Thread: Dream-Time vs. Real-Time: The experiment.

Originally Posted by Naiya

LaBerge did one similar to this, only with more hi-tech stuff. But same basic idea: he had people count while awake, measured their accuracy, then had them count while they were dreaming (I think they would make certain eye movements for another person to watch), and measured the accuracy of that. Then both trials were compared.

If I might ruin the results for you: lucid dreamers were just as accurate at counting time as they were awake. Which follows that most lucid dreams happen in real time or are perceived in real time.

Yup yup.

LDers were accurate within a few seconds. But, I always thought of it like this: LDs are mainly based on expectations. And if you are trying to count and get an accurate number for time... Wouldn't you most likely get an accurate number?

I've had dreams that felt like they lasted longer than a half hour or more. They've felt like days and weeks. Of course, they weren't. But dream time seems very relative.

Well dreams occur in REM stage where your eyes move rapidly, everything is going on within your brain, so how could you move your eyes. It's like people who sleepwalk, they don't know they are doing it. I don't believe that time passes equally in dreams as it does in reality. The dream may last for 5 minutes in real time, but the actually time passing in the dream may be a lot longer.

The rapid eye movement is related to your eyes moving in the dream, usually.

LaBerge told a story about a guy whose eyes darted back and forth during REM. When asked what he was dreaming, the guy said he dreamt about a ping pong match.

Well, time in general is relative. Einstein says so!