Thread: Memory: the Forgotten Fundamental

Originally Posted by Goldenspark

Yes I don't doubt that consciousness is there all night, but not dreaming. I just meant that for a normal nights sleep, as each sleep cycle progresses the level of consciousness waxes and wanes as the hormone levels shift.
Saying that you can have higher levels of consciousness the whole night is a bit like saying you can stay awake all night. Proving that we don't dream all night is almost impossible I guess, but the theoty that we mostly dream during REM, when the brain appears to be almost as active as when awake just seems to make sense.

I think that shows why lucid dreaming can be such a delicate balance, because the waking consciousness stupour keeps your awareness at bay while you dream. Just at the end of the sleep cycle as the hormones shift to a brief conscious wakening, you cross over from dream to waking and have a brief moment of clarity. Any conscious waking during the dream is quite likely to cause full wakefullness, as most of us know from waking just after an LD begins.

I doubt we dream all night, but you can certainly stay conscious all night with enough training, even during delta sleep, it's been studied before.

But then again:



We just don't have the technology to do proper studies of consciousness yet. Unless you count the brain studying itself.