Several Buddhist schools in India, China and Japan concentrate on the interrelationships between waking and dreaming consciousness. In Eastern philosophy, reality can be seen as a dream and an obscure ‘reality beyond’ can be considered as real. In spite of the overwhelming Platonic–Aristotelian–Freudian influence existent in Western culture, some Western thinkers and artists—Valéry, Baudelaire,...
Abstract Ketamine is an N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist that has become increasingly recognized and utilized in the treatment of post-operative pain as a way to reduce opioid use. Overall ketamine is generally well tolerated, however it is associated with transient hypertension and neurologic "emergence phenomena" manifesting as dream-like states, irrational behavior, and delirium. From...
Der Nachtmahr (The Nightmare) was painted 1781 by the Swiss-born artist Heinrich Füssli (1741-1825). Neurologists, sleep medicine specialists and sleep researchers are familiar with this popular work, which became a symbol for the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. Notably, Füssli created this work decades before the first scientific description of the syndrome. Therefore, the following chapter...
The authors studied the self-rated effect of dreams on creativity in participants who were not selected for creative abilities. Students (N = 444) and online respondents (N = 636) answered a questionnaire about dreams and creative dreams. In addition, the students completed several personality measures and creativity scales. Results indicated that dreams that stimulated waking-life creativity...
The function of REM sleep dreaming is still unknown. We situate our approach to understanding dream phenomenology and dream function within that part of evolutionary theory known as Costly Signaling Theory (CST). We contend that many of the signals produced by the dreaming brain can be and should be construed as “costly signals”—emotions or mental simulations that produce daytime behavioral...
Once I had a bizarre dream in which I was vouchsafed a secret which would ensure my wealth and success. It was the title for a comic novel; one supposedly so funny that it would guarantee classic status for any book: Oh Colonel Flastratus! The distinctive feature about my dream was its quality of profound significance, which felt akin to the Eureka moment of a scientific discovery. This led me...
This paper reviews scientific literature on four subjective states: the dream state, the dreamy state of temporal lobe epilepsy and temporal lobe stimulation, the acute psychotic state, and the psychedelic state. Evidence is cited showing that underlying the emergence of dreamlike phenomena in all four states is the occurrence of high-voltage bursts of theta and slow-wave activity (2–8 Hz) in...
Alienation is the feeling that life is 'meaningless', that we do not belong in the world. But alienation is not an inevitable part of the human condition: some people do feel at one with the world as a consequence of the animistic way of thinking which is shared by children and hunter-gatherers. Animism considers all significant entities to have 'minds', to be 'alive', to be sentient agents....
Sleep paralysis (SP) is a brief period of paralysis associated with REM occurring at sleep onset (hypnagogic) or offset (hypnopompic) (1,2). Descriptions and explanations of SP experiences have appeared in the scholarly, medical and scientific literature for at least 1500 years, often under the rubric of nightmare (3) and, more recently, as part of the narcoleptic tetrad/pentad (1). The nature...
December 21, 2006Mariana Szklo‐coxe, Terry Young, Laurel Finn
Sleep paralysis (SP), hypnagogic=hypnopompic hallucinations (HH), and cataplexy, classic symptoms of narcolepsy, have been considered dissociated manifestations of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (1,2). Although primarily examined in clinical narcolepsy (3) or other sleep disordered patient populations (4-6), these symptoms have also been reported outside of clinical settings and across various...