Thread: Time?

Originally Posted by gaia

I'm fascinated by that idea. Have you any experience?

Originally Posted by ChaybaChayba

Yeah dreams occur both in rem and non-rem sleep. Those in rem are simply more vivid.

While dreams are what people most often associate with REM sleep, a person is not always dreaming while they are in REM sleep; dreams occupy approximately 80-90 percent of REM sleep. Also, not all dreams are REM sleep dreams. Studies from sleep labs have shown that dreaming can occur during wakefulness and NREM sleep, as well as during REM sleep. Generally, REM dreams are longer, more visual, more bizarre, and not as related to actual life events. Those dreams in which Elvis is skateboarding with your mother but it's not really your mother, it's really your cat, and suddenly Elvis has turned into Bullwinkle, although he still sings very well, is probably a REM sleep dream. Or incipient mental illness. NREM dreams tend to be shorter, more thoughtful, less emotional and more related to life events. These are the types of dreams in which you think about the Henderson-Hasselbach equation all night long. Also, nightmares and night terrors occur during NREM sleep.

Physiology and Neurochemistry of Sleep -Rosenthal

I have tried and tried and found nothing saying that the dreams are actually less vivid, just that the involvement of the senses varies as does the subject matter. I suppose being less visual may be grounds to say they are less vivid, but an emotional or auditory hallucination can certainly be vivid, too. I wonder if it's all just our preoccupation with sight. I wonder what blind people would say about NREM vs REM dreams?

Studies from sleep labs have shown that dreaming can occur during wakefulness

Intriguing. Do they mention what separates a dream from a daydream? Or do they consider daydreaming simply part of the same whole?

Originally Posted by arby

Intriguing. Do they mention what separates a dream from a daydream? Or do they consider daydreaming simply part of the same whole?

That's how I felt, too, but they don't specify nor do they cite a source for that entire paragraph of text. The sources at the bottom explain the rest of the paragraph, but not how, why, why, when, or who dreams during waking consciousness or who they got that one line of text from. I'm gonna keep looking, if/when I find something I'll post back