Into a several world

[j4]

I seem to have been having very vivid dreams over the last few days, or rather emotionally vivid, because I can't always describe them in detail afterwards but they leave me with very strong feelings that I can't get rid of easily.

Most vivid was the one a few days ago where I dreamed I was at a party and I wanted to leave but I couldn't find hoiho, who was supposed to be coming with me. I asked lots of people (including simonb, who was playing computer games, can't remember who else now, but they basically just shrugged and weren't interested, so I ended up searching the entire house on my own, with various people telling me to stop looking, and at one point I wondered if they knew he was dead and that was why they didn't want me to keep looking, but in the end I went down a tiny narrow staircase and he was there, sort of under the stairs, and he grabbed my arm as I went past which terrified me and then I was just cross with him for hiding, and he said "I needed some answers to some questions" but wouldn't explain beyond that. And I was trying to talk to him but couldn't talk, and woke myself up trying to talk (I do this quite a lot in dreams), so I woke up feeling cross and frightened and worrying about him, and couldn't shake the feeling for ages even though I knew it had all just been a dream.

I wonder if the emotions are already there (consciously or subconsciously) and that's why the dreams occur -- as an outlet for them? Or are the emotional triggers in given situations so strong that even imagining the situations can invoke the emotions? Are dreams like 'imagining' or more like experiencing 'for real'? There's something that stops us actually getting up and moving around while dreaming -- they've done experiments with cats where they suppress that thing and the cats run around and 'hunt' in their sleep -- so maybe it's actually closer to experience than imagination?

On the way into work today I had a bizarre experience while crossing Jesus Lock bridge -- for a couple of seconds I just didn't have a clue where I was, though something was telling me it was Oxford, but it was -- how can explain this? -- just the name 'Oxford', not any meaningful knowledge of place -- and the not-knowing made me feel terribly panicky for just those couple of seconds. Then once I 'knew' again I started wondering how I knew, and what made this one place rather than another ... which makes no sense really, but feels awfully like something I experienced in another, er, state of mind. Weird and disorientating.

Comments

[tamsinj.livejournal.com]

i recognise that feeling. but i normally (infrequently) get it when waking up.

i've once suddenly totally forgotten i was riding a bike and couldn't work out how to balance and stuff.. which felt comparable - well, with more pain and gravel (luckily the cars stopped)

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Dreams are more like 'real' than like 'imagining'. The cut-off thing is a block on the motor control centres, all the action triggers still fire but they're disconnected from the actuators. This block is also the source of the just-as-you-fall-asleep paralysis thing, and, possibly, in a last-chance-to-move kind of way, the myoclonal jerk (which has come damn close to fracturing my ankles more than once).

[nja.livejournal.com]

The cut-off thing is a block on the motor control centres, all the action triggers still fire but they're disconnected from the actuators.

I saw some film once of a cat which had had this block disconnected - it was asleep but jumping about trying to catch imaginary mice. So cats dream, too.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was what I was thinking of when I said the bit about cats... couldn't find the actual research, though to be fair I didn't look terribly hard.

[nja.livejournal.com]

I think it was that Jonathan Miller series about the brain, the one where he gassed himself with CO₂. Probably not on the web.

[j4.livejournal.com]

What's the myoclonal jerk?

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Something I probably mis-spelt or maybe even mis-named.
You know when you're on the very edge of falling asleep, sometimes a bit of you suddenly jerks? Usually the legs... It's that.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Oh... um, I don't know if I get that. I get the dreaming-I'm-falling-and-waking-up-with-a-jerk thing, but not just bits of me.

myoclonus

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Someone I know has a much more debilitating variant of the same thing - very intense jerks at all sorts of times of day. NIH fact sheet on Myoclonus (http://www.ninds.nih.gov/health_and_medical/pubs/myoclonus_doc.htm).