Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: techmind on 13/03/2011 13:50:23

Title: How does the brain "direct" dreams?
Post by: techmind on 13/03/2011 13:50:23

I've been not-so-well recently [:-'(], and been spending more time in bed sleeping ... and dreaming.

I had one particular dream which raised two questions...


I was dreaming a sequence which could have come from an Aussie soap-opera (not that I've seen one for over a decade). There was an open-top 'pick-up truck' with a guy and a girl flirting in the back seat, a couple of slightly older guys in the front seats, one of whom was driving. I wasn't personally there (not as a first-person) but was watching the story be told as in a film/TV drama. My viewpoint jumped around, from watching the drama on the back seat, to the driver's-eye view looking forward to the view of the driver's face as seen from the front-passenger's corner of the windscreen - just like a film/TV production.

Question 1: I can imagine that historically people might have dreamt of being a "fly on the wall" (as well as first-person dreams)... but dreaming from all those changing viewpoints - is that a modern thing which mostly has only happened since we experience this way of looking at the world in film and TV?

In the dream, what started out as a relaxed/friendly drive along open roads gradually became more tense as the driver, without saying anything, became increasingly tense/agitated and began to drive progressively more aggressively as the road narrowed through a village and became more twisty and there were pedestrians and young children at the sides of the road (with no pavement)... which somewhat miraclously we avoided hitting. From the driver's perspective we then see 20-30 yards ahead of us a mother and maybe 7 yr old child and the child suddenly screams and points at us (the truck) ... then the my viewpoint jumps to the child's perspective and we see a tree fallen across the road that our truck is about to hit. And the dream ends/I wake up.

I found this business of the reaction of the child (a character in the dream) to a danger before the nature of that hazard has been seen directly by the person doing the dreaming intriguing.

Question 2: When the brain is dreaming, does it make up everything 'on the fly' as you dream it, or is part of the brain 'planning ahead' or 'looking forward' in the dream?


Do you know of any formal research/results in this area?
Have you experienced similar happenings in your own dreams?

Title: How does the brain "direct" dreams?
Post by: ryan69beach on 19/03/2011 04:37:59

No researches yet but I have noticed that a particular dream  repeats many times don't know why. Even I don't think about all that still it repeats. Can someone tell me why this is happening ?