Dream images, anticipations of the future, memories of the past, perceptual distortions, delusional hallucinations, cognitions intoxicated by alcohol and drugs have always inhabited the visual representations of paintings, comics, films, television series, videogames and, more recently, virtual reality installations. We call them “altered states of consciousness”, meaning any perceptual state...
What is the essence of thinking? The answer is human consciousness. If human beings do not have the ability to think independently, human beings will not be as advanced and complex as human beings are today, and there will be no countless radicals to explore the truth. Therefore, it is necessary to make a scientific inquiry into our consciousness. It is believed that entropy, as a crucial...
Dreams are virtual repetitions during sleep, of what we perceive and act, in reality, when we are awake. The basis of wakeful state, is due to the sensory inputs from the sensory organs (through the ascending tracts) and the motor output from the respective brain centres (through the descending tracks), as well as, due to the activated ascending reticular activating system. (ARAS) and the...
We present the research area of personal dream informatics: studying the self-information systems that support dream engagement and communication between the dreaming self and the wakeful self. Through a survey study of 281 individuals primarily recruited from an online community dedicated to dreaming, we develop a dream-information systems view of dreaming and dream tracking as a type of...
Flying dreams have the potential to evoke a feeling of empowerment (or self-efficacy, confidence in our ability to succeed) and self-transcendent experience (STE), which have been shown to contribute to an individual’s overall well-being. However, these exceptional dreaming experiences remain difficult to induce at will. Inspired by the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) to support profound...
Although epidemiological studies report that hallucinations occur in 6-15% of the general population, little is known about their phenomenology. To overcome this paucity, this study investigates the phenomenological characteristics of hallucinations in the general population, by using a nationally promoted online survey to assess hallucination phenomenology in four sensory modalities, through a...
Lucid dreaming offers the chance to investigate dreams from within a dream and by real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep. This state of consciousness opens a new experimental venue for dream research. However, laboratory study in this field is limited due to the rarity of lucid dreamers. In a previous study, we were able to induce in 50% of the participants a...
In this chapter, the wishes that appear in the dreams of Marco’s first period are classified with respect to two basic criteria—that is, type of condition/state of the psychic apparatus (preconscious/conscious vs. unconscious) and parental approval or disapproval (i.e., prohibitions and rules coming from outside). Based on this latter criterion, we distinguish wishes into simple (unrepressed)...
This chapter deals with the problem of dream report credibility in young children. After a brief review of literature on this theme, the author reports guidelines in evaluating dream report credibility based on eight objective criteria obtained from large studies on children’s dreams.
The purpose of this study was to make explicit the essential structure of the experience of dreaming a droam which changes one's life. The study examined the total dream experience of a person, which included the dreamer?s report of his or her rolevant experience prior to the dream, the dream itself, and the subsequent waking experience of the dream. Because this study sought to discover the...