yourself. I think a good explanation of why external events are incorporated in dreams is a retroactive one. That is, the event is fit into some existing situation after it is perceived, and the situation it is fit into may actually be out-of-time-sequence, that is, may be a while pastwards in dream-time. Making this explanation a little more plausible, for the specific example of sounds, I recall studies (again, Science News is my best guess as to where I read it) showing that people tend to be unable to tell whether nearly-simultaneous events, one a sound and another something else, were really simultaneous, or which one really came first if not. Instead, the sound was fit into the perceived timestream where it "made sense", not where it "really" occured. This may be an inbred feature, rather than an inability, perhaps developed to allow a creature to associate a sound with a sight despite the propogation delay of sound displacing the events slightly. Thus, we perceive a hammer strike and the sound as simultaneous until they are quite far displaced by distance, and early "talkie" movie soundtracks could afford to be a little sloppy in sound synchronization and still be perceived as being in time with the action. Of course, I am spinning a large speculation on few facts, but I think it is plausible. The "facts" I take to be: first that dream-time is not very much faster than wake-time... one can't fit much more than a minute of subjective dream-time into a minute of actual sleep, and second that in terms of sound especially "simultenaity" and relative order of events can't be reliably perceived. -- We may not always be right; but, by God, we're never wrong. --- General Wombat -- Wayne Throop !mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw