Thread: Do you think we can create past memories in dreams?

I think we do. Why? Well, my brothers alarm creates a bang sound just before the alarm goes off (don't ask me why) and in one of his dreams a book fell off a shelf and as it hit the ground it landed with a bang. The alarm then woke him up. But how did his mind create this image? Unless he had some preminition that it was abount to happen, which I dobt sincerely, his mind must have heard the sound and then created a past memory of a book falling. If lucid dreamers could 'hijack' this talent, it could be very interesting indeed.

Discuss.

so the thing in the dream happened before the alarm went off? or is he not sure? i remember one time when my clock radio went off and i started having dreams about a concert playing the song that was on the radio (and i know some people can relate to me when i say this next part i realized that I was dreaming, but I was unable to effect anything, all I was able to do was wake myself up by forcing my eyelids to go up, and I remember how that didnt work when I had my first real lucid dream.

If you normally wake up at the same time each day you can easily know when it will go off. I almost always wake up before my alarm. Its not really a preminition its an internal timer.

i don't get the past memory part of this post. -- why can't; as the alarm makes the sound, a book falls in his dream? is that so inconceivable? your senses hear the alarm, so why can't that carry over into the dream? why do you fall on the conclusion that since he heard the alarm his mind automatically pulled up a past memory of a book falling? it doesn't make sense.

or do you mean like false dream memories and stuff? Those are strange... heheh

ive been having a lot of false dream memories lately... are there any theories out there about how they work?

No I mean when the book fell off from a high shelf, there was some delay between it falling and it landing - a second or so. So, therefore, the book must have started falling before the alarm went off - but how come?

Unless the book didn't fall. It sounds weird but in a dream the book can hit the ground without ever falling. You just hear a bang and the book appears on the floor at the same time.

Perhaps. Obviously, I cannot say myself as it wasn't my dream.

you also need to take into account the time difference here...

your REM is 3 minutes tops? your dreams can last hours even days... now let common sense take it from there and it doesn't seem so impossible.

I have had experiences like Identity X's brother. I remember when a gas main or line or whatever it was near Jackson exploded in 1987 at about 4 a.m. I was in Jackson, asleep. I heard the explosion in my sleep. As soon as I heard it, my brain invented a reason for it. I immediately had the image of somebody near me having been shot. It was as if I remembered it happening. I woke up and knew that it never happened, and later that day found out about the explosion.

This reminds me of a lucid dream I had in my childhood. I totally forgot about this one and left it out when I was talking about my history a few weeks ago. I was at a skating rink, where I often was in my childhood, usually on Friday or Saturday nights. In the dream, I heard my mother's voice on the intercom saying my name and telling me to "get up". I didn't understand what was happening at first, but then it dawned on me that I was dreaming and was being woken up for school. For a few seconds, I was having a lucid dream, but I didn't take advantadge of it like I should have because I was pissed that it wasn't the weekend and was instead the beginning of a school day. That has always been the worst moment of the day for me. My eyes opened right after that due to the disappointment and the parental pressure. I was only about 8 years old, but I really wanted to be a lucid dreamer then, even though I didn't know it was an actual popular science. I should have just ignored my mother and flown around the skating rink or through the walls into another reality, or traveled time or something. Maybe I should have a lucid dream and go back to that morning and do it right this time.

I suspect what is happening is that we are 'caching' the external input in that our sub-concious picks up the sound, processes it and then creates a suitation for it to be presented to our subconcious, and being a real sound that is sudden we instinctively wake up. We are in effect hearing the actual sound a short while after it has actually occured in reality.

Makes you wonder if coma victims suffer an acute version of it?

yes, because one lucid I had had a picture of somthing I drew along time ago, I cant confirm this but it looks like somthing I did around 2 years old, and the memory clicked back into mind. It was quite a rush.

Originally posted by adidas
you also need to take into account the time difference here...

your REM is 3 minutes tops? your dreams can last hours even days... now let common sense take it from there and it doesn't seem so impossible. *

Bingo!!! Adidas gets the prize: A kiss in the cheek from WerBurn!!!!

Since dreams aren't in real time then it is most likely that the brain will just incorporate any sounds and feelings coming from the waking world into the dream. One of the funtions of dreaming is to guard your sleep and detach oneself from the world to maintain this state with greater ease.

Some great theories. Yeah, dreams aren't in real time and thus external influences can be invcorporated gradually and in vogue with the dream situation; makes sense...

REM sleep is that short? crikey i could swear i had it all night long ;p

Actually it is 90 minutes long...I think Adidas meant 3 hours....