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Dreams

I initially didn't think of dreams as an avenue for research until I watched The Matrix. I didn't think much of dreams at first for some reason, but it clicked that dreams and nightmares are effectively a form of simulated reality that, unlike current simulations, well and truly feel real. 

So what do I want to find out? As always, I'm using the interrogation method to figure out what I actually want/need to learn.
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  • What actually ARE dreams?
  • What causes them?
  • Why do we dream?
  • Why do we have nightmares?
  • Why are dreams and nightmares often so confusing or abstract?
  • How do our personal experiences dictate dreams?
  • How does sleep quality and duration effect dreams?
  • What causes recurring dreams and nightmares?
  • What is lucid dreaming?
  • Why is lucid dreaming rare?
  • Is it possible to induce lucid dreams?
  • Can dreams be manipulated by outside sources?
What actually ARE dreams?
  • Its apparently quite hard to come up with a proper, all encompassing definition to what dreams are, but scientists seem to commonly agree that dreams are 'sleep dependent cognitions' - 'thoughts and mental images that occur during sleep'. One issue that arises from this, is that it suggests that REM sleep can only occur during sleep, and cannot occur during daytime consciousness. (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p124)
    • Day dreams are literally just dreams that occur during daytime consciousness, but its debated whether its actually possible. ​
Why do we dream?
  • 'Cognitions' refers to almost everything within ones mental life: thoughts, images, emotions, memories etc. One thing to note is that a lot of our lives rarely appear within dreams, such as reading and writing, implying that our dreams are often fuelled by things we want to fulfill in some capacity - Freud once stated that 'dreams allow us to engage in vivid hallucinatory wish fulfillment'. If someone lives a malnourished life, they will dream of delicious and nourishing foods and drinks. 
    • A major part of why we dream is formed by a need to 'make disparate connections between otherwise unconnected concepts'. Our brains can create imagery and feelings in regards to things we would otherwise never see or experience - we can interact with monsters and gods, we can get the feeling of what its like to kill, to commit atrocities, to save the world.​
    • Jennifer Windt argues that the core and properties of dreams can be captured by her 'immersive spatiotemporal hallucination' (ISTH) model of dreams. It suggests that dreams are spatiotemporal hallucinations. She suggests that dreams 'involve a shift in the spatiotemporal location of the self from a veridical perception-based reference frame, to the non-veridical hallucinatory reference frame'. What we perceive goes from real and truthful, to hallucinatory and false. (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p124,125,126)
    • Nir and Tonini were impressed by how labile the sense of self is in dreams. They believed that the self has 'reduced voluntary control, reduced self-awareness, reduced reflective thought, heightened emotionallity, and altered access to memories' - which is a mostly negative outlook. They believed one could not chase a goal in a dream, and that we can't be aware that we are dreaming. (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p126, 127)
Why are dreams often so confusing and/or abstract?
  • Going back to Hobson and Friston's neuro-simulation concept - the brain is effectively creating scenarios from memory and experience, with no sensory input. The brain's logical capabilities are also significantly lower during REM, and emotionality is increased. Our dreams are often more emotionally charged and don't really make much sense logically, effectively meaning that the brain is attempting to solve problems creatively.
  • From personal experience, I have had many abstract dreams, especially as a child. I had two recurring nightmares that would happen almost identically every time they happened.
    • The first was a really strange one where I would be alone in darkness, holding up a large ball with a pinhead that was on my index finger. Literally nothing else would happen, but for some reason it would cause a fear response in me. I never really looked to figure out what it meant, but it always made me feel quite existential and fearful of the universe. I can't quite figure out how to explain it.​
    • The second was a bit more clear - a large flexible sheet would fold over and crush my family's house while I was out in the garden. Again, I have no idea why there was a giant sheet, but it would cause a fear response. It seems to make more sense as to why, as it would destroy my home and kill my family, but why it was such a strange way of that event panning out is beyond me. 
    • The only other nightmare I remember vividly, was one in which the world literally ran out of metal - that was it. There was no imagery to it, just the idea that there was no more metal. I have no fear of metals nor have I really been too concerned with how humanity uses metals, so I have no clue what my brain was trying to do. I always found this one fascinating, as it was something that was otherwise incredibly mundane, spun and manipulated into something that I felt vividly scared of. 
How does sleep quality and duration affect dreams?
  • Anecdotally, I know that sleep duration can affect the way I remember dreams, but doesn't seem to affect the contents. I often times find that I cannot recall a dream I had during a normal nights sleep (7-9 hours), but I can recall dreams I have during shorter sleep durations, especially sleeps where I have woken up tired and fallen back to sleep. I find that the dreams are much more memorable during those sleeps than others. 
  • 'Good sleepers experience a notable change in emotionality between wakefulness and dreaming, with a prevalence of positive affect during daytime and predominant negative affect during dreaming, whereas poor sleepers are characterised by equal intensity of positive and negative emotionality in both states'.  (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7827529/#:~:text=Overall%2C%20our%20findings%20show%20that,intensity%20of%20positive%20and%20negative)
  • Interestingly, increased durations of REM sleep are actually associated with increased mortality rates. 'Dew et al. were able to analyze measures of sleep architecture in relation to risk for mortality. They reported that three measures of sleep architecture best predicted mortality: (1) sleep latencies of greater than thirty minutes; (2) poor sleep efficiency; and (3) an unusually high or low percentage of REM sleep.' (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p76)
What causes them?
  • The 'activation-synthesis theory' by Allan Hobson suggests that dreams occur during REM sleep (rapid-eye-movement) due to stimulation to the brainstem. REM sleep is characterised by 'burst-like, random brainstem, and basal forebrain cholinergenic activity while noradrenergic and serotoninergic modulation basically cease'. High levels of cholinergenic activity, acommanied by 'monoaminergic demodulation' were hypothesised to result in the hallucinations we call dreams. The activation-synthesis name came 'when limbic and sensorimotor sites of the forebrain engaged in a kind of reactive attempt to produce a coherent experience from the barrage of otherwise chaotic impulses arising from brainstem REM cellular activation'. (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p195, 196)
  • More recently Hobson collaborated with Karl Friston to produce a new theory that builds upon Hobson's work. The new theory is based around the idea that the sleeping brain attempts to simulate the world in an attempt to 'best predict its waking environment', needing 'REM sleep processes to do so. Since the brain has no sensory input during sleep, the brain comes up with these inputs itself, with predictions of the real world created by ones subjective experiences. Dream content is an attempt to 'find plausible explanations for fictive visual searches trigged by oculomotor input, and by pruning of synaptic connections'. (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p198)
Why do we have nightmares?
  • Tore Nielsen and Ross Levin created a new model of nightmares and dreams - the AND model. It suggests that REM dreaming involves the 'stripping away of contextual material from images laden with fear' which 'allows the fear image to be more efficiently integrated into long-term memory'. 'Fear extinction occurs after contextual information is stripped from affect-laden images or memory fragments' - 'Nightmares and recurrent dreams occur when the stripping or decontextualisation process breaks down and then the affect-laden image fragment remains in short-term memory stores where it gets reactivated periodically whenever semantically related cues activate it'.
    • This effectively means that visuals within your brain are typically stripped of context, thus causing no fear - failures in this stripping process is why the fear response remains in response to the aforementioned visuals. ​(The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p202)
How do our personal experiences dictate dreams?
  • As far as we know, our dreams are entirelly formed around our memories and experiences. In fact, they are dependent on said memories. Nightmares are probably the best way of determining the validity of this, as nightmares should, in theory, occur more commonly in people with traumatic life experiences that are relevant in recent memory. 'Severely distressing and repetitive nightmares are a hallmark of PSTD, RBD (REM behaviourr disorder), and several other chronic and disabling neuropsychiatric syndromes'.
  • Failed fear-extinction events can be caused by 'too high a level of fear or arousal associated by the original memory', meaning that a memory may be so traumatic to someone that the decontextualisation process during REM is ineffective, meaning that the negative emotions are continually stimulated within short term memory, causing nightmares. (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p90)
  • I know from personal experience that my dreams are formed by my experiences, as I have had plenty of dreams relating to specific people I know, specific events, or specific things I wanted to fulfill. 
What causes recurring dreams and nightmares?
  • Reccurent dreams are effectively a mystery as it stands - we have no idea why people can have the exact same dream multiple times. The current theory however, is that 'they are related to unresolved emotional difficulties in the dreamer's life'. (The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams, p192)
  • 'Reccurent dreams experienced during childhood suggest almost 90% are described as unpleasant or threatening.' This statistic interestingly drops to about 60% in adults.
What is 'lucid' dreaming?
  • Lucid dreaming is the name given for dreams in which the dreamer is able to control and manipulate them. 
  • Lucid dreaming is a hybrid of REM and waking states in which the 'dosolateral prefrontal cortex is partially activated during lucid dreaming'. During normal REM, this dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is deactivated. Lucid dreamers actually 'evidence of the highest dream recall rates'.
    • Its theorised that their high recall rate is down to 'their ability to solve puzzles, to achieve sudden insight in solving a puzzle, and in control of their attentional skills'.​
Can dreams be manipulated by outside sources?
  • Research has shown that it IS possible to manipulate the dreams of someone else by applying external stimuli such as smells and sounds. A study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19552703/) was conducted that showed applying olfactory stimuli to subjects would have a 'stronger effect on dream emotions' than other stimuli, because the 'processing is linked directly to the limbic system'. Negative smells (rotten eggs) and positive smells (roses) elicited negative and positive changes to reported dreams respectively. 
How does it inspire me?
  • Since dreams revolve around neuroscience and the brain, a consistent visual in my head is that of a neural network. The connections neurons form and how they interact with each other in order to conjure such incredible imagery during sleep is really inspiring to me. They tie in beautifully with the concept of simulation theory too, with the brain creating scenarios and situations without any sensory input from the real world. Exploring neural networks as a layout or visual component could make for some awesome aesthetics or even mechanics within a game space.
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  • The concept of dreams and in turn simulations being able to be manipulated externally is also really inspiring to me. The call-back to the Matrix and how it is a means of control can also be applied within this dream context perhaps - an individual could have their whole experience manipulated via drugs and external sensory input when they sleep. It also opens the door for a lot of worldbuilding, as well as ethical and moral issues that arise as a result of this context. Lots of room for exploration here!
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  • The abstract nature of dreams and nightmares gives a lot of room in terms of designs. Characters could be almost anything I could want them to be, and they could still all make sense alongside each other. I want to play around with the sort of Lovecraftian horror that comes from abstract entities and worlds - things outside of human understanding. Dreams can often times elicit fear on a much different level than the real world, a fear that is hard to wrap our heads around - this could be immensely powerful as a plot device or motif to follow when designing and aesthetic and characters. 
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