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General Science => General Science => Topic started by: mpho mokgethwa on 09/10/2009 19:30:03

Title: How do real life events affect dreams?
Post by: mpho mokgethwa on 09/10/2009 19:30:03

mpho mokgethwa  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Morning Sir
 
I jut want to ask if there is any scientific explanation to this. A month ago I was sleeping and there were burglars trying to break into my house, I had a dream and there was a loud bang in that dream like something was breaking (honestly I don't remember the dream). I woke up only to find that these thieves were actually on my window and they had already opened it but not in yet. This happened 4 times but it was not consecutive. I just want to know how my dream was able to detect if there were bangs on the window whilst I was sleeping and  I was actually dreaming and this happened four times. I bet these buglers are confused as well..  
 
Regards
 
Mpho Mokgethwa in South Africa

What do you think?

Title: How do real life events affect dreams?
Post by: daveman on 25/03/2010 11:22:20

I had a similar dream once where a long and detailed dream lead to a bang. As I woke I realized that the bang came from outside.

What happens is that the conscious and sub-conscious minds are united, but alternate in their dominant states. At night the conscious mind rest and releases control to the sub-conscious mind. This has a lot to do with memory organization actually, but that's outside the scope of this answer.

The sub-conscious mind is much less "logical" than the conscious mind. It's a more creative mind. As a dream unfolds, it uses it's "form of logic" to glue things together. You've probably noticed, that after waking from a dream, and trying to describe the dream to someone else, that the logical conscious mind can have trouble making sense of what the sub-conscious mind constructed.

So getting back to the dream, as the dream flows, happily with the "altered logic", and a noise comes along, the sub-conscious mind quickly incorporates the sound into the dream. Although the direction of the dream changes, to the sub-conscious mind it had continuity.

As you wake up, the conscious mind quickly takes over and becomes confused by what just happed, necause it must see things in a logical way.

Don't know if that helps...