Bad dreams

[StringJunky]

 

Dreams are products of brain stimuli, filtered (interpreted) as physical/material experience. This brain stimulus, which is neither physical nor material, is a byproduct of our brain acting to restore its glycogen reserves rather than a neural relay response to concurrently real sensory stimuli. As afferent byproducts of subcortical brain activity, dream stimuli are exclusively a type of mentation not directly linked to congruent, contemporaneous sensory experience. Therefore, our dream imagery and scenarios are actually a type of mentation interpreted by the brain as physical/material experience. Everything about the nature of our experiences within our dreams describes something mental our brain interprets as physical/material. In our dreams, the houses we explore, the people we meet, the places, the food, everything universally interprets something exclusively mental in nature. When we correctly filter our dream experiences through the lense of the mentation they interpret, their content becomes more relavant as their meaning becomes cogent and clearer. From this point, my thoughts regard how to correctly apply this universal mentation filter to dream content should you still have interest. I welcome your thoughts.

 

Yep. Keep going.

[Robittybob1]

 

Dreams are products of brain stimuli, filtered (interpreted) as physical/material experience. This brain stimulus, which is neither physical nor material, is a byproduct of our brain acting to restore its glycogen reserves ..... I welcome your thoughts.

 

Did I read that right: dreams are a byproduct of the brain restoring its glycogen reserves?

 

The link on glycogen in the brain had nothing about "dreams", so how did you make the linkage?

What was the purpose of giving us that paper to read?

Edited June 3, 2016 by Robittybob1

[DrmDoc]

Did I read that right: dreams are a byproduct of the brain restoring its glycogen reserves?

 

The link on glycogen in the brain had nothing about "dreams", so how did you make the linkage?

What was the purpose of giving us that paper to read?

 

Apologies; to clarify, it was linked as a description of the nature of glycogen in the brain. For more on the metabolic processes of the brain, I refer you this discussion link.

 

Yep. Keep going.

 

Brain stimuli, to further clarify, could be understood as those neural affects (physical/material and non-physical/material) that initiate a cognitive (mentation) process. Dreaming is a cognitive process that brain stimuli initiate and dreams are brain stimuli filtered, as physical/material experience, through a cognitive process. Dreams, as mentation products, invariably interpret something mental in nature or affect. Affect is another key work here because when discussing dreams (filtered neural stimuli in sleep) we are essentially discussing neural affects that have influenced the responses of our sleeping brain; therefore, our brain responses in sleep are the effects of or reactions to neural stimuli. There are two basic categories of brain responses that correspond to the neural stimuli that initiate or influence those responses in sleep: Mental and Social. There are stimuli that exclusively affect what and how we think and feel. These are categorically mental influences affecting our analytical processes that do not gain outwardly evident behavioral expression. There are also influences that do gain outward expression--through our attitude, emotion, or behavior--that are categorically social. The physical/material filter our brain applies to stimuli in sleep is an effort to detect the nature of those neural (mental and social) affects by how they have influenced the brain’s responses. We know that the brain can respond with further mentation (mental) or with some behavioral (social) expression; therefore, the physical/material filters our dreams depict likely reference something either mental or social. Houses in dreams, for example, may reference either mental or social structures; dream vehicles may reference either mental or social conveyances, and roads may reference either mental or social paths, etc. The process of referencing dream depictions as either mental or social influences condenses our efforts to extract meaning from dream content to a methodical process based on how our brain universally interprets the neural stimuli it experiences in sleep. I welcome your continued interest, queries, and comments.

Edited June 3, 2016 by DrmDoc

[Lyudmilascience]

Have you ever tried to convert the images in your dreams into colloquial sayings. I found that was the language of my dream interpretation. So it would be like charades, where your subconscious mind was trying to communicate to your conscious mind using pictures (scenes, stories) that expressed these sayings.

I cant seem to convert them into sayings, but I can write them down into a story. I thought about writing my books down and publishing them as short stories or add on and invent long books out of them but first I would have to patent the stories and find a publishing company, become good at writing, I would rather write down the stories and have a writer publish them. I do try to illustrate my dreams because im an art major, some of them came out ok but some im just not capable without references, I need to go out and look for references, I cant use someones photos off line.

[Robittybob1]

 

Apologies; to clarify, it was linked as a description of the nature of glycogen in the brain. For more on the metabolic processes of the brain, I refer you this discussion link.

....

Same article is referenced. Do you have any actual evidence for what you say about dreams restoring the glycogen levels in the brain?

I cant seem to convert them into sayings, but I can write them down into a story. I thought about writing my books down and publishing them as short stories or add on and invent long books out of them but first I would have to patent the stories and find a publishing company, become good at writing, I would rather write down the stories and have a writer publish them. I do try to illustrate my dreams because im an art major, some of them came out ok but some im just not capable without references, I need to go out and look for references, I cant use someones photos off line.

Would you start a new thread somewhere discussing stories in dreams? This one seems to be mainly about the science of dreams. I'd be interested to see what develops.

[DrmDoc]

Same article is referenced. Do you have any actual evidence for what you say about dreams restoring the glycogen levels in the brain?

 

You're quite right; that link did not contain the references you sought. However, this link leads to an article exploring evidence suggesting how the sleep process "replenish energy stores in the brain". The article discusses various elements of a related "Benington-Heller" hypothesis on the nature of glycogen in sleep, as well as, sleep/wake and deprivation experiments suggesting the mechanism for glycogen production in sleep. Although prior evidence suggested a "predominant lack of glycogen" production in neuron cells because of their "constantly high energy demand" more recent studies now suggest values "substantially higher than previous estimates of glycogen content in the brain". The sleep/wake and deprivation studies discussed in the first link confirmed certain hypothesized predictions and suggests, though not expressly, how glycogen effect those cycles of non-REM to REM in sleep. As you may know, REM signals that active state of brain function in sleep when dreaming occurs. Our brain moves from an inactive to active state throughout the sleep process. From the article:

 

"The predictions of Benington and Heller about glycogen changes with sleep/wake and sleep deprivation have been supported, at least in part. However, the dynamic changes are more complex than they proposed. A reassessment of data obtained in experiments stimulated by their hypothesis leads to new hypotheses: a) depletion of glycogen is part of the arousal response providing ATP for the sudden increase in energy required to support enhanced neuronal firing on sudden awakening; and b) it is repletion, not depletion, of glycogen that is likely the signal to promote sleepiness."

 

The authors were discussing evidence that suggests glycogen depletion initiates arousal in the brain while glycogen restoration promote a return to an inactive state. Though not referenced expressly in the article, this process aligns with the proposed nature of our sleeping brain's inactive (NREM) to active (REM) cycles. I welcome your thoughts.

[DrmDoc]

 

 

I have sleep paralysis, when i was a kid it was every night, horrific, I had no idea what was happening, As I have grown older they are once or twice a month now.

 

Apologies for my oversight of your post and this late response. WebMD here offers a generally competent description of your experience and probable causes. Although some studies have linked sleep-paralysis to neurologically related causes, most have focused on its psychological implications. Of the two, I subscribe to the psychological context of sleep-paralysis. Generally, form the research I've reviewed, the predominant cause of most abnormal sleep conditions is stress. Either directly or indirectly, stress is likely a major factor in what causes sleep-paralysis. As with most perceptual experiences generated by the sleep process, I consider sleep-paralysis an effect of the brain stimuli that also causes dreaming. In my view, stressful stimuli cause bad dreams and sleep-paralysis is how our dreaming brain filters or identifies the mental or social effects of that stress. What could be key to our understanding of why some of us experience this condition is an understanding of what effects our brain is likely identifying through the experience of sleep-paralysis.

 

In my view, as I've posted previously, our understanding of the mental or social effects that dream imagery and scenarios interpret should be consist--from dreamer-to-dreamer--to be valid; therefore, sleep-paralysis likely interprets a type of mental or social paralysis, which could be identified by other elements of the experience. For example, a common sleep-paralysis scenario involves waking in bed and unable to move, in an eerily dark room, when a dark figure is suddenly observed in the room moving towards the dreamer and/or pressing-down on the dreamer's chests. In this scenario, sleep-paralysis conveys the mental effects of being paralyzed by fear, which relates to a mentally indecisive or immobile state. The dark bedroom describes the intimate mental environment of forebode that the dreamer's fear has constructed. Lastly, the dark intruder likely personifies the fear--the mental or social element--that the dreamer feels unable to defend against. I've found that these dreams often arise in anticipation of events or experiences that the dreamer believes he or she cannot escape or is unable to avoid. In another brief example, dream scenarios involving falling from high places isn't necessarily about the effects of falling asleep but most likely about the mental or social effects of failure and the fear of same. Similarly, being chased or running and hiding from someone or something in a dream suggesting an effort to mentally or socially escape or avoid some menacing mental or social consequence or influence. When we filter our conscious understanding of dreaming through the lens of how our dreaming brain universally interprets stimuli, I think what our dreams may convey becomes cogent and clearer.

Edited June 25, 2016 by DrmDoc