12 ms·

Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity

283 points by lxm 4y ago

awongh 4y ago
I have a lot of vivid dreams where there's some storyline going on, and within that story my mind constructs some architecture for the story to play out in. Very detailed and specific structures that I'll navigate through (that's the sensation)- hallways, rooms, environments with people and objects and where I can remember very small details, like a golden fleur-de-lys symbol on a public bathroom stall door. I've always suspected that these dreams are somehow linked to coding and the spatial/navigational sensations I get when constructing some idea in code.
shaky-carrousel 4y ago
Sadly I don't remember which medication I took, but I once took something to help with anxiety. Side effects were amnesia and hypnotic effects, if I recall correctly. I remember it was some anxiolytic. The thing is, for like an hour or two, I was able to remember hours and hours and hours of dreams. All appeared in front of me. I could get them like a chain, first one, then another that happened in the same location (be it real or imagined), and another, and another... It was a pretty awesome, if a bit overwhelming experience. The great thing is that now I know all the dream memories are still in there. I'm not able to remember them normally, but they are there. Sadly, as I said, I have no idea of what I took.
can16358p 4y ago
For some reason I find myself being able to remember many dreams for a few weeks, and almost none for a few more weeks/months. I don't change anything in my life that I can think of in those periods which might be affecting my creativity, sleep quality, thinking etc. Would love to know the reason though.
d4rkp4ttern 4y ago
Was recently wondering about something: Is having more vivid dreams (and being able to recall them) a sign of a restful, good quality sleep, or is it the opposite?
dwighttk 4y ago
I “remember” maybe one dream every 6 months. And those memories are like “aah I was falling” or “I hadn’t prepared for a test!” or “there was a group of people” sometimes the additional detail of “I wasn’t clothed…” Hope my jalopy of a brain can make it through.
superb-owl 4y ago
Anecdotally, I absolutely believe the results here. I went from rarely remembering my dreams to recalling 5-6 dreams per night, and regularly lucid dreaming. While I shy away from any distinct interpretive framework (e.g. Freudianism) taking the time to ask "where did this come from?" or "what is this telling me?" has given me huge insights into my own hidden fears, anxieties, and desires. I can honestly say I'm a much happier, more well-adjusted person as a result.
LocalH 4y ago
What about those of us who have had extremely minimal dream recall since we can remember? Sleeping feels like a black hole to me after the fact. Rarely do I even wake up with the slightest hint of what I was dreaming, and even when I do it slips away as I’m actively thinking about it.
giantg2 4y ago
I wonder if there's any links to possible negative affects (potential for dementia, etc) of vivid dreaming and/or recall. I have tons of vivid dreams that I can usually remember. I am fairly creative, although many would probably us the adjectives 'weird' or 'smart-ass'.
- Rury 4y ago
  From what I read, dreams are more apparent when you have poor sleep, as it either happens mostly (or at least recall ability is increased) during REM, which occurs when you're not fully asleep.
magneticnorth 4y ago
Interesting! Anecdotally, I have one friend who has vivid, very involved dreams that she can recall almost nightly, and she works as a professional artist who is talented and prolific across a few different areas of visual art.
jimmar 4y ago
As mentioned by the authors, the causal relationship cannot be answered by this study. But if you want to recall your dreams more frequently, I highly recommend keeping a dream journal (also mentioned in the link). In my teenage years I went from remembering an average of a dream per week to vividly remembering 3-4 dreams per night. As soon as you wake up, immediately start writing all details you remember. Whether or not this increases your creativity in the waking world, it's fun to see what your brain constructs while you're asleep.
- typpo 4y ago
  I've written down every dream I've had for the past 10 years. Hard to say whether it's improved my creativity, but it's fun to search and see trends. Like you said, dream recall improves if you immediately record dreams upon waking. I wrote a very crappy web app for this back in 2012: http://keepdream.me/ http://keepdream.me/. It emails me every morning to ask what I dreamed and records my reply. There must be better alternatives now.
armchairhacker 4y ago
I don't get particularly vivid dreams but I sometimes get dreams of really interesting stories. The dream itself is like a movie, I'm not the main character but I'm just kind of watching it unfold. What's really interesting is that these "dream movies" always have a half-decent plot. IMO a lot of movie plots are really bad and stick to typical tropes and lessons. My dreams don't stick to these tropes and have actual twists, lessons, etc. Like if they were a real movie I might actually watch it. For example one of them followed a rebellion against an oligarchy, but it never stuck to any main character. First we're introduced to someone, then eventually new people are introduced, and then eventually the original character dies but we just continue the story focusing on the new people, then even more people are added and they die and so on. So it's a bit more realistic and nobody gets plot armor. Idk how creative I am, I usually identify as someone whose more left-brain.
- js8 4y ago
  > I sometimes get dreams of really interesting stories. The dream itself is like a movie I have that too, surprisingly complex plots. I suspect it's because of what we consume - movies, culture, politics, etc.
- intrasight 4y ago
  I consider myself very fortunate that I have very vivid and often lucid dreams - for 50 years since I was a child. My dreams are like cinematic productions - crazy camera work and all. I dream in color and sound. Many of my dreams have soundtracks. I often wake up in the morning with the soundtrack still playing in my head and I turn on my phone and record. I have dozens of them now. When I was ten years old I had a dream where there was a credit role at the end of the dream. None of my friends had dreams like that so I realized at a young age that I had a gift. It's obviously a very personal gift as no one else can fully experience my dreams. I do write the good ones down and share them with close friends. Of course the nightmares are also very vivid too, and also sometimes have soundtracks. I consider myself a creative person but certainly not exceptionally so. But I do feel blessed to have interesting dreams that I remember.
  - lukeplato 4y ago
rl3 4y ago
I've had heightened dream recall before. It was due to poor sleep quality (presumably too much REM) and was pretty much living hell. Nevertheless, taking advantage of the increased visibility into one's dreams for the sake of analysis is at least fun.
jrib 4y ago
Anecdotally, I've found dream recall linked to novel experiences in real life. When I expose myself to new environments or interactions I tend to recall dreams more. Have others noticed this?
- greyface- 4y ago
  This tracks my experience, and is consistent with the idea of dreams as a memory consolidation mechanism.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
Of course this all depends on if the Guildford Uses Task test https://www.creativehuddle.co.uk/post/the-alternative-uses-test https://www.creativehuddle.co.uk/post/the-alternative-uses-t... is actually an accurate measure for creativity. Did they also score well on the Torrance tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Tests_of_Creative_Thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Tests_of_Creative_Thi... , based on Guildford but... I read an article once where Robert Frost took a creativity test and scored extremely low (based on seeing images in Rorschach inkblots) and remarked afterwards that creativity was not about seeing the images but in training oneself to ignore the non-essential images (paraphrasing, have never been able to find this via google - supposedly this happened while Frost was Poet Laureate.) Also the following points seem relevant: 1. ability to remember dreams is at least partially based on being woken up during them or shortly afterwards, this is why you can generally only remember the last dream you had. 2. A good nights sleep is often described as being central to high intelligence. 3. What is the relation between high creativity and high intelligence? Which brings me back to the question of how accurate the tests are, given that there generally agreed on foundational problems with all IQ testing methods (that I'm familiar with) finally then, if it is true, the thing to help creativity would be to remember your dreams: https://www.wikihow.com/Remember-Dreams https://www.wikihow.com/Remember-Dreams
- mojomark 4y ago
  > 3. What is the relation between high creativity and high intelligence? When asked "Which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?", psychologist Donald Hebb famously replied "Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?" [1] I'm no psychologist, but I'd imagine you'd find the relation between creativity and intelligence in the same context is similarly orthoganal. 1. Meaney M. The nature of nurture: maternal effects and chromatin remodelling. In: Cacioppo JT, Berntson GG. (eds) Essays in social neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, pp. 1–14.
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blockwriter 4y ago
When I am in a period of intensive writing, I recall my dreams at a higher than normal rate. The dreams also feel more layered than normal dreams, although I recognize that this is not quite knowable. I will often record these dreams as part of keeping my literary diaries. My most compelling narratives are dreamlike, in that their composition borrows a structure from the mere recording of dreams. These narratives feel like dry land dreaming that, like dry land training for skating, allows me to dial in on the technical aspects of the very fluid experience that is dreaming. This connection between dreaming and writing is of great interest to me. I am somewhat surprised that my most compelling writing was not inspired directly by any dream that I remember. The phenomenon of the one and the other are that similar. A kind of background hallucination can be intuited when writing fiction. In my experience, these hallucinations indicate that the writing has attained a degree of formal completion. I observe the characters of my story as though they were made of clay and also diminutive. Why clay? I am unsure, but I think it has to do with this clay’s yielding but inelastic quality.
pessimizer 4y ago
This is further evidence that "dreams" aren't actually being recalled, but instead that people wake up with their brains in an inconsistent state and rationalize how their brains came to be in that state. Creativity enables us to create detailed rationalizations.
- erybodyknows 4y ago
  I’ve always theorized that dreams, or at least the interpretation of them, are primarily emotional states that our minds attempt to backfill with logic or narrative structure upon awakening. Even when attempting to remember the details they seem to slip away and transmutate. However the general “sense” or feeling remains.
joemazerino 4y ago
I am anecdotally convinced that dreaming is beneficial. Every time I dream I wake up feeling refreshed. Is there any links to The Brain Network and neurogenesis?
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  Yes. In my opinion neurogenesis and mania/positivity is tightly linked. https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/adult-neurogenesis-plays-an-important-role-in-rem-sleep-335803 https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/adult-n...
- trevorishere 4y ago
  You've never had night terrors? I'm not sure how those would be classified as beneficial.
- rootw0rm 4y ago
  I have using dreams sometimes...where I can smell, taste, feel the drugs. Only to wake up feeling disgusted and ashamed. Beneficial? Maybe, maybe not.
pmoriarty 4y ago
The more I'm interested in my dreams and the more of them I write down the more of them I recall. But since all that writing and analyzing takes a long time, I rarely do it anymore, so I don't recall many dreams, but I'm still pretty creative.
- eternalban 4y ago
  There is no rush in analysis. I've had dreams that finally made sense years after the fact.
  - deltaonefour 4y ago
    its not suppose to make any sense. Any analysis you do is more YOU apoplying meaning to it without realizing it.
    - eternalban 4y ago
      That is your opinion and we disagree. And your last sentence is equally applicable to anything psychological content (conscious or otherwise, including simple sensing), is it not?
      - deltaonefour 4y ago
        How is it opinion when it's logical fact. Dreams have no meaning in the same way the bible has no meaning. You assign the meaning and that can be meaningful to you personally, but the dream itself is random.
        eternalban 4y ago
        Bible or any written text has meaning. Let's say we take the most ungenerous position and consider it as willful psychological manipulation of masses. Does that deprive it of 'meaning', 'agency'? "Logical fact". I missed this bit in your argument. Presumably, you assert that the mind's modalities consist of a 'rational' state of consciousness and a dream state mode where the content matter is "random". It is true that the mind, unfettered by the necessity to navigate in real-time a physical reality, is no longer constrained by either physics or causality. This then results in content matter that can seem random (as narratives) but to deprive them of meaning does not follow. I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary. — Mendeleev, as quoted by Inostrantzev As the saying goes, YMMV. /g
Terry_Roll 4y ago
Choline will do this for you, 3 eggs (yolks) is suggested to be enough for pregnant women, lecithin, choline bitartrate, CDP Choline, and any choline mimetic like Carnitine. I've found a couple of 000 capsules filled with lecithin 30mins before bed is best. A none supplemental alternative is water fasting but thats something that cant be done all the time.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  Interesting because I found if I take B6 I dream away more than usual and it’s way more vivid. Choline please a role in the Transulfuration pathway, as does B6 By stimulating the CBS enzyme. https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fels-jbs-prod-cdn.jbs.elsevierhealth.com%2Fcms%2Fattachment%2F1d05a906-4998-4ede-b302-695d37674cd7%2Fgr1.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.journalofdairyscience.org%2Farticle%2FS0022-0302(19)30411-4%2Ffulltext&tbnid=wM9-5t7S9baUTM&vet=1&docid=T5BYTPJwhXph1M&w=1133&h=519&hl=en-us&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fels-jbs-p...
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    Choline is an chemical in cells walls, it lowers the pressure in the alveoli to facilitate the gas exchange so it can increase physical performance and endurance, its used in connections between neurons, so it keeps brain fog/baby brain at bay.
itsmemattchung 4y ago
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.
- unixhero 4y ago
  If you are lucid often, then you got and amazing skill.
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    I used to have a lot of lucid dreams where I was able to spot I'm in a dream and start controlling what happens. The caveat was that my subconscious stopped making any effort, and I had to really consciously make things happen in the dream. Turns out I wasn't very creative in that state, and my lucid dreams went stale really fast. I'm glad it's over now.
- janeerie 4y ago
  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).
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    Nightmares are a thing. This can get particularly bad if you relive traumatic events.
    - emerged 4y ago
emmelaich 4y ago
Is dream recall related to visual imagination? Do those with aphasia never remember dreams?
- jhgb 4y ago
  What exactly does aphasia have to do with this?
  - harrisi 4y ago
    I assume they meant aphantasia. As far as I know, there's no evidence that people with aphantasia cannot dream, however. Anecdotally, I believe I have aphantasia and I very rarely remember any of my dreams, but it does happen.
    - emmelaich 4y ago
      Correct, I meant aphantasia. Thanks.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
I dream every night. Been that way since I was 14. And I have bipolar disorder. Guitarist, vocalist, published photographer, writer among other things. But the creativity also bled into my technical work. I also have Closed Eye Hallucinations, which means that at night mostly when I close my eyes the light patterns turn into physical images. For a long time they were tortured faces but I see lots of things; trees, mountains, people... So my psychiatrist thoughts on this was that the brain creativity creates these images out of patterns from the light and dark when you close your eyes.
dukeofdoom 4y ago
Remembering your last thought before falling asleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj9z510COyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj9z510COyg
yesenadam 4y ago
I recently got the book Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams: A Guide to Awakening Consciousness During Dream Sleep by Charles McPhee, but it sounded a little scary and full-on! So I haven't tried its techniques yet. Anyone here done that? I'm sure I would've tried it in my 20s, when I was experimenting with everything e.g. once I did a mantra for 2 weeks non-stop. I had Ann Faraday's The Dream Game, the only really good book on interpreting dreams I've seen. One of its techniques is to treat all the parts of a dream as characters, and talk with them, ask them questions, or put them in dialogue with each other. I had a dream diary, where I'd write down every dream I remembered. After a while doing that, I'd remember them almost every night. But then I'd write them down, then wake up and realize I only dreamt writing them down. So I'd have to write them down again. I had to stop when every day I'd have to write them down 4 times! Write them down, wake up, realize I only dreamt it, write them down again, wake up, realize I'd only dreamt that, write them down yet again, wake up etc. Too much. Also I tried sandplay, a kind of psychological therapy, which was absolutely amazing, and seems very similar to getting the parts of a dream talking. The therapist (or whatever they call themselves. Mine was a new-agey author/guru type, but there was nothing new agey about what he said in the sandplay room) has a room with a sandbox in the middle, and shelves full of hundreds of objects, toys, figurines, etc of all kinds around the walls. You walk around the room, selecting whatever object you feel drawn to, and put it in the sand. With as little thinking about it as possible. Then when you feel like stopping, stop. (I kept putting more things in, dozens, until he asked me to stop, and regrettably we only got to talk about a few of them.) Then they ask you to talk about each thing in the sand, what they mean, what one is doing next to another one etc. The answers just pour out, and it's like being able to see inside your head. I found it absolutely incredible, highly recommend! It's fun, painless, you can do it any time... and suddenly the insights/revelations usually locked away and only accessible from dreams/hallucinogens/psychological work, are freely available, gushing out.
kaycebasques 4y ago
My wife creates illustrations fairly consistently and she has uncanny dream recall. Like, sometimes it takes 5-10 minutes for her to tell me the complete dream. She has a strong memory in general which at times is very inconvenient because she can accurately remember all my goof-ups...
mapster 4y ago
I dictated by dreams into a microcasette for 4 weeks straight. I noped out at the end as the dreams became more lucid, almost out of body. 30 yrs later I still remember some of the dreams. I should like to try it again now that my work utilizes my creative strengths.
WesleyJohnson 4y ago
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...
- doliveira 4y ago
  Honestly I seldom remember I dreamt at all, and when I do it's more of a persistence of the emotion I was feeling than recollecting the dream itself. But when I do remember, it generally means it wasn't a good sleep
- tgv 4y ago
  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.
  - deltaonefour 4y ago
    No if you REM you dreamed. I also don't remember my dreams at all. This is the way it's supposed to be for us. If you remember your dream it means you were woken up in the middle of it. Something is disrupting your sleep whether it's the brain itself or something else. The waking up in the middle of the night thing could be sleep apnea. For people like us we're not suppose to remember dreams. But if we do, it means our sleep was disrupted.
    - tgv 4y ago
      > No if you REM you dreamed. REM is not the definition of dreaming.
      - deltaonefour 4y ago
        I never said that. Please be logical. REM is not the definition of dreaming but if you REM you dreamed. Thanks.
arthurofbabylon 4y ago
I learned to lucid dream as a teenager - it was incredible for resolving internal conflict and doing emotional work (everything in a dream is a reflection of the mind). Since then I’ve used it to solve both rock climbing problems and software problems. The basis of lucid dreaming is dream recall and a healthy skepticism about the permanence or validity of “reality.” It sounds like a difficult skill to develop but anyone who tries makes surprisingly quick progress, with quick gains in dream recall. For resources I recommend Andrew Holocek’s books (amazing, drawing upon Tibetan Buddhist techniques) plus the app I made for lucid dreaming shapedream.co (I’ll happily give anyone free access to its tools and guides - just write me).
- kaveet 4y ago
  This was my experience too. Although it’s been 5+ years since I actively tried to lucid dream, I still have nearly the same level of dream recall and average 1-2 accidental lucid dreams per month. The app looks wonderful! It might be the perfect excuse for me to get back into it. I’d love to maybe discuss some of your recommended reads—I’ll drop you a note.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Personally, I expanded on this to enter a dream state at will in quiet, comfortable circumstances. I find it fun to run my own mental holodeck. I dropped regular lucid dreaming once I gained this ability and focused on improving “dreaming” at will. Interestingly, I haven’t had any lucid dreaming since starting antipsychotic medication. Hasn’t affected entering states at will. If anything, it’s made it easier because I have much clearer cognition and the difference reality and imagination is more well-defined. The body and mind is fascinating. :)
birriel 4y ago
How did the researchers make sure that the participants were recalling the dreams they actually had? I understand the brain scan activity, but how could they tell that the actual subjective experience of the dreams was being accurately remembered?
- neves 4y ago
  this book describes a lot of experiments about dreams: Oracle of the Night, by Sidarta Ribeiro from rats with electrodes to brain imaging tech
jasonladuke0311 4y ago
The supplement ZMA gives me good recall of my dreams pretty frequently.
- dinkleberg 4y ago
  I was gonna comment about this. ZMA really seems to have an impact on how vivid my dreams are. When I forget to order another bottle my dreams are far less interesting. It's quite odd. It makes me think about how heavily our experience of life is impacted by our chemistry.
  - jasonladuke0311 4y ago
    Yeah I like it even though the science says it’s bunk. I feel more well-rested. I tried the constituent minerals separately but the effect wasn’t the same. Either a placebo or the dosage/formulation in ZMA has a unique effect.
  - rl3 4y ago
    >ZMA really seems to have an impact on how vivid my dreams are. I notice this with zinc/magnesium/calcium. Having taken it every night since adolescence, it's pretty much a requirement for good sleep. Without, REM city. Granted, less calcium and more magnesium these days. >It's quite odd. It makes me think about how heavily our experience of life is impacted by our chemistry. Agreed. There's probably a good argument to be had that developing a supplement dependence for sleep has likely affected the course of my life, for better or worse. Probably worse, but who knows. As an aside, be careful with B6 supplementation; it can accumulate, causing adverse CNS effects.
    - dinkleberg 4y ago
      Thanks for the heads up on the B6, I’ll have to do some research on that. The ZMA pills are convenient, but it wouldn’t be much more effort to just take some zinc and magnesium separately.
void-star 4y ago
I have strong personal anecdotal evidence that dreaming and creativity are interconnected. I began dream journaling a few years back, recording descriptions of my dreams along with sketches and drawings. These sketches and notes often led to inspiration in my painting and drawing practice. Doing this also actually increased the lucidity and frequency of memorable dreams I was having in a kind of feedback loop. I have talked about this with other people who have tried dream journaling and it seems to be a common phenomenon.
photochemsyn 4y ago
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 apparently a form of lucid dreaming, very Inception-like work: https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-entered-peoples-dreams-and-got-them-talking https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-entered-p... Interestingly I find those long Youtube 'relaxing sleep' videos to be a good way to moderate dreaming, possibly via a similar mechanism. Maybe white noise has a similar effect. One I use has waves quietly crashing on the beach, although once it resulted in a dream of walking through a thunderstorm in a forest and I'm pretty sure every time the waves crashed I'd experience a lightning-and-thunder strike which was rather alarming, complete with vivid imagery, and eventually woke me up. However, using the same video over and over again seems to result in a constant point of reference when dreaming, leading to more peaceful and less intensely random dreams. (Right after the Ukraine war broke out I started having vivid nuclear annihilation dreams, which were a bit much, and using these Youtube videos mitigated most of that) 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. Maybe for PTSD it's worth the tradeoff, but for many the cost-benefit ratio will be too negative.
- mullingitover 4y ago
  > 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.
Geee 4y ago
Dreams are weird. Last night I had an eye surgery, but they did it from the inside, by removing the top half of my skull. Then they attached it with three wing bolts. I was worried that it would fall off, because it was wobbly, and I tried to fasten the bolts but it didn't seem to work very well.
sammalloy 4y ago
I have this ability, and it’s not as wonderful as it sounds. I think I might have posted about it before. The thing is, it’s sometimes better to forget than to remember. I am sometimes haunted by my dream memories because they are too vivid, too real, and interfere with my other memories. I have intense memories of dreams stretching back many, many years, and it’s not beneficial to me. It’s more nightmarish than creative.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Also posted before by me; you can train to control some aspects of the dream. For me dreaming is like living different lives and movies ‘for real’. Sometimes I dream of things so realistic that months later I believe it really happened. Like someone told me about some software and where to get it; turns out this software does not exist, I dreamt it. Control part, for instance, was dreaming about being on vacation on some island which contained zombies and, although first trying to defend and hide from them, I thought ‘it is just a dream, let’s see what happens if I get bitten’ and so I had one of them bite me. I turned into a zombie and noticed I could still think and thought maybe the others can too. They could, so now my friends and me were immortal and ready to cure the world of everything. So nightmare turned into an excellent thing. But yes, I trained lucid dreaming since I was about 17-18, which is 30 years ago. I can just either let a dream play out or change things or wake up. I can also often make dreams continue after I wake up.
  - sammalloy 4y ago
    > Sometimes I dream of things so realistic that months later I believe it really happened. Like someone told me about some software and where to get it; turns out this software does not exist, I dreamt it. Yes, that’s the exact problem I’m talking about. It’s not good. It feels like it’s bordering on delusion. I’ve met other people like this in RL. I know one woman who believes in things that only happened in her dreams. I don’t think that’s all that healthy. And of course, you’ve got an entire Reddit community devoted to these things.
    - tluyben2 4y ago
mjh2539 4y ago
Be careful what you wish for. When you have incredibly vivid, realistic dreams, and you have good dream recall, it becomes difficult distinguishing between what actually happened in the past and what just happened in a dream.
- gchamonlive 4y ago
  It's a good thing dreams are really surreal then. I can separate my dreams nicely because I can't for the life of me jump 3 stores high and parkour to the edge of a glass dome while being chased.
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    I sometimes have dreams where I am just watching tv with some friends, or where I am programming or reading something online. And indeed, months later usually, it feels like that actually happened.
    - gchamonlive 4y ago
      I wish I had more down to earth dreams, really. It is cool to be in a totally different reality, and sometimes when I get a little self-aware in a dream and I concentrate on figuring out whether I'm dreaming, the dream just become more realistic. Like entering a building made of a maze of stairs and actually smelling and feeling the texture of wood. But since my dreams are so disconnected from my daily reality they just fade to oblivion eventually.
- donthellbanme 4y ago
swayvil 4y ago
If you're looking for a method to increase dream recall (lucid too) then I recommend Vipassana meditation. Works very well.
- arnejenssen 4y ago
  I started to meditate in 2007. Only 10-minute sessions. The change I noticed after a month, was that I woke up with a dream almost every day. Before starting meditation, the dreaming was a few times per year. Perhaps the meditation creates a relaxation that is helpful for dreaming?
  - swayvil 4y ago
    If I was looking for a why... I might say that, in vipassana, we extend our conscousness into places that are otherwise unconscious. And become comfortable being conscious there and having that place be part of our reality. The land of dreams being one such otherwise unconscious place.
neves 4y ago
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-of-night-by-sidarta-ribeiro/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/553072/the-oracle-o...
- neves 4y ago
  He even teaches how to do lucid dreaming.
- jay3ss 4y ago
  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_World_of_Lucid_Dreaming https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316781.Exploring_the_Wor...
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veidr 4y ago
I have episodic insomnia, and have prescriptions for drugs like zolpidem (Ambien) and etizolam, but I don't like to use them, so I am always on the look out for less-crazy things that other people say them sleep. Recently I tried the supplement cocktail[1] that neuroscience podcaster Andrew Huberman has mentioned he sometimes uses: magnesium threonate, epigenin, and L-theanine. While this does indeed make it easier for me to fall asleep, I also noticed that it consistently produces weirder and more memorable dreams than I normally have. While I doubt there is a causal relationship between remembering your dreams and the creativity benefits described in this article, I do prefer to have wild dreams and remember them. If that describes you, too, you might experiment with these supplements and see if they have a similar effect. [1]: https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/ https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/
dorkwood 4y ago
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. Dream memories are extremely fragile. 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. Once you make a habit of this, a curious thing happens. First, you'll remember more dreams. After a while, you likely won't have enough time in the morning to write them all down. The other thing that happens is you'll dream more vividly. There seems to be a link between how descriptive you are in your writing and how rich your dream experience becomes.
- pizza 4y ago
  Since it's way more likely I'll fall asleep near my phone, I've started tweeting my dreams on wake. I do have to admit, it is getting a lot easier to decipher them for longer afterwards, too. It's also getting a lot easier to pinpoint the origins of dream contents into things I had been thinking about while awake, too. The connections just seem a lot more apparent.
- JasserInicide 4y ago
  Yup, can confirm this. Replay as much of the dream as you can once you realize you're actually awake. It's crazy how fast the dream fades from your memory too, every second you lose more and more of it. Also, the better you get at exercising this, the better chance you have at entering a lucid dream. Best chance for those is also right when you wake up, spend a couple minutes recounting a dream, and then fall back asleep.
  - papito 4y ago
    The best ones are where you can fly at will, and then you realize you are in a dream. You may still have a few seconds where you are semi-conscious and can "fly".
anoncow 4y ago
My dreams have a cinematic universe of their own. Many of my dreams have stories and characters connected to my other dreams.
pbhjpbhj 4y ago
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 ahead of the "recall" part then it seems doable. I wonder if there could be negatives to greater dream recall, processing memories of dreams sounds like extra work for your finite brain functions to handle. I once woke from a dream with a sense of religious injunction, and still have the name I was "given" as a curiosity in my life, "St Athanasius of Lubensk". I had never heard of the forename nor the place at the time of the dream. Research showed them to separately be something. If you have details, let me know.
- magusdei 4y ago
  >If you have details, let me know. Athanasius is greek for "immortal" and is a common name of saints, church fathers etc. Lubensk (Лубенськ) is an obscure city near Luhansk. Saint Athanasius of Lubensk refers to Athanasius III of Constantinople, saint of the Orthodox church known as an "enlightener", who died near Lubensk. According to the Wikipedia article[1] he sometimes appears to people in dream visions, so your experience is not entirely without precedent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_III_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_III_of_Constantinop...
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    I've not looked this up in a while. I couldn't link any Athanasius to Lubensk at the time (but don't Athanasius of Constantinople, and found Lubensk. Gotta say the "appears to people in a dream" is kinda fucked up [messing with my head]. It must be 10y or more since I last researched it, looks like there are more leads out there. Thanks.
- superb-owl 4y ago
  This was a common objection to the notion of Lucid Dreaming for a long time. Scientists accused lucid dreamers of making up a post-hoc story about being in control. Finally Stephen LaBerge did a study where he was able to move his eyeballs in a distinct pattern during the REM phase [1], proving that he had conscious control while asleep. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05547-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05547-0
morjom 4y ago
I've lived with diagnosed type 2 narcolepsy[1] for 11-12 years now (half of my life, thanks Pandemrix), vivid dreams have been par for the course. Lots of nightmare-like dreams. Looks, sounds, smells like a nightmare, but doesn't "feel" like one). Thankfully I have developed/ adapted a way to wake-up whenever. I'd say I am semi-lucid in most of my dreams. I also have a very distinct "dreamscape" where my dreams happen. I can remember many of my dreams from years ago pretty accurately even though I don't journal them. 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy
- Rury 4y ago
  Yeah, I've learned to be able to wake up at will too. However, it always comes at a cost. I have to kill myself in the dream, and it always involves being hit or run over by a train. But sometimes it doesn't work entirely as I end up waking up in another dream, which is sometimes freaky, as it's not evident to me at first that I'm in just another dream or if I am awake. But once I figure I'm still dreaming, I can always cause that train to appear again.
  - deltaonefour 4y ago
    I too have a similar ability. But lately there's been a creature in my dreams. Every time I see it, I know I'm dreaming and I kill myself immediately. One time it managed to pin me down to stop me from killing myself. I ended up biting on some suicide capsules in the back of my jaw to die and that worked, but I won't always have that prop in the future.. It really depends on the context and the dream whether or not it makes sense for me to have that in my mouth. I can will it into existence but it HAS to make sense in the dream. I keep running from this creature. It wants to talk to me but somehow I sense malice and that I should avoid talking to it at all costs.
nestorD 4y ago
I once spoke with a psychic who does dream interpretation and he was adamant that people who recall their dream and people who don't can be put in two different personality clusters (including the fact that people who recall their dream are more creative). To his credit, he did study the scientific literature on the subject in details and might have been tipped by some preliminary research on the subject.
weinzierl 4y ago
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)."
akomtu 4y ago
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.
easytiger 4y ago
I have vivid/lucid dreams since childhood and often sleep paralysis. It's a curse not a blessing. Trust me. Also fairly sure it's inherited.
dgellow 4y ago
Lot of people discuss ways to improve dream recalls, or to have more lucid dreams. Is there a way to do the opposite, to stop remembering dreams or stop dreaming at all? I personally very much dislike the concept of dreaming, it feels like being forced to watch (or participate in) a movie I have no interest in. My best sleep is when I feel I was “turned off”, with no dream or at least no memory or feeling of dreaming. Just going to sleep, and wake up the morning with nothing happening in between, that’s my _dream_ night. I never met anyone who can relate, so I guess that’s pretty uncommon.
- frostedflakes 4y ago
  I don't recommend it but smoking lots of high potency cannabis all day, everyday will make your dreams disappear. But they will also come back 100x more vivid upon cessation.
  - can16358p 4y ago
    Probably the calming effect which results in a deeper sleep, thus not remembering much from the dreams. And if one gets used to having deep sleep only under an effect of a substance, then withdrawal, as you said, could be worse.
  - LocalH 4y ago
    This is not universal. My lack of dream recall predates my consumption of cannabis. I have multiple friends who, while smoking potent cannabis daily, also have some of the most vivid dream recalls I’ve ever witnessed.
- t_mann 4y ago
  Yes, it totally is (see also my response to user dorkwood). I used to have very unpleasant dreams up until I was a teenager and now all my nights are 'turned off', like you describe. When you wake up and your dream is still present, just think about something in your real life and actively tell yourself to forget the dream.
  - 4y ago
puzzlingcaptcha 4y ago
Interesting. One side effect of mirtazapine (an anxiolytic and atypical antidepressant) is vivid dreaming.

283 points by lxm 4y ago

I have a lot of vivid dreams where there's some storyline going on, and within that story my mind constructs some architecture for the story to play out in. Very detailed and specific structures that I'll navigate through (that's the sensation)- hallways, rooms, environments with people and objects and where I can remember very small details, like a golden fleur-de-lys symbol on a public bathroom stall door. I've always suspected that these dreams are somehow linked to coding and the spatial/navigational sensations I get when constructing some idea in code.

shaky-carrousel 4y ago

Sadly I don't remember which medication I took, but I once took something to help with anxiety. Side effects were amnesia and hypnotic effects, if I recall correctly. I remember it was some anxiolytic. The thing is, for like an hour or two, I was able to remember hours and hours and hours of dreams. All appeared in front of me. I could get them like a chain, first one, then another that happened in the same location (be it real or imagined), and another, and another... It was a pretty awesome, if a bit overwhelming experience. The great thing is that now I know all the dream memories are still in there. I'm not able to remember them normally, but they are there. Sadly, as I said, I have no idea of what I took.

can16358p 4y ago

For some reason I find myself being able to remember many dreams for a few weeks, and almost none for a few more weeks/months. I don't change anything in my life that I can think of in those periods which might be affecting my creativity, sleep quality, thinking etc. Would love to know the reason though.

d4rkp4ttern 4y ago

Was recently wondering about something: Is having more vivid dreams (and being able to recall them) a sign of a restful, good quality sleep, or is it the opposite?

dwighttk 4y ago

I “remember” maybe one dream every 6 months. And those memories are like “aah I was falling” or “I hadn’t prepared for a test!” or “there was a group of people” sometimes the additional detail of “I wasn’t clothed…” Hope my jalopy of a brain can make it through.

superb-owl 4y ago

Anecdotally, I absolutely believe the results here. I went from rarely remembering my dreams to recalling 5-6 dreams per night, and regularly lucid dreaming. While I shy away from any distinct interpretive framework (e.g. Freudianism) taking the time to ask "where did this come from?" or "what is this telling me?" has given me huge insights into my own hidden fears, anxieties, and desires. I can honestly say I'm a much happier, more well-adjusted person as a result.

LocalH 4y ago

What about those of us who have had extremely minimal dream recall since we can remember? Sleeping feels like a black hole to me after the fact. Rarely do I even wake up with the slightest hint of what I was dreaming, and even when I do it slips away as I’m actively thinking about it.

giantg2 4y ago

I wonder if there's any links to possible negative affects (potential for dementia, etc) of vivid dreaming and/or recall. I have tons of vivid dreams that I can usually remember. I am fairly creative, although many would probably us the adjectives 'weird' or 'smart-ass'.

Rury 4y ago
From what I read, dreams are more apparent when you have poor sleep, as it either happens mostly (or at least recall ability is increased) during REM, which occurs when you're not fully asleep.

magneticnorth 4y ago

Interesting! Anecdotally, I have one friend who has vivid, very involved dreams that she can recall almost nightly, and she works as a professional artist who is talented and prolific across a few different areas of visual art.

jimmar 4y ago

As mentioned by the authors, the causal relationship cannot be answered by this study. But if you want to recall your dreams more frequently, I highly recommend keeping a dream journal (also mentioned in the link). In my teenage years I went from remembering an average of a dream per week to vividly remembering 3-4 dreams per night. As soon as you wake up, immediately start writing all details you remember. Whether or not this increases your creativity in the waking world, it's fun to see what your brain constructs while you're asleep.

typpo 4y ago
I've written down every dream I've had for the past 10 years. Hard to say whether it's improved my creativity, but it's fun to search and see trends. Like you said, dream recall improves if you immediately record dreams upon waking. I wrote a very crappy web app for this back in 2012: http://keepdream.me/ http://keepdream.me/. It emails me every morning to ask what I dreamed and records my reply. There must be better alternatives now.

armchairhacker 4y ago

I don't get particularly vivid dreams but I sometimes get dreams of really interesting stories. The dream itself is like a movie, I'm not the main character but I'm just kind of watching it unfold. What's really interesting is that these "dream movies" always have a half-decent plot. IMO a lot of movie plots are really bad and stick to typical tropes and lessons. My dreams don't stick to these tropes and have actual twists, lessons, etc. Like if they were a real movie I might actually watch it. For example one of them followed a rebellion against an oligarchy, but it never stuck to any main character. First we're introduced to someone, then eventually new people are introduced, and then eventually the original character dies but we just continue the story focusing on the new people, then even more people are added and they die and so on. So it's a bit more realistic and nobody gets plot armor. Idk how creative I am, I usually identify as someone whose more left-brain.

js8 4y ago
> I sometimes get dreams of really interesting stories. The dream itself is like a movie I have that too, surprisingly complex plots. I suspect it's because of what we consume - movies, culture, politics, etc.
intrasight 4y ago
I consider myself very fortunate that I have very vivid and often lucid dreams - for 50 years since I was a child. My dreams are like cinematic productions - crazy camera work and all. I dream in color and sound. Many of my dreams have soundtracks. I often wake up in the morning with the soundtrack still playing in my head and I turn on my phone and record. I have dozens of them now. When I was ten years old I had a dream where there was a credit role at the end of the dream. None of my friends had dreams like that so I realized at a young age that I had a gift. It's obviously a very personal gift as no one else can fully experience my dreams. I do write the good ones down and share them with close friends. Of course the nightmares are also very vivid too, and also sometimes have soundtracks. I consider myself a creative person but certainly not exceptionally so. But I do feel blessed to have interesting dreams that I remember.
- lukeplato 4y ago

rl3 4y ago

I've had heightened dream recall before. It was due to poor sleep quality (presumably too much REM) and was pretty much living hell. Nevertheless, taking advantage of the increased visibility into one's dreams for the sake of analysis is at least fun.

jrib 4y ago

Anecdotally, I've found dream recall linked to novel experiences in real life. When I expose myself to new environments or interactions I tend to recall dreams more. Have others noticed this?

greyface- 4y ago
This tracks my experience, and is consistent with the idea of dreams as a memory consolidation mechanism.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

Of course this all depends on if the Guildford Uses Task test https://www.creativehuddle.co.uk/post/the-alternative-uses-test https://www.creativehuddle.co.uk/post/the-alternative-uses-t... is actually an accurate measure for creativity. Did they also score well on the Torrance tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Tests_of_Creative_Thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrance_Tests_of_Creative_Thi... , based on Guildford but... I read an article once where Robert Frost took a creativity test and scored extremely low (based on seeing images in Rorschach inkblots) and remarked afterwards that creativity was not about seeing the images but in training oneself to ignore the non-essential images (paraphrasing, have never been able to find this via google - supposedly this happened while Frost was Poet Laureate.) Also the following points seem relevant: 1. ability to remember dreams is at least partially based on being woken up during them or shortly afterwards, this is why you can generally only remember the last dream you had. 2. A good nights sleep is often described as being central to high intelligence. 3. What is the relation between high creativity and high intelligence? Which brings me back to the question of how accurate the tests are, given that there generally agreed on foundational problems with all IQ testing methods (that I'm familiar with) finally then, if it is true, the thing to help creativity would be to remember your dreams: https://www.wikihow.com/Remember-Dreams https://www.wikihow.com/Remember-Dreams

mojomark 4y ago
> 3. What is the relation between high creativity and high intelligence? When asked "Which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?", psychologist Donald Hebb famously replied "Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?" [1] I'm no psychologist, but I'd imagine you'd find the relation between creativity and intelligence in the same context is similarly orthoganal. 1. Meaney M. The nature of nurture: maternal effects and chromatin remodelling. In: Cacioppo JT, Berntson GG. (eds) Essays in social neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, pp. 1–14.

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blockwriter 4y ago

When I am in a period of intensive writing, I recall my dreams at a higher than normal rate. The dreams also feel more layered than normal dreams, although I recognize that this is not quite knowable. I will often record these dreams as part of keeping my literary diaries. My most compelling narratives are dreamlike, in that their composition borrows a structure from the mere recording of dreams. These narratives feel like dry land dreaming that, like dry land training for skating, allows me to dial in on the technical aspects of the very fluid experience that is dreaming. This connection between dreaming and writing is of great interest to me. I am somewhat surprised that my most compelling writing was not inspired directly by any dream that I remember. The phenomenon of the one and the other are that similar. A kind of background hallucination can be intuited when writing fiction. In my experience, these hallucinations indicate that the writing has attained a degree of formal completion. I observe the characters of my story as though they were made of clay and also diminutive. Why clay? I am unsure, but I think it has to do with this clay’s yielding but inelastic quality.

pessimizer 4y ago

This is further evidence that "dreams" aren't actually being recalled, but instead that people wake up with their brains in an inconsistent state and rationalize how their brains came to be in that state. Creativity enables us to create detailed rationalizations.

erybodyknows 4y ago
I’ve always theorized that dreams, or at least the interpretation of them, are primarily emotional states that our minds attempt to backfill with logic or narrative structure upon awakening. Even when attempting to remember the details they seem to slip away and transmutate. However the general “sense” or feeling remains.

joemazerino 4y ago

I am anecdotally convinced that dreaming is beneficial. Every time I dream I wake up feeling refreshed. Is there any links to The Brain Network and neurogenesis?

FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Yes. In my opinion neurogenesis and mania/positivity is tightly linked. https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/adult-neurogenesis-plays-an-important-role-in-rem-sleep-335803 https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/adult-n...
trevorishere 4y ago
You've never had night terrors? I'm not sure how those would be classified as beneficial.
rootw0rm 4y ago
I have using dreams sometimes...where I can smell, taste, feel the drugs. Only to wake up feeling disgusted and ashamed. Beneficial? Maybe, maybe not.

pmoriarty 4y ago

The more I'm interested in my dreams and the more of them I write down the more of them I recall. But since all that writing and analyzing takes a long time, I rarely do it anymore, so I don't recall many dreams, but I'm still pretty creative.

eternalban 4y ago
There is no rush in analysis. I've had dreams that finally made sense years after the fact.
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  its not suppose to make any sense. Any analysis you do is more YOU apoplying meaning to it without realizing it.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    That is your opinion and we disagree. And your last sentence is equally applicable to anything psychological content (conscious or otherwise, including simple sensing), is it not?
    - deltaonefour 4y ago
      How is it opinion when it's logical fact. Dreams have no meaning in the same way the bible has no meaning. You assign the meaning and that can be meaningful to you personally, but the dream itself is random.
      - eternalban 4y ago
        Bible or any written text has meaning. Let's say we take the most ungenerous position and consider it as willful psychological manipulation of masses. Does that deprive it of 'meaning', 'agency'? "Logical fact". I missed this bit in your argument. Presumably, you assert that the mind's modalities consist of a 'rational' state of consciousness and a dream state mode where the content matter is "random". It is true that the mind, unfettered by the necessity to navigate in real-time a physical reality, is no longer constrained by either physics or causality. This then results in content matter that can seem random (as narratives) but to deprive them of meaning does not follow. I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary. — Mendeleev, as quoted by Inostrantzev As the saying goes, YMMV. /g

Terry_Roll 4y ago

Choline will do this for you, 3 eggs (yolks) is suggested to be enough for pregnant women, lecithin, choline bitartrate, CDP Choline, and any choline mimetic like Carnitine. I've found a couple of 000 capsules filled with lecithin 30mins before bed is best. A none supplemental alternative is water fasting but thats something that cant be done all the time.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Interesting because I found if I take B6 I dream away more than usual and it’s way more vivid. Choline please a role in the Transulfuration pathway, as does B6 By stimulating the CBS enzyme. https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fels-jbs-prod-cdn.jbs.elsevierhealth.com%2Fcms%2Fattachment%2F1d05a906-4998-4ede-b302-695d37674cd7%2Fgr1.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.journalofdairyscience.org%2Farticle%2FS0022-0302(19)30411-4%2Ffulltext&tbnid=wM9-5t7S9baUTM&vet=1&docid=T5BYTPJwhXph1M&w=1133&h=519&hl=en-us&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fels-jbs-p...
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  Choline is an chemical in cells walls, it lowers the pressure in the alveoli to facilitate the gas exchange so it can increase physical performance and endurance, its used in connections between neurons, so it keeps brain fog/baby brain at bay.

itsmemattchung 4y ago

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.

unixhero 4y ago
If you are lucid often, then you got and amazing skill.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  I used to have a lot of lucid dreams where I was able to spot I'm in a dream and start controlling what happens. The caveat was that my subconscious stopped making any effort, and I had to really consciously make things happen in the dream. Turns out I wasn't very creative in that state, and my lucid dreams went stale really fast. I'm glad it's over now.
janeerie 4y ago
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).
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Nightmares are a thing. This can get particularly bad if you relive traumatic events.
  - emerged 4y ago

emmelaich 4y ago

Is dream recall related to visual imagination? Do those with aphasia never remember dreams?

jhgb 4y ago
What exactly does aphasia have to do with this?
- harrisi 4y ago
  I assume they meant aphantasia. As far as I know, there's no evidence that people with aphantasia cannot dream, however. Anecdotally, I believe I have aphantasia and I very rarely remember any of my dreams, but it does happen.
  - emmelaich 4y ago
    Correct, I meant aphantasia. Thanks.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

I dream every night. Been that way since I was 14. And I have bipolar disorder. Guitarist, vocalist, published photographer, writer among other things. But the creativity also bled into my technical work. I also have Closed Eye Hallucinations, which means that at night mostly when I close my eyes the light patterns turn into physical images. For a long time they were tortured faces but I see lots of things; trees, mountains, people... So my psychiatrist thoughts on this was that the brain creativity creates these images out of patterns from the light and dark when you close your eyes.

dukeofdoom 4y ago

Remembering your last thought before falling asleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj9z510COyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj9z510COyg

yesenadam 4y ago

I recently got the book Stop Sleeping Through Your Dreams: A Guide to Awakening Consciousness During Dream Sleep by Charles McPhee, but it sounded a little scary and full-on! So I haven't tried its techniques yet. Anyone here done that? I'm sure I would've tried it in my 20s, when I was experimenting with everything e.g. once I did a mantra for 2 weeks non-stop. I had Ann Faraday's The Dream Game, the only really good book on interpreting dreams I've seen. One of its techniques is to treat all the parts of a dream as characters, and talk with them, ask them questions, or put them in dialogue with each other. I had a dream diary, where I'd write down every dream I remembered. After a while doing that, I'd remember them almost every night. But then I'd write them down, then wake up and realize I only dreamt writing them down. So I'd have to write them down again. I had to stop when every day I'd have to write them down 4 times! Write them down, wake up, realize I only dreamt it, write them down again, wake up, realize I'd only dreamt that, write them down yet again, wake up etc. Too much. Also I tried sandplay, a kind of psychological therapy, which was absolutely amazing, and seems very similar to getting the parts of a dream talking. The therapist (or whatever they call themselves. Mine was a new-agey author/guru type, but there was nothing new agey about what he said in the sandplay room) has a room with a sandbox in the middle, and shelves full of hundreds of objects, toys, figurines, etc of all kinds around the walls. You walk around the room, selecting whatever object you feel drawn to, and put it in the sand. With as little thinking about it as possible. Then when you feel like stopping, stop. (I kept putting more things in, dozens, until he asked me to stop, and regrettably we only got to talk about a few of them.) Then they ask you to talk about each thing in the sand, what they mean, what one is doing next to another one etc. The answers just pour out, and it's like being able to see inside your head. I found it absolutely incredible, highly recommend! It's fun, painless, you can do it any time... and suddenly the insights/revelations usually locked away and only accessible from dreams/hallucinogens/psychological work, are freely available, gushing out.

kaycebasques 4y ago

My wife creates illustrations fairly consistently and she has uncanny dream recall. Like, sometimes it takes 5-10 minutes for her to tell me the complete dream. She has a strong memory in general which at times is very inconvenient because she can accurately remember all my goof-ups...

mapster 4y ago

I dictated by dreams into a microcasette for 4 weeks straight. I noped out at the end as the dreams became more lucid, almost out of body. 30 yrs later I still remember some of the dreams. I should like to try it again now that my work utilizes my creative strengths.

WesleyJohnson 4y ago

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...

doliveira 4y ago
Honestly I seldom remember I dreamt at all, and when I do it's more of a persistence of the emotion I was feeling than recollecting the dream itself. But when I do remember, it generally means it wasn't a good sleep
tgv 4y ago
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.
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  No if you REM you dreamed. I also don't remember my dreams at all. This is the way it's supposed to be for us. If you remember your dream it means you were woken up in the middle of it. Something is disrupting your sleep whether it's the brain itself or something else. The waking up in the middle of the night thing could be sleep apnea. For people like us we're not suppose to remember dreams. But if we do, it means our sleep was disrupted.
  - tgv 4y ago
    > No if you REM you dreamed. REM is not the definition of dreaming.
    - deltaonefour 4y ago
      I never said that. Please be logical. REM is not the definition of dreaming but if you REM you dreamed. Thanks.

arthurofbabylon 4y ago

I learned to lucid dream as a teenager - it was incredible for resolving internal conflict and doing emotional work (everything in a dream is a reflection of the mind). Since then I’ve used it to solve both rock climbing problems and software problems. The basis of lucid dreaming is dream recall and a healthy skepticism about the permanence or validity of “reality.” It sounds like a difficult skill to develop but anyone who tries makes surprisingly quick progress, with quick gains in dream recall. For resources I recommend Andrew Holocek’s books (amazing, drawing upon Tibetan Buddhist techniques) plus the app I made for lucid dreaming shapedream.co (I’ll happily give anyone free access to its tools and guides - just write me).

kaveet 4y ago
This was my experience too. Although it’s been 5+ years since I actively tried to lucid dream, I still have nearly the same level of dream recall and average 1-2 accidental lucid dreams per month. The app looks wonderful! It might be the perfect excuse for me to get back into it. I’d love to maybe discuss some of your recommended reads—I’ll drop you a note.
kayodelycaon 4y ago
Personally, I expanded on this to enter a dream state at will in quiet, comfortable circumstances. I find it fun to run my own mental holodeck. I dropped regular lucid dreaming once I gained this ability and focused on improving “dreaming” at will. Interestingly, I haven’t had any lucid dreaming since starting antipsychotic medication. Hasn’t affected entering states at will. If anything, it’s made it easier because I have much clearer cognition and the difference reality and imagination is more well-defined. The body and mind is fascinating. :)

birriel 4y ago

How did the researchers make sure that the participants were recalling the dreams they actually had? I understand the brain scan activity, but how could they tell that the actual subjective experience of the dreams was being accurately remembered?

neves 4y ago
this book describes a lot of experiments about dreams: Oracle of the Night, by Sidarta Ribeiro from rats with electrodes to brain imaging tech

jasonladuke0311 4y ago

The supplement ZMA gives me good recall of my dreams pretty frequently.

dinkleberg 4y ago
I was gonna comment about this. ZMA really seems to have an impact on how vivid my dreams are. When I forget to order another bottle my dreams are far less interesting. It's quite odd. It makes me think about how heavily our experience of life is impacted by our chemistry.
- jasonladuke0311 4y ago
  Yeah I like it even though the science says it’s bunk. I feel more well-rested. I tried the constituent minerals separately but the effect wasn’t the same. Either a placebo or the dosage/formulation in ZMA has a unique effect.
- rl3 4y ago
  >ZMA really seems to have an impact on how vivid my dreams are. I notice this with zinc/magnesium/calcium. Having taken it every night since adolescence, it's pretty much a requirement for good sleep. Without, REM city. Granted, less calcium and more magnesium these days. >It's quite odd. It makes me think about how heavily our experience of life is impacted by our chemistry. Agreed. There's probably a good argument to be had that developing a supplement dependence for sleep has likely affected the course of my life, for better or worse. Probably worse, but who knows. As an aside, be careful with B6 supplementation; it can accumulate, causing adverse CNS effects.
  - dinkleberg 4y ago
    Thanks for the heads up on the B6, I’ll have to do some research on that. The ZMA pills are convenient, but it wouldn’t be much more effort to just take some zinc and magnesium separately.

void-star 4y ago

I have strong personal anecdotal evidence that dreaming and creativity are interconnected. I began dream journaling a few years back, recording descriptions of my dreams along with sketches and drawings. These sketches and notes often led to inspiration in my painting and drawing practice. Doing this also actually increased the lucidity and frequency of memorable dreams I was having in a kind of feedback loop. I have talked about this with other people who have tried dream journaling and it seems to be a common phenomenon.

photochemsyn 4y ago

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 apparently a form of lucid dreaming, very Inception-like work: https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-entered-peoples-dreams-and-got-them-talking https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-entered-p... Interestingly I find those long Youtube 'relaxing sleep' videos to be a good way to moderate dreaming, possibly via a similar mechanism. Maybe white noise has a similar effect. One I use has waves quietly crashing on the beach, although once it resulted in a dream of walking through a thunderstorm in a forest and I'm pretty sure every time the waves crashed I'd experience a lightning-and-thunder strike which was rather alarming, complete with vivid imagery, and eventually woke me up. However, using the same video over and over again seems to result in a constant point of reference when dreaming, leading to more peaceful and less intensely random dreams. (Right after the Ukraine war broke out I started having vivid nuclear annihilation dreams, which were a bit much, and using these Youtube videos mitigated most of that) 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. Maybe for PTSD it's worth the tradeoff, but for many the cost-benefit ratio will be too negative.

mullingitover 4y ago
> 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.

Geee 4y ago

Dreams are weird. Last night I had an eye surgery, but they did it from the inside, by removing the top half of my skull. Then they attached it with three wing bolts. I was worried that it would fall off, because it was wobbly, and I tried to fasten the bolts but it didn't seem to work very well.

sammalloy 4y ago

I have this ability, and it’s not as wonderful as it sounds. I think I might have posted about it before. The thing is, it’s sometimes better to forget than to remember. I am sometimes haunted by my dream memories because they are too vivid, too real, and interfere with my other memories. I have intense memories of dreams stretching back many, many years, and it’s not beneficial to me. It’s more nightmarish than creative.

tluyben2 4y ago
Also posted before by me; you can train to control some aspects of the dream. For me dreaming is like living different lives and movies ‘for real’. Sometimes I dream of things so realistic that months later I believe it really happened. Like someone told me about some software and where to get it; turns out this software does not exist, I dreamt it. Control part, for instance, was dreaming about being on vacation on some island which contained zombies and, although first trying to defend and hide from them, I thought ‘it is just a dream, let’s see what happens if I get bitten’ and so I had one of them bite me. I turned into a zombie and noticed I could still think and thought maybe the others can too. They could, so now my friends and me were immortal and ready to cure the world of everything. So nightmare turned into an excellent thing. But yes, I trained lucid dreaming since I was about 17-18, which is 30 years ago. I can just either let a dream play out or change things or wake up. I can also often make dreams continue after I wake up.
- sammalloy 4y ago
  > Sometimes I dream of things so realistic that months later I believe it really happened. Like someone told me about some software and where to get it; turns out this software does not exist, I dreamt it. Yes, that’s the exact problem I’m talking about. It’s not good. It feels like it’s bordering on delusion. I’ve met other people like this in RL. I know one woman who believes in things that only happened in her dreams. I don’t think that’s all that healthy. And of course, you’ve got an entire Reddit community devoted to these things.
  - tluyben2 4y ago

mjh2539 4y ago

Be careful what you wish for. When you have incredibly vivid, realistic dreams, and you have good dream recall, it becomes difficult distinguishing between what actually happened in the past and what just happened in a dream.

gchamonlive 4y ago
It's a good thing dreams are really surreal then. I can separate my dreams nicely because I can't for the life of me jump 3 stores high and parkour to the edge of a glass dome while being chased.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  I sometimes have dreams where I am just watching tv with some friends, or where I am programming or reading something online. And indeed, months later usually, it feels like that actually happened.
  - gchamonlive 4y ago
    I wish I had more down to earth dreams, really. It is cool to be in a totally different reality, and sometimes when I get a little self-aware in a dream and I concentrate on figuring out whether I'm dreaming, the dream just become more realistic. Like entering a building made of a maze of stairs and actually smelling and feeling the texture of wood. But since my dreams are so disconnected from my daily reality they just fade to oblivion eventually.
donthellbanme 4y ago

swayvil 4y ago

If you're looking for a method to increase dream recall (lucid too) then I recommend Vipassana meditation. Works very well.

arnejenssen 4y ago
I started to meditate in 2007. Only 10-minute sessions. The change I noticed after a month, was that I woke up with a dream almost every day. Before starting meditation, the dreaming was a few times per year. Perhaps the meditation creates a relaxation that is helpful for dreaming?
- swayvil 4y ago
  If I was looking for a why... I might say that, in vipassana, we extend our conscousness into places that are otherwise unconscious. And become comfortable being conscious there and having that place be part of our reality. The land of dreams being one such otherwise unconscious place.

neves 4y ago

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-of-night-by-sidarta-ribeiro/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/553072/the-oracle-o...

neves 4y ago
He even teaches how to do lucid dreaming.
jay3ss 4y ago
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_World_of_Lucid_Dreaming https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316781.Exploring_the_Wor...

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veidr 4y ago

I have episodic insomnia, and have prescriptions for drugs like zolpidem (Ambien) and etizolam, but I don't like to use them, so I am always on the look out for less-crazy things that other people say them sleep. Recently I tried the supplement cocktail[1] that neuroscience podcaster Andrew Huberman has mentioned he sometimes uses: magnesium threonate, epigenin, and L-theanine. While this does indeed make it easier for me to fall asleep, I also noticed that it consistently produces weirder and more memorable dreams than I normally have. While I doubt there is a causal relationship between remembering your dreams and the creativity benefits described in this article, I do prefer to have wild dreams and remember them. If that describes you, too, you might experiment with these supplements and see if they have a similar effect. [1]: https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/ https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/

dorkwood 4y ago

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. Dream memories are extremely fragile. 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. Once you make a habit of this, a curious thing happens. First, you'll remember more dreams. After a while, you likely won't have enough time in the morning to write them all down. The other thing that happens is you'll dream more vividly. There seems to be a link between how descriptive you are in your writing and how rich your dream experience becomes.

pizza 4y ago
Since it's way more likely I'll fall asleep near my phone, I've started tweeting my dreams on wake. I do have to admit, it is getting a lot easier to decipher them for longer afterwards, too. It's also getting a lot easier to pinpoint the origins of dream contents into things I had been thinking about while awake, too. The connections just seem a lot more apparent.
JasserInicide 4y ago
Yup, can confirm this. Replay as much of the dream as you can once you realize you're actually awake. It's crazy how fast the dream fades from your memory too, every second you lose more and more of it. Also, the better you get at exercising this, the better chance you have at entering a lucid dream. Best chance for those is also right when you wake up, spend a couple minutes recounting a dream, and then fall back asleep.
- papito 4y ago
  The best ones are where you can fly at will, and then you realize you are in a dream. You may still have a few seconds where you are semi-conscious and can "fly".

anoncow 4y ago

My dreams have a cinematic universe of their own. Many of my dreams have stories and characters connected to my other dreams.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago

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 ahead of the "recall" part then it seems doable. I wonder if there could be negatives to greater dream recall, processing memories of dreams sounds like extra work for your finite brain functions to handle. I once woke from a dream with a sense of religious injunction, and still have the name I was "given" as a curiosity in my life, "St Athanasius of Lubensk". I had never heard of the forename nor the place at the time of the dream. Research showed them to separately be something. If you have details, let me know.

magusdei 4y ago
>If you have details, let me know. Athanasius is greek for "immortal" and is a common name of saints, church fathers etc. Lubensk (Лубенськ) is an obscure city near Luhansk. Saint Athanasius of Lubensk refers to Athanasius III of Constantinople, saint of the Orthodox church known as an "enlightener", who died near Lubensk. According to the Wikipedia article[1] he sometimes appears to people in dream visions, so your experience is not entirely without precedent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_III_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_III_of_Constantinop...
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  I've not looked this up in a while. I couldn't link any Athanasius to Lubensk at the time (but don't Athanasius of Constantinople, and found Lubensk. Gotta say the "appears to people in a dream" is kinda fucked up [messing with my head]. It must be 10y or more since I last researched it, looks like there are more leads out there. Thanks.
superb-owl 4y ago
This was a common objection to the notion of Lucid Dreaming for a long time. Scientists accused lucid dreamers of making up a post-hoc story about being in control. Finally Stephen LaBerge did a study where he was able to move his eyeballs in a distinct pattern during the REM phase [1], proving that he had conscious control while asleep. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05547-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05547-0

morjom 4y ago

I've lived with diagnosed type 2 narcolepsy[1] for 11-12 years now (half of my life, thanks Pandemrix), vivid dreams have been par for the course. Lots of nightmare-like dreams. Looks, sounds, smells like a nightmare, but doesn't "feel" like one). Thankfully I have developed/ adapted a way to wake-up whenever. I'd say I am semi-lucid in most of my dreams. I also have a very distinct "dreamscape" where my dreams happen. I can remember many of my dreams from years ago pretty accurately even though I don't journal them. 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy

Rury 4y ago
Yeah, I've learned to be able to wake up at will too. However, it always comes at a cost. I have to kill myself in the dream, and it always involves being hit or run over by a train. But sometimes it doesn't work entirely as I end up waking up in another dream, which is sometimes freaky, as it's not evident to me at first that I'm in just another dream or if I am awake. But once I figure I'm still dreaming, I can always cause that train to appear again.
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  I too have a similar ability. But lately there's been a creature in my dreams. Every time I see it, I know I'm dreaming and I kill myself immediately. One time it managed to pin me down to stop me from killing myself. I ended up biting on some suicide capsules in the back of my jaw to die and that worked, but I won't always have that prop in the future.. It really depends on the context and the dream whether or not it makes sense for me to have that in my mouth. I can will it into existence but it HAS to make sense in the dream. I keep running from this creature. It wants to talk to me but somehow I sense malice and that I should avoid talking to it at all costs.

nestorD 4y ago

I once spoke with a psychic who does dream interpretation and he was adamant that people who recall their dream and people who don't can be put in two different personality clusters (including the fact that people who recall their dream are more creative). To his credit, he did study the scientific literature on the subject in details and might have been tipped by some preliminary research on the subject.

weinzierl 4y ago

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)."

akomtu 4y ago

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.

easytiger 4y ago

I have vivid/lucid dreams since childhood and often sleep paralysis. It's a curse not a blessing. Trust me. Also fairly sure it's inherited.

dgellow 4y ago

Lot of people discuss ways to improve dream recalls, or to have more lucid dreams. Is there a way to do the opposite, to stop remembering dreams or stop dreaming at all? I personally very much dislike the concept of dreaming, it feels like being forced to watch (or participate in) a movie I have no interest in. My best sleep is when I feel I was “turned off”, with no dream or at least no memory or feeling of dreaming. Just going to sleep, and wake up the morning with nothing happening in between, that’s my _dream_ night. I never met anyone who can relate, so I guess that’s pretty uncommon.

frostedflakes 4y ago
I don't recommend it but smoking lots of high potency cannabis all day, everyday will make your dreams disappear. But they will also come back 100x more vivid upon cessation.
- can16358p 4y ago
  Probably the calming effect which results in a deeper sleep, thus not remembering much from the dreams. And if one gets used to having deep sleep only under an effect of a substance, then withdrawal, as you said, could be worse.
- LocalH 4y ago
  This is not universal. My lack of dream recall predates my consumption of cannabis. I have multiple friends who, while smoking potent cannabis daily, also have some of the most vivid dream recalls I’ve ever witnessed.
t_mann 4y ago
Yes, it totally is (see also my response to user dorkwood). I used to have very unpleasant dreams up until I was a teenager and now all my nights are 'turned off', like you describe. When you wake up and your dream is still present, just think about something in your real life and actively tell yourself to forget the dream.
- 4y ago

puzzlingcaptcha 4y ago

Interesting. One side effect of mirtazapine (an anxiolytic and atypical antidepressant) is vivid dreaming.