DrmDoc

Hello All, I began my recent spade of discussions on dreaming as an effort to encourage exchanges, among interested minds, that would enhance my perspective of mind and consciousness in brain function and deepen my understanding of certain types or forms of dreaming. In that effort, I’ve shared my personal dream experiences which is, frankly, not very easy for me to do. Dreams convey so much information to me that sharing them is like publicly exposing one’s medical/psychological history. Fortunately, as I’ve learned, there are precious few who share my degree of insight or even interest in this subject. In my initial post in this discussion thread, I mentioned precognitive dreaming and ran afoul of our site’s moderators by not qualifying that description of a dream type. I said I could explain how this extraordinary type of dreaming occurs but not always why it does. I was charged by our moderators to “do the work” to support my claims and now, I believe, I have an opportunity to do so and demonstrate my meaning. In qualifying my description of precognitive dreaming, I said it’s like forecasting the weather where sufficient meteorological data could be gathered and assessed to predict or provide a future weather-related scenario or outcome. With precog dreaming, the data is unconsciously gathered, assessed and, primarily, it forecasts some aspect related to our social or mental environment. As I consciously pondered our moderator’s charge and the work that needed doing, I experienced the following dream response this past evening: In this dream, rather conveniently, I found myself as a meteorologist amidst reporting the oncoming week’s weather forecast for television viewers. I recall reporting the mid-week pollen count as 10, which I thought and said was low. The forecast in this probable precog dream is 10 with a predicted low probability of occurring about mid-week which, from my perspective, starts this coming Wednesday. For those who are unfamiliar, the United States permit two types of countrywide lottery drawings weekly, Mega Millions & Powerball. Of the various ways to win either drawing, one needs only the Megaball or Powerball number to have a winning ticket. My dream appears to forecast 10 as either the Megaball or Powerball number for this coming week. I believe this dream offers us a uniquely public opportunity to observe either the fallacy of precog dreaming, the profound nature and value of dream content or, perhaps, the nature of coincidence as MigL amusingly observed in a prior comment. I guess we'll all know by this time next week.

I saw that documentary and I was engrossed from start to finish!

Las Vegas developer, Robert Bigelow, is offering almost $1,000,000 to neurologists or psychologists as follows: "Specifically, the billionaire wants to know if it is possible "the survival of human consciousness beyond bodily death ." To do this, scientists, neurologists and psychologists have until August 1, 2021 to submit a response of up to 25 thousand words. A group of specialist judges will select the winner on November 1. Thus the first place will receive 500 thousand dollars, the second 300 thousand and the third 150 thousand." I think I can answer that question in 1 word but Mr. Bigelow requires 25,000. If you're up for easy money, here's your chance. Enjoy!

If I understand correctly, you're presenting a position that correlates genetically based racial distinctions with variations in brain size that confer variations in intelligence. Let's start with the genetics, which does not confer intelligence unless their expression result in malformations that inhibit normal or average brain development or function. Homo sapiens, as a species, share a commonality of brain development, structure, and function that may only be altered invitro or after birth as a result of nutritional, environmental, or social influences and effects. What I'm stating here is that genetics do not influence our capacity to learn and innovate unless those genetics in someway effects brains developments that are inconsistent with average, atypical developments among the human species--which brings us to brain size. Indeed, genetics can affect brain size as evident by the brain cases of humans from extinct to modern emergences. However, brain size empirically does not confer "exceptional cognitive abilities". If brain size were an empirical measure of intelligence, we'd be a planet of Neanderthals whose brain size were larger than modern humans. Or, perhaps, we'd be ruled by species of whale or elephant whose brain volumes can measure as much as 9 kg and 7 kg respectively. Indeed, the idea that brain size confer intelligence is a ludicrous assertion. Lastly, race vs. ethnicity are not synonymous from how I understand and has used those terms. Race describes a purely physical distinction between humans primarily characterized by skin pigmentation, eye color, and hair texture. While ethnicity describes a social distinction rooted in tribalism and traditions relative to origins of religious and/or geographic significance. Race and ethnicity are not empirical scientific measures of intelligence because they do not constrict the basic cognitive capacity of humans. The basic cognitive capacity of humans may only be constricted by the prejudices we impose overtly and subvertly on our species--as suggested by the argument you have posed in this discussion.

If there is some real or practical advantage to understanding dream content, one may ask, what is it? A primary advantage, as many mental healthcare providers could attest, is psychological. Dream content can provide remarkably clear insight on the psychological underpinnings of our thoughts and behaviors. However, for several years now, I've investigated whether there is any materially overt advantage to knowing anything about dream content. Well, the juries still out on the latter; however, at the very least, I've proven to my own satisfaction that the psychological advantages are real. Many years ago, amid a particularly painful divorce, I fell into an extraordinarily deep depression that lingered for several years. Being a typical male of that era with my upbringing, I did not seek the professional help I obviously needed with the belief that I would recover sufficiently without it. And I did recover, but not until after I experienced a particularly vivid dream about my mother who had died just a couple years before my divorce. It was a simple dream involving me crying profusely over her departure in the dream from my home. When I awoke, I immediately understood that dreams relevancy to my current psychological state at the time and I also new what that dream meant. The cause of my deep depressions during the years after my divorce was not my marriage dissolution but the loss of my mother whom I had not sufficiently grieved until the emotional buoyance my marriage provided dissolved in divorce. Over the years, I've had many such psychological revelations regarding the underpinnings of mind and emotion from the insight my perspective of dream content provides. In more recent years, I've investigated the material advantages of dream content with inconsistent results. The material advantages I seek are those dreams that provides some provably and overwhelmingly real physical or material result that cannot be dismissed by pure chance. I've devised experiments, based on my functional perspective of dreaming, that initially but do not consistently provide the type of unassailable results I seek. But, I remain in the hunt. If your interest remains, I welcome your thoughts and discussion of the relevant science.

You're quite right, perhaps I should unearth and revisit whatever notes I may have jotted down at the time as reassurance. I kept a journal--diary as some may reference-- of my daily experiences as a record of significant events that I may reflect on in my later years. I now keep a sort of dream journal for a similar purpose.

Over my long years I, as have many others, have had many such dream types that tend to reflect the resonant effects of stress and anxiety that persist amid the aroused state of dreaming in brain function. Dreaming is how our sleeping brain responds to stimuli in sleep, which means they don't occur without a cause that can't be traced back to some resonant influence of primarily mental significance. Precisely! Perhaps intuition is just a convenient or simpler way to describe the perception and thought processes our brain unconsciously engages amid our conscious wakeful focus on more immediate concerns or interests. Indeed, as time does embellish memory, it may be that my dream was not as vivid as I recall. However, I believe my memory of the experience is quite clear as I have revisited it obsessively since my moment of arousal from it. Interestingly, I remember more about that moment than I do my real life experiences at the time.

Apologies, I should have qualified my use of "precognitive dream" as a reference distinguishable from some unproven psychic phenomena. It is not a suggestion that I or anyone possesses some extraordinary perceptual ability. As I perceive and use this reference, it describes the predictive nature of a dream type and content that isn't anymore extraordinary that weather forecasting. Meteorologists, for example, can forecast atmospheric occurrences within a relative degree of certainty with sufficient data. Likewise, there's a significant amount of sensory experiences that escape our conscious perception but not necessarily our unconscious awareness. As I understand, precognitive dreaming is about the unconscious nature of brain function and how that function accumulates, processes and accesses huge amounts of sensory data to produce predictive outcomes. Using my muddy shoe dream as a example, it's likely that I was unconsciously aware of the potential for someone stepping in some muddy area near my parent's home and that anyone leaving or entering that resident might muddy their shoes if not particularly attentive. Unfortunately, my sister was that person and my dream appeared to forecast that she would muddy her shoe. Further, it may be that I was unconsciously aware that the shoe she muddied was one of a pair she might have worn frequently at the time and that if she were to step in some mud puddle, that pair would be the ones soiled. I cannot now know for certain, given the number of years that have past since that dream, what I did or didn't know about the grounds of my parent's home or my sister's foot apparel preferences at that time. What I do know is that this dream experience compelled my many years of interests in the extraordinary nature of our unconscious--which is the focus of my interests here in these discussions. Amusing and yes, coincidence does indeed appear to be the most reasonable and applicable explanation as it relates to the general nature of real life experiences; however, coincidence is not a word that apply to the nature of dreaming and dream content in brain function. Empirically, the science suggests that dreaming is not a coincidental act of brain function in sleep and neither is dream content. On average occurring at 90 minute intervals, dreaming initiates as a consequence of atonia near the end of the deepest stages of NREM glymphatic cleansing. Dreaming emerge as a response to the increase sensitivity of brain function to stimuli in sleep due to the partial removal of sensory suppressing interstitial cell waste (adenosine) and brain chemistry (melatonin). Dream content is an interpretive response to the stimuli our brain experiences in sleep. The elements of my dream suggest something deeper, which I cannot now confirm given how long ago it occurred. Nevertheless, I appreciate your perspective.

Understandably, most people of serious mind and interests would rather consign this topic of discussion to the trash bin. From an unstudied perspective, understanding the true nature of dreams and dreaming appears to offer no real or practical advantage to our material pursuits and interests. Many years ago, I was of similar mind until I experienced a curious dream involving a muddy shoe. A remarkably vivid experience, I dreamed about a shoe belonging to my younger sister that appeared as placed in a bathroom sink. I awoke immediately and, throughout that morning, I thought the dream very odd. I said to myself, “What care did I have for my sister’s muddy shoes?” She had several shoes and that shoe was not particularly noteworthy. As I went about my day, I thought no more of the dream and my sister’s errant shoe until that evening when I entered through the basement door of the home she shared at the time with our parents. As I crossed the threshold, there, on the floor, laid the exact muddy shoe exactly as it appeared in my dream the night before, though not in a sink. After finding her muddied shoe, I later told my sister about the odd dream and we both had a laugh. She said that she had inadvertently stepped in some mud earlier and didn’t want to track it through the house while rushing to use a bathroom toilet. Thereafter, I became increasingly curious about the nature of dreams and how it was possible to dream about a future experience I could not possibly know would occur. Over the years, I would learn that my muddy shoe dream was a precognitive dream and that such experiences are quite common. Although I can explain how such dreams occur, I can’t say that I completely understand why they do. In retrospect, there was nothing about that dream’s content that clearly explains why it occurred. Nevertheless, dreams and dreaming are not total mysteries to me or to science. They are remarkably predictive and descriptive of compelling unconscious mental and social influences. Understanding dream content opens a window on our unconscious mind in ways not commonly or well understood by many--particularly those in mainstream science, IMO.

Hello All, Through my previous SFN posts (Progression of Sleep to Dreaming, Dreams and Dreaming, & Dreams and Memory), I believe I've sufficiently established the nature of dreaming in brain function and that dreams are meaningful. Yet some of you, who may still have some interest, may still have doubts regarding all or, specifically, the latter. Indeed, dreams are meaningful in that they uniquely interpret the resonant sensory influences unconsciously affecting the brain's response centers in sleep. So, one may ask more specifically, what are these "resonant influences and how are they interpreted by dream content?" If you still have interest or doubts, let us discuss them here as permissible by SFN rules. I welcome your thoughts.

Quite right, thanks!

If I may comment on just this bit, our moon is tidal locked meaning that one side of the moon always faces Earth and the other side always faces away from Earth. Both sides do receive sun exposure amid this locked rotation. The "dark side" of our moon is not a reference to its level of luminosity but rather to its unobservable position relative Earth.

Although he may be barred from office, Trump's massive vote count in this past election and his insurrection inspiring popularity virtually assures his continued sway over Republican (conservative) politics. Stripped bare, I believe Trump's primary interest is power and his enormous potential sway over conservative politics is power. With that power he could, for example, threaten the electability of Senators who support a conviction for his seditious efforts to overturn the results of a legitimate election.

Recent...as in the history made on the steps and in the houses of Congress just a few short weeks ago. It was a insurrection fostered by a false narrative propagated by Republican leadership in both the Legislative and Executive branches of our nation's government.

I agree but I think Trump's threat is likely a veiled flexing of his potential political muscle against those Republicans who might support some future punitive action for his clearly seditious efforts against Biden's presidential confirmation.

I agree...but the crazies are still out there and their leader has clearly not abdicated with his threats of a Republican alternative "Patriots Party"...which may not be such a bad thing if it will dilute or divide the political party that has done the most harm to our nation in recent history.

Although I agree all regions of the brain contribute some quality to our behavioral outputs or responses, some regions contribute demonstratively and quantifiably more. Consider, if you will, the curious case of Phineas Gage who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a railroad spike rocketed through his left prefrontal in a 19th century railroad accident. Although Phineas survived and lived another 12 years after the accident, reports emerged suggesting he had suffered profound changes to his personality. Prior to the injury that destroyed his left prefrontal cortex Phineas, from most accounts, was a well regarded site manager for the railroad. After recovering from his injury, accounts are that he displayed bawdy and inappropriate behaviors, fits of anger, and an inability to maintain employment consequently. The injury appeared to have rendered Phineas with an immature disregard for the consequences of his behavior. From another perspective, consider the behavioral outcome of leucotomy (lobotomy) during the first half of the 20th century. Leucotomy was a widely used psychosurgical procedures separating the prefrontal cortex from the cerebrum that fell into disrepute by mid-20th century. Sometimes causing death, this procedure was employed to treat certain forms of mental illness and it frequently resulted in listless, indolent patients. These patients appeared unconcern with future needs or responsibilities beyond what may have been presently occurring. The behavioral outcome of these types of injuries and surgeries to the prefrontal cortex suggest that its function may contribute significantly to our anticipatory behavioral output. From my perspective of brain evolution, the cortex is merely an extension of subcortical processes and is where sensory stimuli is extensively perceived and assessed for suitable or reciprocal behavioral outputs. The prefrontal cortex evolved, in my view of evolution, concurrent with the anticipatory needs and behaviors of ancestral animals. It is my belief that our modern prefrontal cortical function is what gave our emerging ancestors a survival advantage over our Neanderthal predecessors. The quality that prefrontal function contributes to our behaviors is convincingly displayed by sufferers of hypofrontality in schizophrenia who predominately appear to have little regard for their behavioral consequences. Interestingly, we all experiences a transient form of hypofrontality during our dreaming stages of sleep. In conclusion and in answer to your query, the prefrontal cortex is likely the part of our brain that is most involved in assessing or predicting the consequences of our actions and behaviors. I hope this helps.

And likely much closer today than you may think with all the furor Donald Trump has caused this county since soundly losing the presidency.

Hello again, As a follow up and for clarity, dreams are efferent brain responses that do not trace a path to permanent or long-term memory unless they include or end in a real sensory experience. Recording our dreams, physically or materially, involves afferently real sensory experiences that refresh and reinforce our memory of the dream content we record. Unlike dream experiences, physical/material sensory experiences trace a path to memory through their neural altering impact. The evidence for this is shown by the neural affect of sensory experience on brain development. My particular interest in all of this, as I have previously commented, has been a better understanding of what I consider extraordinary dream experiences and content. I considered those experiences and content extraordinary when they have had some unquestionably real impact in my conscious cognitive experience. Consequently, I've acquired remarkable insight on brain evolution, neural development, brain function and the consciousness that function produces. It's my hope that what meager insights I've shared here have proved worthy of your interest.

Hello All, Functionally, memory was evolved for experiences that had a real physical/material impact on the survival of ancestral animals. Dreams aren’t easily remembered because they are not materially real experiences and our brain is able to detect that distinction in sleep. If you’ve heard or read this explanation before, it probably originated from thoughts I’ve expressed here or elsewhere. What I may not have shared here or elsewhere before now are the mechanisms for this process in brain function. In the brain distinctively, neural activity flows in just two basic directions: Afferent for the direction of neural impulses entering the brain as stimuli from the sensory systems of the body and efferent for the direction of neural impulses exiting the brain as functional responses to stimuli. Dreams emerge from the efferent response systems of brain function and only emerge as a collective interpretive response to afferent stimuli. Memory was evolved for afferent stimuli, which describes stimuli that have a direct and tangible impact on the sensory systems of the body. Although our dream content relies on our brain’s memory stores to interpret stimuli, dreams are efferent interpretive responses that are only memorable for the afferent stimuli evoking their emergence. As they indeed originate from real sensory experiences, afferent stimuli are encoded with a physically distinct signature facilitating a unique and traceable neural path for each sensory experience to a designated state of memory in the brain. Without that physically distinctive signature, the memory of our experiences may never reach a state of permanency. From this perspective short-term memory involves stimuli and experiences that never reach a state of permanency. Dream content remains short-term because they are efferent responses that do not originate from afferently encoded stimuli. Dreams originate internally from brain function rather than externally though sensory experience. Although dream content does efferently interpret afferently encoded effects, those interpretations will not become permanent memories without afferently encoded signatures reinforcing their material value or memory worthiness—which is why recording our dreams reinforce our memory of them.

If not considered in earlier discussion, this election was a referendum on Trump that likely owes victory to Republicans rather than Progressives, Democrats, or some other independent affiliation. The evidence for this is suggested by the loss that House Democrats experienced and their failure to make significant gains in the Senate despite Biden's nearly 5 million more popular votes than Trump. This significant margin of popular votes suggests to me that a large number of Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Biden while continuing their support for down ticket Republicans. If other affiliations were responsible for Biden's victory, they likely would have also elected a congress that would likely support rather than potentially obstruction his administration's goals.

I agree, discussions centering on defunding the police is a shameful distraction from this history making movement gripping our nations conscience and the world....yet it remains a distraction arising from the movement itself and it is quickly becoming a significant part of it's message and call to action. I fervently agree and believe that "WHY" is profoundly important and should remain at the forefront of our nation's discussion but I also believe that "HOW" should remain as equally important if our goal is to remedy our country's inequities and create a nation more securely rooted in freedom, justice and true equality for our citizenry. What happened to Mr. Floyd is indeed the "Last Straw." The moment for action is now. This movement is a call to action and the HOW in its message should inform and direct our actions with resounding clarity if we want it to prevail.

Although I agree that services to a community might benefit from redirected funds, I think there's a danger to promoting this idea of defunding the police. In our society, I think most people have a tendency to consider only the bumper sticker version of an issue rather than read the fine print as Booker eloquently provides. Just today, Minneapolis protesters ejected their mayor from their peaceful action when he refused to support defunding and, specifically, removing police from their community. When the protests are done and the police are gone, crime in America remains. We are an uncivil and uncivilized society that require policing and the slogan "Defund the Police" sends our communities, citizens, police, and, particularly, our criminals the wrong message. A message that we are a reformed society, which we aren't, and that we do not require protection, which we do. I think "Defund Bloat and Waste, Fund Public Schools and Mental Health Clinics" would send a clearer more effective message.

I support every constructive effort to reform our police policies and tactics, as well as, every civil effort to bring equality to our nation's people; however, "Defund the Police" is an idiotic idea. As a wise person once said, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

Your advocacy for police brutality suggest your statement here is unequivocally disingenuous. You've touted your belief in police brutality and, thereby, confirm you do believe it exist. It's hardly convincing that a person who holds such beliefs is in anyway sincerely or slightly interested in humans rights protection whatsoever. As decent human beings raised with a modicum of morals, they should have innately known to weigh "following training/orders" against the loss of common decency. "I was just following training/orders" is not an excuse for crimes committed while doing so.