Monday, January 28, 2008

Dreams

For my group we're thinking of doing our project on dreams.
We haven't narrowed it down to just what topic were going to focus on.
Some of the different topics we've thought of are
  • lucid dreams
  • nightmares and how they effect us
  • dream interpretation
  • dreams and pass memories
  • recurring dreams
Another topic i found interesting was the period of sleep called Hypnagogia that happens when you are between being awake and asleep. You might feel as if you are awake but your brain waves are still preforming as if you are still sleeping. You then have very vivid dream like hallucinations and sensations. It's kind of like when you feel like your falling and you jerk yourself awake.
They talk about it more in this article i found
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/227/hypnagogia.html

3 comments:

Krista said...

Have you ever seen the movie Waking Life?

It is a beautiful film about Lucid dreaming, the protagonist in the film is jumping between being conscious and unconscious in his dream one evening. It also touches what it means to be fully awake and present in everyday moments. Anyways, it might be helpful for you to see it as some research.

I believe in dream interpretation, a lot of dreams substance is memories and events that occured earlier in the day. The brain relies on sleep, during the REM sleep cycle (I believe) is when the brain processes and stores all of the new memory and thoughts it experienced during the day.
http://www.50plushealth.co.uk/media/images/sleep-cy450.gif
This is a pretty easy diagram that describes the Sleep Cycle.

Jackson said...

You should probably look at Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams." Its a pretty classic text referring to dream analysis. A lot of his theories can seem dated and simplistic but its good to get a feel for what hes getting at. Here's a general overview discussing the text.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interpretation_of_Dreams

ssun said...

How about sleepwalking ?