The bulk of the scientific fraternity still regards the world as ‘a thing as such’, a ‘reality’, in other words, that is independent of an active mind. Its proponents build their theories on facts they regard as something certain, steadfast and unalterable. The etymology of ‘fact’ reveals that its meaning has its roots in the Latin word ‘facere’, ‘to do’. Its present day meaning was established...
“The imaginary” and “imagination” are the essences of art and literature. However, all through history, a long-held dispute has always revolved around what they actually stand for. From illusion to dream and inspiration and divinities; from the ancient Greece to the era of Islamic philosophy and mysticism, all are linked to such concepts as imagination and the imaginary. Although these two...
Background: Knowledge transfer is an unavoidable process when it comes to indigenous knowledge especially in Africa, the continent known for its oral tradition. Such knowledge is in danger of being obliterated as a result of a number of factors, including lack of interest from younger generations and low life expectancy whereby knowledgeable people die before transferring it to the next...
The continuity hypothesis states that waking life experiences, e.g., personal concerns and cultural environment, are reflected in dreams. The present study’s goal was to compare written dream reports from Brazilian and German samples. Overall, 97 Brazilian participants were included; two German samples from previous studies (N=89 and N=4197) were selected for comparison. The Brazilian...
Summary Although motor activity is actively inhibited during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, specific activations of the facial mimetic musculature have been observed during this stage, which may be associated with greater emotional dream mentation. Nevertheless, no specific biomarker of emotional valence or arousal related to dream content has been identified to date. In order to explore the...
Background: Dreaming during anaesthesia is a common phenomenon. Dreams can occur with both inhalational agents as well as intravenous agents (IVA) like propofol and ketamine. But there are concerns like patient awareness, dreams and other untoward effects that may be associated with IVA. We have conducted this study to quantify the incidence of dreaming during IVA with propofol or ketamine....
The late Dr. Prakash Vikal's book on dreams is a new edition of the original, first published in 1995. It consists of three sections: general information on dreams, dreams in relationship to homeopathy and a repertory of dreams. The first section contains many short chapters on scientific research into dreams, types of dreams, lucid dreaming and some information on Freud and Jung. There are...
Sizing up Consciousness explores, at an introductory level, the potential practical, clinical, and ethical implications of a general principle about the nature of consciousness. Using information integration theory (IIT) as a guiding principle, the book takes the reader along a scientific trajectory to face fundamental questions about the relationships between matter and experience. What is so...
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and its main oscillatory feature, frontal theta, have been related to the processing of recent emotional memories. As memories constitute much of the source material for our dreams, we explored the link between REM frontal theta and the memory sources of dreaming, so as to elucidate the brain activities behind the formation of dream content. Twenty participants...
In a lucid dream, the dreamer knows that he or she is dreaming and can thus deliberately carry out actions. The original goal of this study was to investigate musical practice in lucid dreams and its possible effects as well as the quality of the experiences. A total of 5 musicians were interviewed about their lucid dreams in which they had played instruments and sung. However, the interviewees...