In a message dated 6/12/03 11:37:10 PM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> >Some days back I ambled into Dr. Cola�o's site and read Dr. >Helekar's excellent paper on scientific temper and inquiry. I was >also impressed by the cutting-edge work the good doctor is into. > >I am a little curious about dream activity in sleep. > Hi Jose: Thanks for your kind words. I am not much of an expert on sleep and dreams. I can only tell you what I know from reading about other people's work. Sleep and dreams are among the least understood phenomena. Both why we sleep and dream, and how exactly we do them are not very clear. So there are no clear-cut answers to your questions. There are conditions that lead to very little dreaming and certainly very little dream recall. Ironically, insomnia is associated with an increase in dream recall frequency because people who wake up a lot during sleep can remember what they were dreaming just before waking up. The difference between REM and non-REM sleep is only in the amount and vividness of dreams. It is in principle possible to sleep without dreaming at all because it has recently been shown that the mechanism of dreaming can been dissociated from the mechanisms controlling the stages of sleep, but it would be hard to obtain objective confirmation of such an occurrence. Conscious control over dreams is possible, especially with practice, but is not a common occurrence. There is a phenomenon called lucid dreaming wherein the dreamer is aware that she is dreaming and can with practice control the content of her dreams. However, I am not aware of any study asking whether lucid dreamers could voluntarily suppress their dreams. Also, the type of voluntary control lucid dreamers have is very limited and different compared to what is seen in the normal waking state. Cheers, Santosh ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
