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Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

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Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#91

Post by r0s »

macNchz wrote: post #44
itsmemattchung wrote: post #18

Interesting byproduct. When I learned about lucid dreaming in my 20s, I spent an inordinate amount of time (every day for years) developing the skill, including journaling — in as much detail as possible — my dream as soon as I woke up. Unfortunately, I cannot turn off the ability now and now have to deal with the consequence of recalling all my dreams: good and bad.

I did the same thing in college and learned fairly quickly that I don't really care to remember all of my dreams. Nights where I remember all of my dreams don't feel restful and are sort of disorienting. It's hard to describe exactly what was so unpleasant about it for me, but there's some element of time perception involved...it was as though my memories of dreams were encoded on the same track as my waking memories…

My experience exactly. My intuition tells me dreams that should be recalled will be, the rest really don't need to be.

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#92

Post by weinzierl »

Many good and interesting comments from people with high dream recall ability, but I'm more interested in the opposite.

I guess I am what the article describes as a low dream recaller. I recall a dream definitely less then once a week on average - significantly so. For me it's more like a couple of times a year or maybe once a month at best. It basically only happens when my sleep is interrupted. It has always been like that even in phases of my life where I had enough sleep.

I wonder how common that is? In the study from the article 27 out of 55 participants were low dream recallers. I assume participants were selected for dream recall ability and these numbers tell us nothing how common low recall ability really is?

"The study included 55 healthy participants (ages 19–29) with normal sleep characteristics and body mass index. Twenty-eight participants were high dream recallers (able to recall about 6 dreams per week on average), while 27 participants were low dream recallers (recalling less than one dream per week on average)."

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#93

Post by tgv »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80

How does one know that you don't create the dream at the point that you're explaining it? Like a false memory. Thinking up an idea and remembering an idea probably have similar patterns on EEG. I guess that experiment has been done? At times I've had pretty interesting dreams, but since I was a teen (decades ago) wondered if perhaps the dream was made on the spot as I "remembered" it. Provided the creative part kept…

> How does one know that you don't create the dream at the point that you're explaining it? Like a false memory.

That's a good question, especially since the "people who can frequently recall their dreams tend to be more creative". It might be a self-report effect.

Another thing that the article seems to skip is the fact that it's doesn't try to measure only recall, but also the actual presence of dreams (you can't recall if you don't dream). There's no way to tell the difference. Plus the usual limitations of such studies: the manipulation (short sleep for the measurements and sleep deprivation in the non-measurement period), and bad statistical practices (NHST, calling higher p values proof of absence).

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#94

Post by akomtu »

On one occasion I caught a dream in the making. At some point while falling asleep my audial perception turned off and apparently it was rewired to hear internal processes, e.g. heartbeats and breathing. For a few moments it was a "textureless sound", but soon a random thought about waterfalls had crossed my mind and the sounds got texture. Imagine an overwhelming sound of waterfall modulated by heartbeats and breathing: you're aware of what's going on, but it feels so real and overwhelming, like standing under Niagara, that you're struggling to not give in to fear. When I was waking up, I caught a similar moment of half-built visual dream. I was seeing a room made of textureless cubic voxels, loosely resembling a living room layout, with a couple piles of voxels constituting armchairs, I think. However, this 3d scene was again modulated by heartbeats and breathing, so the "armchairs" were enlarging and shrinking with every heartbeat, overall resembling a fire, just made of voxels. The moment a thought with colors had crossed my mind, the voxels got texture and the room started to look indistinguishable from reality.

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#95

Post by tgv »

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #33

I never remember my dreams, to the point that I am not convinced I actually have dreams. I sleep well, wake up refreshed most mornings, but have no recollection of having dreamt. Probably all the caffeine...

By now I'm pretty sure that during a large period of my life I almost didn't dream. I dreamt perhaps once a month, and usually in clusters of a few days. Nowadays, I dream very often, almost every night. I also wake up more often during the night. Unless my brain rewired significantly, I think the conclusion that I simply didn't dream back then is quite likely.

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#96

Post by mullingitover »

photochemsyn wrote: post #46

Dreams are a mixed bag, they can be quite positive or negative experiences, or just a tedious regurgiation of one's daily experiences that one could do without. The phrase "a deep and dreamless sleep" generally implies a good night's sleep, and excessively vivid dreaming can be rather exhausting. Curiously there are some ways to manage dreams, here's an interesting article on researchers investigating what's apparent…

> For those who struggle with sleeping through really intense dreams, strong indica cannabis will suppress dreams for many people, but the side effects are a lot of grogginess the next morning.

For better or worse, there can also be a strong rebound effect with extremely vivid dreams when you stop smoking regularly.

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#97

Post by drusepth »

dorkwood wrote: post #76

You can improve your dream recall ability. It's not fixed. I did it when I was younger. I was lucky if I could remember one dream per month, and I went to remembering around six per night. Here's how to do it: as soon as you wake up, pay attention to whether you were just dreaming or not. Don't get out of bed and go to the bathroom -- if there was anything to remember from your dreams, you'll lose it by doing this. D…

>What you need to do instead, if you remember anything at all (even just part of a dream, some fleeting image) is get out a piece of paper and write it down immediately, in as much detail as possible.

I've had very good luck with a slight variation of this, too -- especially at the start. Rather than immediately waking up and writing down your dream(s), I've found it very helpful to immediately close my eyes and continue to visualize the dreams as I go back over what happened in each. This lets you build up more concise (see: faster-to-write-down) outlines without as much "real world" visual input trying to break those fragile dream memories. This approach might be overkill for writing down a single dream, but IMO helps a lot when you're trying to remember and write down multiple/many dreams.

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#98

Post by feanaro »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80

How does one know that you don't create the dream at the point that you're explaining it? Like a false memory. Thinking up an idea and remembering an idea probably have similar patterns on EEG. I guess that experiment has been done? At times I've had pretty interesting dreams, but since I was a teen (decades ago) wondered if perhaps the dream was made on the spot as I "remembered" it. Provided the creative part kept…

> At times I've had pretty interesting dreams, but since I was a teen (decades ago) wondered if perhaps the dream was made on the spot as I "remembered" it.

This is easily disproved by observing that people sometimes mutter in their sleep as they dream. Cats/dogs vocalize and twitch while dreaming too sometimes.

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#99

Post by drusepth »

janeerie wrote: post #24
itsmemattchung wrote: post #18

Interesting byproduct. When I learned about lucid dreaming in my 20s, I spent an inordinate amount of time (every day for years) developing the skill, including journaling — in as much detail as possible — my dream as soon as I woke up. Unfortunately, I cannot turn off the ability now and now have to deal with the consequence of recalling all my dreams: good and bad.

I'm curious what you consider to be the bad consequences of recalling your dreams? I remember at least one dream every night and enjoy going back over any of them. I especially like that I can identify a dream as the cause if I wake up in a weird mood. I worry that if I didn't have this recall, I might wake up just being vaguely pissed at my husband (because he was being a jerk in a dream).

I have a similar story to the comment you're replying to and remember most, if not all, of my dreams each night -- which are almost entirely vivid nightmares I'd prefer not to remember. Lucid dreaming is a skill that can help (waking up or taking control when you recognize a nightmare is a dream), but IME it's high-effort enough to maintain the skill that I now just try to sleep as little as I can instead.

Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

#100

Post by jay3ss »

neves wrote: post #66

I can't recommend enough the book "Oracle of the Night" by the neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro. He enter into the science of the dreams, and teaches how to use them as a source of creativity. Sometimes he wanders, but I think this is what creative scientists do. One of the best science books I've ever read https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/553072/the-oracle-o...

A really great book about dreaming and inducing lucid dreams is "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" by Dr. Stephen LaBerge[0]. It goes through relaxation techniques, improving dream recall, and eventually how to induce lucid dreams. It's quite a process and takes some work, but I was able to use his methods to induce lucid dreams and it's quite a powerful experience.

- [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316781.Exploring_the_Wor...

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