Chapter 3 WIP

This is a basic rundown of what I'll be doing for this chapter. If you have any suggestions for organization, content, ect. post them here. I could also use a lot of help from the Research Dept. since this is a very science-heavy chapter. I've looked up a few things so far and provided links to them. :)


Chapter 3: I'm hoping to include a lot about current knowledge on the physiology and psychology of sleep. I think this chapter can be stretched quite a bit. Spockman has already posted the beginnings of a piece on the current theories of dreaming that is looking good so far. Please also help him by corroborating his information.


-The Sleep cycle and neurology of dreams (REM/NREM): most of this was already covered in the original, so with Kromoh's permission I'd like to use what we have there.

http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/sleep_stages.htm

http://www.sleepassociation.org/


-Neurology of LUCID dreams. What happens to the brain? What do we know is different? How are/were lucid dreams proven? Why did the science community take so long to accept lucid dreaming? (lack of evidence, lack of research, prejudice?) I need some help finding info for this one, all I can find is what LaBerg has written.

http://www.lucidity.com/NL53.ResearchPastFuture.html

http://www.lucidity.com/slbbs/index.html

How to tell if a dream is lucid or not? Do you stay lucid for the whole dream once you get lucid? Why not?



-Current theories of why we dream (Spockman) To just get an overview of what's out there, you can check out Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream#Dream_theories

But I would rather like to avoid using Wiki because as a general rule I don't think it's a great source, more of just a good place to get ideas of where you can go from there.

-The future of dreaming: featuring a neuro headset may mean dreamers can record their dreams as movies:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7254078.stm

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/mi...lating-dreams/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Naiya

-The Sleep cycle and neurology of dreams (REM/NREM): most of this was already covered in the original, so with Kromoh's permission I'd like to use what we have there.

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All fine for me.

As co-leader of the research dept, I'll see how much I can do about this. However, I'm currently on travel and will only be back next saturday.

I'm back good people. Should start working on it anytime.

I don't know if this is worth pointing out, Naiya, but I really think that what I wrote about sleep cycles in Lunar Light is much more organized and matured. Check it out here: http://www.lunar-light.org/scienceofsleep.html

Kromoh, would it be all right for me to use what you wrote on sleep cycles verbatim? I can paraphrase it, but it seems kind of silly to do that. If so, I can either put your work and name under a separate heading or put both our names down for this chapter. Let me know, either way is fine with me. ;)

Unfortunately, Kromoh's away until the eighth of August. :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Naiya

Kromoh, would it be all right for me to use what you wrote on sleep cycles verbatim? I can paraphrase it, but it seems kind of silly to do that. If so, I can either put your work and name under a separate heading or put both our names down for this chapter. Let me know, either way is fine with me. ;)

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Boo :D

Naiya, I give you permission to use and alter the content I wrote in any way you judge needed for the book. Follow your female instincts and I'll be fine with the result :D

(btw I'm not completely back, just here for a surprise visit)

Thanks Kromoh! :D

Here is part one of Chapter 3. I included two more references which will be at the bottom. Researchers, please fact check.

I'll ask someone with time in Editing to take a look as this is still needs editing. Special thank you to Kromoh for allowing me to copy some of his work on the stages of sleep! ;)


The Science of Sleep and Dreaming (Tentative Title)

Humanity has been dreaming since the beginning of our existence. Throughout history and all the ages, mystics, shamans, witch doctors, yogis and the like have attempted to understand sleep, dreams and their meanings.

Nathaniel Kleitman was a professor who established the world's first sleep laboratory in 1925 at the University of Chicago. He and a graduate student by the name of Eugene Aserinsky can be considered the fathers of the study of sleep.

After hours of watching subjects sleep, Kleitman and Aserinsky discovered REM sleep. With further study they were able to find that REM sleep coincided with the dream state, and so the physiology of sleep and dreams was finally given its first true foundations in science.

Ever since their discovery, science has been able to uncover more about the stages of sleep and the nature of each stage.

Measuring brain activity in a sleeping person, scientists discovered that sleep consists of repetitive cycles of brain activity, during which you go through every important part of sleep. These cycles have a duration of around 90 minutes, and change slightly depending on how long you have been sleeping for.

The very first stage (N1) is not necessarily sleep, but rather a beginning to sleep. It is a transition from wakefulness to sleep, often referred to as somnolence. Slowly, brain activity lowers, and the brain enters the sleep process. This is the stage during which hypnic jerks occur.

The following stage (N2) is responsible for around 50% of total sleep. Muscular activity lowers and consciousness of the external environment disappears.

Stage N3 works primarily as a transition period from stage 2 to the deepest stage 4. This is the stage in which night terrors, bedwetting, sleepwalking and sleep-talking occur.

Stage N4, together with stage N3, are considered to be what is called "deep sleep". Brain activity is the lowest, though it is lower on N4. They are considered to be essential for rest, and, together with REM (further below), will rebound in the next night if a person is deprived of them in one night of sleep. Also, trying to wake someone up during deep sleep can prove extremely difficult depending on the person.

The final stage to mention is REM, or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. It is so called because of the rapid movements of the eyes during this phase. Mental activity raises and the brain behaves similar to that of a person who is meditating. For Lucid Dreaming, this is perhaps the most important sleep phase, as it is theorised that the majority of dreams occur during REM sleep. Furthermore, some neurotransmitters in the brain, such as seratonin, are completely shut down, thus inducing what is called sleep atonia (popularly named Sleep Paralysis), during which motor functions do not work. The person is rendered physically motionless, and based on that comes a possible explanation of what dreams are.


This theory, given shape to by Dr. Stephen LaBerge, will be explained below.

Our brain keeps an updated, functional image of our body at all times. This allows us, for example, to know where our arms are placed without actually having to look at them; and to guarantee better muscular coordination for the body. Due to sleep atonia which happens in our sleep, interestingly, even though the body image is still there, if you try to move, say, an arm, it will not move at all. But for the brain, it will be like it had moved. The brain will update the body image, believing the arm has been moved, when actually it has never left its original position. The effect of this is that we can actually "move" our body image, without really moving our physical bodies. Thanks to the highly hallucinogenic state REM sleep gets us in, the brain is then able to actually make up what it would be seeing instead of what it is actually seeing (the back of our eyelids). This is how dreams work: you are able to move your body image without actually moving your real body, and your characteristic, imaginative mind fills in the details.

While we have begun to answer the question of how we sleep, unfortunately there are still no clear answers on why we sleep. It is known that REM sleep--or dreaming sleep--is necessary for our bodies and minds to function. Rest is not a substitute for sleep. Because of this, scientists suspect that there are things the mind needs from sleep such as brain development or memory. No theory as of yet has been stood up to the rigors of scientific review, so nothing has been proven, but researchers are still hopeful.


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http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/1999...-kleitman.html


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/sc...-we-sleep.html


The next part will be on the physiology of lucid dreaming. Should have it posted by tomorrow at the latest. Thanks!

First Revision:

Kromoh's remarks in brackets, my responses in italics. I'll probably break it up into smaller paragraphs later if necessary. But most of the obvious stuff has been edited. :)

The Science of Sleep and Dreaming (Tentative Title)

Humanity has been dreaming since the beginning of its existence. [[better?-- my bad, I make nonsensical typos like this a lot when I'm tired. You'll probably see more of them. ]] Dreaming was believed by some cultures to be a different reality, or godly revelations by others. What else could the early man hypothesize: all that was known is that a person would sleep through a portion of the day, have wondrous experiences, in many ways similar to wakefulness, and then wake up as if nothing had happened. Throughout history and all the ages, mystics, shamans, witch doctors [[witch doctors? I wonder what Naiya meant-- Witch Doctors in the anthropological sense, but if we want to be more PC I can say medicine men?-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_doctor ]], yogis and the like many others have attempted to understand sleep, dreams and their meanings.

Nathaniel Kleitman was a physiologist who established the world's first sleep laboratory in 1925 at the University of Chicago. He and a graduate student by the name of Eugene Aserinsky are considered by some to be the fathers of the study of sleep modern sleep research.

After hours of watching subjects sleep, Kleitman and Aserinsky were able to find repeating patterns in sleep activity, when the sleeping subject would rapidly move his or her eyes. During this period in 1953, which Kleitman called "rapid eye movement" (REM), he observed a general increase in brain activity, and also that it was correlated with dreaming. This was the first solid step of scientific sleep research; ever since their that discovery, scientists were able to investigate the different patterns and stages of sleep to a finer degree, uncovering more about the nature of each stage. This paragraph feels awkward. Somebody help me with this. I want to mention the passage of time somehow. Obviously Aserinsky didn't come to the college until about 1950 so I need to mention that.

Measuring brain activity in a sleeping person, scientists it was discovered that sleep consists of repetitive cycles of brain activity, during which you go through every important part of sleep. These cycles have. Each cycle has a duration of around 90 minutes, and changes slightly depending on how long you have been sleeping for.

The very first stage of the cycle (N1) is not necessarily yet sleep, but rather the beginning of sleep it. It is a transition from wakefulness to sleep, often referred to as somnolence. Slowly, brain activity lowers, and the brain enters the sleep process. This is the stage during which hypnic jerks occur.

The following stage of the cycle (N2) is responsible for around 50% of total sleep. Muscular activity lowers and consciousness of the external environment disappears.

[[updating my own work, scientists no longer consider N3 and N4 different:]]

Stage N3 is often called "deep sleep". Brain activity, as well as muscle tone are the lowest. This is the stage in which night terrors, bed-wetting, sleep-walking and sleep-talking occur. Trying to wake someone up during deep sleep can be extremely difficult. It is considered essential for rest, and, together with the following stage (REM), will rebound in the next night if a person is deprived of them during sleep.

The final stage to mention is REM, or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. It is so called because of the rapid movements of the eyes during this phase. Mental activity rises and the brain behaves similar to that of a person who is meditating. For Lucid Dreaming, this is perhaps the most important sleep phase, as it is theorized known that the majority of dreams occur during REM sleep. Furthermore, some neurotransmitters in the brain, such as serotonin, are completely shut down, thus inducing what is called sleep atonia (popularly named Sleep Paralysis), during which motor functions do not work. The person is rendered physically motionless, even if the brain commands the body to perform a movement. Based on that knowledge comes a possible explanation of what dreams are.

This theory about dreams is probably the most important one for our objective, which is lucid dreaming. It was given shape to by Dr. Stephen LaBerge, and will be explained below.

Our brain always keeps an updated, functional image of our body at all times. This body image, as it is called, allows us to, for example, know where our arms are placed without actually having to look at them; and to guarantee better muscular coordination for the body. However due to sleep atonia, which happens in our sleep, interestingly, even though the body image is still there, if you try to move, say, an arm, it will not move at all. But for the brain, it will be like it had moved. The brain will update the body image, believing the arm has been moved, when actually it has never left its original position. The effect of this is that we can actually "move" our body image, without really moving our physical bodies. We can walk around, jump, swim, or run, and everything will only happen inside our own head. Thanks to the highly hallucinogenic imaginative state that REM sleep gets us in, the brain is then able to actually make up what it would be seeing instead of what it is actually seeing (the back of our eyelids) taking it from our senses. This is how dreams work To make it short: you are able to move your body image without actually moving your real body, and your characteristic, imaginative mind fills in the details.

While we have begun to answer the question of how we sleep, unfortunately there is still no clear answer as to why we sleep. It is known that REM sleep--or dreaming sleep--is necessary for our bodies and minds to function. Complete sleep deprivation can kill smaller mammals such as rats.

As humans, our body follows a natural daily rhythm - the circadian rhythm. It is thought that mammals were naturally selected to have an exact daily rhythm, which would offer them multiple advantages. To name a few; better metabolic and digestive activity, sleeping during the fixed time of the day which is least dangerous (either day or night, depending on the animal), knowing how much time there is left to perform actions such as hunt or travel, among others. A piece of evidence which strongly supports this is that the bodily rhythm is known to be affected by sunlight, or also artificial light - individuals wake up from sleep when exposed to light.

Rest is not a substitute for sleep. Because of this, scientists suspect that there are specific things that sleep provides us which are fundamental. First one worth mentioning is that of neurological restoration: synthethizing more neurotransmitters and restoring sensitivity to neuroreceptors. Sleep has also been found to be fundamental for memorization and learning: humans subject to sleep deprivation have problems with memorizing new information and recalling memories. Also, humans put to sleep immediately after learning something new memorized the subject much more easily.

Sleep may also provide the body with a time to rest and heal. Continuous activation of the muscles would injure them just like overexertion would. Wound healing and immunity are also positively affected by sleep.

Children and babies require a lot of sleep to function properly (up to 18 daily hours, 8 of them being REM sleep). As humans grow older, they require each time less sleep, and the amount of REM sleep also decreases.

It has been pointed out that, if sleep were not essential, one should be able to find 1) animal species that do not sleep at all, 2) animals that do not need recovery sleep when they stay awake longer than usual, and 3) animals that suffer no serious consequences as a result of lack of sleep. Yet, no animals have been found to date that satisfy any of these criteria, which suggests that sleep is essential to the survival of complex species.

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[[I am adding some info info on dreams specifically; things I've posted here: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...7&postcount=31 (last subtitle). I do not know how essential this is - feel free to cut it out if it doesn't fit.]]
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Up to now, we have discussed sleep, its constitution and purpose. But we have said very little about actual dreams, which are our main objective. It turns out that dreams are still a mystery to science; the multiple theories concerning dreams reveal that little is actually understood about the phenomenon. What follows are the most prominent theories about the purpose of dreaming we have so far.

One theory proposes that dreams are the natural and random activation of some neurons in the brain during REM sleep, and as a response, the forebrain creates a story to situate and rationalize the nonsensical sensory information created. Which lobe(s)? Do they know? Frontal, parietal...?

Dreams have also been found to be related to memorization and learning. Individuals have reported dreaming about newly-learned subjects or activities in the first night. Riding a bike, traveling by boat or playing tennis may very likely induce a person to dream of those activities. Some specific dreams bring forth very distant memories, and also dreams that are highly emotional are very hardly forgotten.

Sigmund Freud hypothesized that dreams are the manifestations of subconscious thoughts and experiences, and suggested that dream interpretation could be a method of analysing the subconscious mind. Dreams would then reveal a person's fears, opinions, and desires.

Eugen Tarnow suggests that dreams are excitations of the long-term memory, in order to refresh memory and avoid forgetting of useful information. Dreams would then have a directly functional purpose.

A 2001 study showed evidence that illogical locations, characters, and experiences may help the brain strengthen the linking between otherwise distant or discrepant information. Dreams would then serve as a means to consolidate memories, find similarities and correlations between memorized information.

During the night there may be many external stimuli bombarding the senses; the mind interprets the stimulus and makes it a part of a dream, such as a sound, a voice, a light. A phone ringing may make a person dream of a phone ringing, and wetting the bed may make one dream of urination. It is not known if the brain does this to ensure continued sleep, or if the phenomenon is actually unintentional. The brain will, however, awaken an individual if they are in danger or if trained to respond to certain sounds, such as a loud noise or a baby crying.

Dreams may ultimately be a means of the brain to simulate and predict scenarios, which would train such ability to be used in real situations (music does exactly the same). This would be an evolutionary advantage, such as for hunting or fighting over territory.



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Final note: I think it would be slightly better-flowing if we talked more to the reader. I think that right now it feels too formal. Perhaps it's just me though.

Sources:
http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/1999...-kleitman.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/sc...-we-sleep.html
http://www.camden.rutgers.edu/~bwhit...LEEP/index.htm
wikipedia - (Dream, Sleep, REM Sleep) accessed July 2009

Wow, witch doctor is the name for that in English. I had no idea.

Concerning the sleep lab thing, here's my suggestion:

Spoiler for suggestion:

Nathaniel Kleitman was a physiologist who established the world's The world's first sleep laboratory was established in 1925 at the University of Chicago. However, it was not until 1953 that it lead to a major discovery: REM sleep. He Nathaniel Kleitman and a graduate student by the name of Eugene Aserinsky are considered by some to be the fathers of the study of sleep [[avoiding repetition]] modern sleep research.

After hours of watching subjects sleep, Kleitman and Aserinsky were able to find repeating patterns in sleep activity, when the sleeping subject would rapidly move his or her eyes. During this period in 1953, which Kleitman called "rapid eye movement" (REM), he observed a general increase in brain activity, and also that it was correlated with dreaming. This was the first solid step of scientific sleep research what would one day be called sleep science [[sounds waaay better, I realize it now]]; ever since their [[I think you overlooked this]] that discovery, scientists were able to investigate the different patterns and stages of sleep to a finer degree, uncovering more about the nature of each stage.

Also, Naiya, a hint would be to quote the text you will edit - it allows you to see the formatting the person used. Just a tech hint :P

Still working on the physiology of LDing... :P

Will hopefully be posting tomorrow.

Just a suggestion, you could put 'Tribal witch doctor' instead of just witch doctor. Hopefully that would give people a general idea on what you mean by them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mrdeano

Just a suggestion, you could put 'Tribal witch doctor' instead of just witch doctor. Hopefully that would give people a general idea on what you mean by them.

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Hmm yeah that's a good idea. :)

I'm back and working on the next portions of this chapter. Thanks for the patience guys. :)

Part 2, Physiology of Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming has had an uphill climb in proving its existence to the scientific community. Despite repeated laboratory tests and the aide of machines to monitor brain waves, there are still some skeptics who refuse to acknowledge any such state as lucid dreaming.

Presently the main argument against the existence of lucid dreaming is that one is not truly lucid, but merely dreaming that they are lucid. Despite the painfully obvious circular logic in this argument, it was taken as a serious explanation until the latter half of the last century and is mainly credited to people such as Norman Malcolm. Today there are still a few nay-sayers, but you will rarely find those outside of extreme ignorance of evidence and experience.

Stephen LaBerg at the Stanford University Sleep Research Center is often credited with pioneering lucid dream research and proving the lucid state through a series of simple experiments (Note to self...I believe there was at least one or more people who had already done experiments beforehand, but it was not well-known like LaBerg's. Will have to get back to this).

In LaBerg's early experiments, he tried to establish how the mind and body function during a lucid dream. He had a few important discoveries here. First, that physical eye movements had a correlation to the eye movements in the dream during REM sleep. This gave the team a clever idea--why not use eye movements during a lucid dream as a way to signal and communicate in real time to the experimenters?

This idea worked--subjects were able to signal that they were dreaming during the actual dream, and communicate through eye movements. It is now thought that dreams (and lucid dreams) occur during the REM stage of sleep. Subjects also used breathing as a way to signal or communicate--either by breathing rapidly or holding their breath, doing it a set number of times in a row.

LaBerg used an EEG (electroencephalogram) to record the electrical activity in the brains of his sleep subjects. It is a device commonly used in neuroscience.

Brain lateralization (the idea that one hemisphere is dominant during a certain activity) is the same during a lucid dream and the waking state. For example, subjects' right lobes were active with Alpha activity during singing, but when they counted the left lobe was active.

Not surprisingly, subjects were able to count in real time the passing seconds with the same accuracy that they could while awake.

Physiological responses to sex were also very similar to those during a waking state.

LaBerg concluded that "effects of dream events on the brain and body are much more like the effects of real events than like those produced by waking imagery."

So what is different in a lucid dream? LaBerg found that lucid dreams usually happen during periods of high autonomic nervous system activity. REM movement increases, breathing becomes more rapid, and brain activity is generally higher.

Finding this, LaBerg believed that one must be able to activate the central nervous system enough in order to become lucid. This theory is still somewhat tentative, however, since they were not able to figure out exactly how this activation happens.

When a subject would first become lucid, LaBerg did find that there was a decrease in Alpha activity in the left parietal lobe of the brain. this is important because a decrease in Alpha activity usually means an activation of activity in that part of the brain. Lucid dreaming can be associated with the left side of the brain from this evidence, but LaBerg believes that the association has more to do with the fact that when one becomes lucid, they tell themselves "I am dreaming!" The left hemisphere is associated with language, so its activation at the realization would not be too surprising anyway.

LaBerg has only scratched the surface with his work over the past few decades. Fortunately many other institutes and universities have begun to study lucid dreaming, so we can hope that we will know more about how they function and how the brain and body are affected by them in the future.


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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/IS...rttoddcarrolA/



My other sources are in the first post, and this link is just to a book Malcolm wrote in 1959 which I referenced.

Part 3, The Future of Dreaming


How will technology affect lucid dreaming in the future?

One of the latest pieces of technology is a neuro-hdeadset, originally made for gaming. It utilizes the EEG and reads brain activity, which it then translates into commands. It can read the emotions of the player and allow them to use virtual telekinesis.

A similar device was recently invented, called the Brain Computer Interface or BCI. It would take several decades, but this device would be able to record entire dreams in real time, and you would be able to play your dreams like movies to other people. You could also use it to input certain dreams you would want to have, sit back and enjoy them. Of course, for a lucid dreamer, creating fantasy dream situations is already available.

This would be a boon for dream researchers and dreamers alike, since we would be able to share each other's dreams as they actually happen.


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A bit short, but there you go.


By the way, I think this all should do it for one chapter. Since this is an online thing, we might want to keep the chapters short. So I'm thinking that this can be split into two chapters:

The Science of Dreaming

The Psychology of Dreaming

Late reply, but I thought the chapter was very well put Naiya. Did CB ever edit it for us?