Sleep Pattern Research.

Many of you might be interested in an outcome of this experiment.


I'll be keeping a dream journal together with reporting dream events at night upon awakening. After a while, a history of dreaming and sleep is created. Within the history, there would be pattern of dreaming within each night, patterns of falling asleep and awakenings.

Each green and gray markers on the graph below represents a dream. Each dream journal entry can be accessed from that screen for quick access. I hope to be able to understand when my dreamsigns appear (during which cycles), see which dreams preceeded and followed it and relate the overall dream quality and duration to the quality of the sleep that I had on that night.

Black Marker: bedtime
Silver Marker: rise time
Red Marker: awakenings
Silver Marker: no dream recall
Green Marker: dream recalled
Blue Marker: lucid dream experienced

Top ruler purple ruler: sleep cycles
Bottom cyan ruler: hours

(App crashed on Dec 12, causing only half night of data to be recorded)
http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...-Pattern-3.png

The image above is a 9 day scrolling history. ~12 days of history are present, but only 9 are visible at a time.
Together, this shows an over time pattern of sleep and dreaming. As I start to write in a dream journal like that, I would be able to see when I see and don't see certain kinds of dreams.

As I get more data, I'll try to analyze it in more detail. I'll probably be posting some graphs and tables to explain data like that as well.

Absolutely fantastic work Ev! A visual representation like this which can also fit into someone's dreamjournaling and analysis of dreamsigns is really quite excellent. The interface is simple and easy to understand and I would imagine being an iPhone app it would be quite easily distributable :)

Keep it coming man :D

Wow, this is very interesting...it's a great way to visually keep track of your sleep habits. Is this from an existing phone app?

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Originally Posted by Naiya

Wow, this is very interesting...it's a great way to visually keep track of your sleep habits. Is this from an existing phone app?

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Yeah, I published the app a couple days ago, but have been using it in beta for about 2 weeks. The app's name is Singularity Experience, it is available on the Apple App Store. I've emailed the same sleep history to a local sleep lab doctor, let's see what she says.

The top row is the most recent night that I've just woken up from. I followed good sleep hygeine, decreasing light at 11:30, taking melatonin at that time, going to sleep at 00:15. I remember a rather long dream in the 1st sleep cycle, something that has not happened to me in a very long time. Such event is significant. I'm not sure what caused it.

Green markers are dreams, the purple line on top of a cell is a sleep cycle ruler. You can see that dreams 1,2,3,4 and 6 occur periodically, at about 90-100 minutes from each other. Dreams 5 and 7 are also spaced at about 100 minutes.

As I analyze history like that, I see some patterns of dreaming: a dream around 3:00-3:30, a dream aroudn 5:00-5:30 are the most clear indicators. These are real world times.

I see another pattern that is difficult to put into words. It appears that dreaming is related to the time of going to bed, sleep onset latency and some other factor that eludes me. This factor could be the biological clock itself or the intensity of light experienced prior to going to bed.

I spend A LOT of time staring at 2 large monitors in front of me, all the way close to bedtime. That's a huge amount of white light all the way up until very late hours of night. This could contribute

http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...-history-4.png

This image is intended to help me understand how the dreaming may be tied to the biological clock (if any). Black marker indicates my time in bed. Orange marker is awakening. The inner dial is broken into 16 segments, 90 minutes each.

Time in bed: 0:15
Sleep onset at 0:22
The first dream awakening at 2:15 (113 minutes from previous event)
Second at 3:35 (80 minutes from previous event)
Third at 5:25 (110 minutes from previous event)
Fourth at 7:06 (111 minutes from previous event)
Fifth at 7:57 (51 minutes from previous)
Sixth at 9:25 (88 minutes from previous)
Seventh at 10:00(35 minutes from previous)


http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...s-analysis.png

I've outlined the next steps in this kind of research in this post
http://www.dreamviews.com/f44/singul...ml#post1792882

This is very cool Ev, I think I'll get the app today and see what results I get this week. I'll post back my results. :)

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Originally Posted by Naiya

This is very cool Ev, I think I'll get the app today and see what results I get this week. I'll post back my results. :)

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Thanks, I'll keep documenting my results as well!

I continued to report my dreams upon awakening, and for the past week have been adding dream journal entries to the dreams. Each orb on the image below is a dream event:

Red is awakening
Green is a dream
gray is no dream recall
Blue is lucid dream

By tapping on each marker, I was able to see the dream journal entry for that dream. After analysis of about a week of such data, I came to a realization that some of these awakenings do not happen immediately after REM, instead, I keep dreaming on and off and awaken in a light sleep stage that follows.

As such, not all the dreams that I report or remember are from REM. The suspected non-REM dreams are fragmented, chaotic, and frequently fade really quickly.

This got me thinking, and I used the spontaneous dream recall upon falling asleep to examine my memory for dreams. What I recalled are dozens of long, "full feature length" dreams that are just grand. They have a different feeling to them.

I've noticed the same phenomenon a while back, as I was experimenting with lucid dreaming supplements - some of them make the dreams really intense, but deeper and harder to recall.

There was an article that I saw a few days ago about the kinds of nightmares that manifest themselves in different sleep stages. Maybe I can find it and post it here, because it significantly influenced the development of this idea.

Quote:

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REM Dreams and Non-REM dreams are very different from each other in a few major ways. The first difference between the two is Non-REM dreams consist of brief, fragmentary impressions. They are also less likely to involve visual images compared to REM sleep, and are more frequently forgotten. Non-REM dreams are like thinking about something during the day for a brief period of time while REM dreams are comparable to thinking deeply about something. REM sleep consists of about two hours a night while Non-REM sleep lasts about four to six hours.

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http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...y-analysis.png

By analyzing dream journal entries like that, I can improve the REM prediction accuracy (assuming that the awakenings are reported directly after REM or a dreaming state).

The taller the spike, the larger is the probability of dreaming at that minute.
There are 19 days of data and about 70 dreams that I have reported with the app.


As you can see, the dreams are all over the place, but there are some clusters that I might consider to be the REM windows. You will notice that after sunrise, I report less dream, even thought I often dream more. This is because I do not feel like reporting every single fragment.

http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...y-analysis.png

I know it's a bit early for this, but have you noticed better recall or perhaps even lucids so far? :)

Hi Naiya,

I noticed that the sleep recall is cyclical itself. It does not stay consistent, but also changes over time. On some days I recall more dreams than on others, and on some days I sleep really deeply. The recall, and the desire to recall dreams upon awakening has improved, now there's a clear motivation to do so. I have about 80 dream journal entries over the past 20 days, while without such experiment I would've recalled and recorded less.

The depth of dream recall is also improving, as I notice that some of the dreams that I recall are fragments, or series of episodes, while some are really deep and immersive. Without an electronic dream journal, such analysis would've been difficult, as my handwriting is terrible at night, in the darkness.

With a journal like this, I know exactly how many lucids I had in the past week, which is improving, but is not quite at a level where it should be. I'm also measuring dreams on their clarity and control.

I'm also noticing weird patterns and artifacts, for example today from 6:38 until 7:56, in about 1 sleep cycle, I woke up 6 times to report dreams. The shortest sequence of wake up - write- fall asleep - dream - wake up - write took only 10 minutes. By analyzing the motion pattern of such events, I hope to get a better understanding of what REM looks like in terms of my motion. This also brings the total number of dreams recalled in a single night to 10, the most I've had in a very long time.

It is indeed a bit early for in-depth analysis, as I've only started taking this task seriously with the start of this thread, about a week ago.

This is awesome. Thank you, Ev.
Also, how do you wake up after your dreams a lot like you do? Do you use autosuggestion?

I just wake up after each dream. It is possible that my body does not suppress the anti-diuretic hormones at night, and as a result, if I drink water, I wake up after each dream to pee. If I keep drinking water, the patter would repeat.

Here are the results of my first attempt at dreamsign analysis with the app, read more details in that post.
http://www.dreamviews.com/f44/singul...ml#post1801202

http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...1-796x1024.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ev

I spend A LOT of time staring at 2 large monitors in front of me, all the way close to bedtime. That's a huge amount of white light all the way up until very late hours of night. This could contribute

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I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the computer application "f.lux". It automatically changes your computer monitor's screen lighting to a natural color (Halogen lighting) after sunset. It's much more relaxing on the eyes and I'm sure this would be healthier for a sleep routine.

Here's the application: F.lux: software to make your life better

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frenchblablabla

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the computer application "f.lux". It automatically changes your computer monitor's screen lighting to a natural color (Halogen lighting) after sunset. It's much more relaxing on the eyes and I'm sure this would be healthier for a sleep routine.

Here's the application: F.lux: software to make your life better

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That's a very good find, thank you for sharing!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frenchblablabla

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the computer application "f.lux". It automatically changes your computer monitor's screen lighting to a natural color (Halogen lighting) after sunset. It's much more relaxing on the eyes and I'm sure this would be healthier for a sleep routine.

Here's the application: F.lux: software to make your life better

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Just installed this app! Should be interesting - I wonder if I'll notice the shift in colour on my monitor

Edit: just found the 24-hour preview button, wow!

I may make a thread on it. It seems like you guys like it quite a bit. I'm not even sure how I heard about the app haha, but I thought it was nice.

I'm experimenting with different types of data visualization, and am pretty exited about the possibilities. :banana:

Green markers for dreams and blue markers for lucid dremasare good, but they only tell half the story. Dreams can be rated on clarity and control, and the length of the description is also an important metric of dream recall.

This is why in version 1.2 I will introduce the color of dreams.
Darker green color means average clarity and poor recall, no dream description provided.
Brighter color means longer description and higher clarity rating.
Blu-er color indicate a certain degree of dream control, even within ordinary dreams.
Lighter blue indicates a clearer, longer dream with high control.
The frame of the dream indicates whether it was reported as a lucid or regular dream.

Together this color coding will not only help understand when you dream, but also when you can recall dreams the best, when you dream with control, etc.
By analyzing the activity prior to the night, it may be possible to identify what consistently contributes to dream control, clarity, etc. This will go way beyond anecdotal "Apple juice gives you vivid dreams" kind of topics.

I envision that this would be very useful for research, because it is possible to very quickly identify when episodes of clarity and control occured, if there was a pattern to them. Subsequent experiments with supplements may also be evaluated using this method. With zooming, an entire month of data may be visually analyzed in just a few minutes, and interesting dreams identified

http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...1/photo-69.png

http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...1/photo-68.png

I've been tracking when events from past days appear in my dreams. One of the theories of dreaming is to integrate waking memories. Analysis like the one below may shed some light on how/when the brain integrates waking memories in a dream.

With the app version 1.2, I can search my dream journal and filter sleep history according to some terms. When I record dreams in my dream journal, I mark obvious instances when an image from a previous day appears in a dream. The term for this is "Day residue", it is a free example of how a real life object may get integrated into a dream.

For example, seeing a bike commercial on TV I may find myself riding a bike in a dream. The appearance of day residue may be delayed, and the theme of a dream may represent an even that occured a few days in the past.

To start with advanced analysis, you need to start marking your dreams with keywords, like "Day residue" or your most frequently observed dreamsign. You can then search the history and get a pattern like the one to the right. Tapping on each marker, you can see what you dreamt about, while the color of each marker indicates the dream's clarity and level of control.

http://luciddreamingapp.com/wp-conte...s-analysis.png