Thread: Time difference.

I forgot who did it, but I think that it was proven that dream time is the same as real time.

Stephen LaBerge conducted such a study. He mentions it in his book, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming.

And what was the result of his study?

That the time was more or less equivalent between dreaming and awake.

Hey there,

Lets make a nuance here,

It's not been proven that 1 minute real time is 1 minute dream time.


For the most part, dream time seems to correspond to real time. In order words, most dreams for most dreamers seems to be equal in lenght to real time. If you're dreaming for 20 minutes, likely 20 minutes would have passed in real time.

But there's exceptions. There's plenty of reports of people who have had really long dreams in only a few minutes. In fact, I think most people who keep a dream journal long enough and frequently enough can probably find one dream in their journal that seemed like it was way longer then actual time. I know I myself often have this strange phenomena where I'd wake up at say 7h22, and know my alarm will go off at 7h30. I'd drift off back into sleep and have a full blown dream that seems to last 20-30 minutes, then wake up again at 7h27. It happens, there's reports of people who claim to have life-lenght dreams in a few minutes even.

So how much dreaming can you do in 1 minute? Usually, about 1 minute worth of dreaming. But every so often, a whole lot more

-Redrivertears-

This good old debate of dream-time

I had an interesting related dream this week, with a "time warp" that I analyzed during the dream (even if I was not lucid).

In the beginning of the dream, I was in a crowded subway train, as if I was going to work. Various dream-things happen.
Then I'm walking in the tunnel, climbing stairs, looking for my next correspondence. My mind is in the "I'm confused and lost in an unknown place" dream mode.
Suddenly, I realize that I don't remember anything between when I was in the train, and now. I tell myself that I may have walked in auto-pilot while my mind was wandering (It happens a lot in real life). I somewhat think about doing an RC, however it doesn't work and the dream goes on.
I wake up a few minutes later.


The interesting thing is that I thought about it during the dream, so the memory was still clear when waking up. And there is no doubt for me: the dream went directly from one scene to another, without bothering to do the uninteresting filler scene. Only the vague implicit sensation of having done it.

(Lucid dreams work the same way, just a bit attenuated because of the constant awareness)

So, yes, a 20 minutes worth story can be packed in a 3 minutes dream, like Star Wars in 3 minutes, but I think it is because of all the "deleted scenes" and implicit transitions which become implanted memories.
At this point it becomes difficult to define time because it's not linear.

Yes dreams can seem to last a long time (I remember thinking once in a lucid that 3 days had passed, but even in the dream I knew that couldn't really be); like you said the dream has a lot of implied time that has past so it feels like a long time has gone by.

But when they tested it experimentally, they had the person in a lucid dream estimate a minute or something, and it was the same as real time.

Same thing as what you were saying I guess. Sometimes dreams feel a lot longer because of the story that you're in.

OK. Well Ive gone to sleep at 755 AND WOKE UP @ 805 after doing stuff that would have taken about a hour.

Dream time very closely matches real time. The difference is that - in dreams - a type of editing occurs. It's just like how long periods of time are portrayed in movies and TV shows. The dream may represent long durations but it does so in chucks of time rather than actually enacting the entire span. We just don't usually notice the scene transitions so it's easy to falsely believe that an entire dream week (for example) was experienced.

Another analogy is when you scan your eyes across a scene. Scan from one side of the room to the other and you may believe that you looked at everything along the path. In actuality, your eyes only jumped from one focal point to the next. Unless you follow a moving object, it's impossible to smoothly scan a scene with your eyes. Your attention merely jumps from point to point. It's a perceptual illusion.

In a dream, I never have a sense for time.
Sometimes I hear a song on a radio which is currently playing in the real world. When this happens, it is usually just one song, and the dream often feels much longer than the actual playing time of that particular song.

I don't have any definite proof of this, but I've become fairly convinced that some dreams come along with a parallel dream memory. In other words, I can remember being in a dream and remembering what seemed like a long preceding event, but when I wake up and analyze the dream, it really looks like there was no preceding event in dream time -- just the memory of it which came more or less instantaneously. So the dream feels like it was longer than it really was.

Originally Posted by FarSeeker

I don't have any definite proof of this, but I've become fairly convinced that some dreams come along with a parallel dream memory. In other words, I can remember being in a dream and remembering what seemed like a long preceding event, but when I wake up and analyze the dream, it really looks like there was no preceding event in dream time -- just the memory of it which came more or less instantaneously. So the dream feels like it was longer than it really was.

Interesting thought.

Everyone seems to cite LaBerge's study here. But I want to know more about how the study was conducted. I want a study in which lucid dreamer experts are told to try and dilate time, and see if there is any difference.

I m wondering the same thing, too. How could they have a person lucid dream and estimate one minute. The people that would be awake wouldn't know when the lucid dream started, when they started to dream, or when they started counting seconds once they were in the lucid dream. So there would be no way that the dreamer would be able to be asleep and while being asleep communicate with the waking people and tell them when one minute has past.

I think, the obvious way would be to move your eyes in one second intervals for one minute. That sure can be observed in the real world, once it happens.

for some reason, I dont think that would work

Originally Posted by l00zidman

for some reason, I dont think that would work

Oh but it has and does.

Hey there,

To add some background information:

Laberge and other sleep/dream researchers have come to the conclusion that while the body is paralysed during sleep, eye movements are not. So eye movements you make during your dream as you look around you are actually acted out by your sleeping body as well, though behind your eyelids. These eye movements can be measured with the right equipment.

Now what Laberge did was teach lucid dreams to make a certain series of eyemovements (that couldn't possibly just be random), and make this their dreamgoal when they become lucid. As soon as they become lucid, they'd do these pre-rehearsed eyemovements in their dream, and Laberge's equipment would pick it up in the lab. This signalled the onset of the lucid dream.

They'd start counting from there, right up until the moment the dream woke up. If he woke up from the lucid dream directly, it'd be counted. If he had another dream afterwards or lost lucidity, ofcourse, the result would be discarted. They then asked the lucid dream how long he/she thought that the dream lasted, and compared this to the chronometer they had running from the onset of the eye signal to the waking moment. Generally speaking, they were roughly the same.

Now, do note that even Laberge quotes that the actual test group was far too small for this to be a truly valid experiment (according to scientific methodology there are several criteria that need to be met in order for your experiment to truly 'count'. It has to be valid for a large enough body of test subjects, it has to be consistent, and it has to be representative of what you're trying to measure). So nothing was actually 'proven' in any way, but it does make a good basis for the hypothesis that generally speaking, dream time and real time are roughly the same.

The thing to remember is this part: "generally speaking". The experiment tells us nothing about whether it is possible to have a longer dream in one minute or not. "Generally speaking", most people drive their cars without accident. That doesn't mean accidents don't happen. I think we can all relate to that

As a side note, what I find way more interesting then the time subject in this experiment is that in my knowledge, it is the first time ever that someone "in a dream" has been able to communicate directly and consciously with someone "awake", even if that communication was just a set of eye signals and blinks

-Redrivertears-

ooooooooh, but could they get mixed up with the movements the eyes do during REM?

Originally Posted by l00zidman

ooooooooh, but could they get mixed up with the movements the eyes do during REM?

REM eye movements are much too random. They are the same as your waking life gaze when you look at the world around you, where your eyes jump from one thing to the next in seemingly random jerks.

oooh ok I got it now.

"Perception of time while lucid dreaming
The rate that time passes while lucid dreaming has been shown to be about the same as while waking. In 1985 LaBerge performed a pilot study where lucid dreamers counted from one to ten (one-one thousand, two-one thousand, etc.) while dreaming, signaling the end of counting with a pre-arranged eye signal measured with Electrooculogram recording.[7] The study was repeated in 2004 by researchers in Germany and LaBerge's results were duplicated. The German study by Erlacher, D. & Schredl, M also studied motor activity and found that deep knee bends took 44% longer to perform while lucid dreaming.[8]"
I've found that in wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream