Click HERE to see this thread with all of the graphics, features, and links.

Just a thought. How do I get all the images in my dreams?

I've seen people in my dreams and I know that I haven't seen them in my waking life. How does my mind create such images?

through the same mechanisms that allow you to imagine the faces of people you have never seen before.

are dreams just an imagination land?

while dreaming, why do I believe that the dream is an actual event.

Sometimes I even try to force myself to sleep trying to continue a good dream. or try to finish its plot/story.

Stored chemical triggers for synapses....controlled by the subconcious. It's all electrochemisty in the end.

The most baffling thing is that how can electrical currents produce those images in my mind? Like how a computer monitor produce images.

I hate it when I dreamt about my x girlfriend having sex with someone else

Originally posted by StarCraft2
The most baffling thing is that how can electrical currents produce those images in my mind? Like how a computer monitor produce images.

I hate it when I dreamt about my x girlfriend having sex with someone else
You have issues.

Originally posted by King Kandy
You have issues.

Everyone has issues.

Originally posted by StarCraft2
The most baffling thing is that how can electrical currents produce those images in my mind? Like how a computer monitor produce images. You're brain functions like that all the time. Sometime just randomly making stuff up to fill in for blank slots in memory. Extracting previous memories and compiling them to create new images while unconscious isn't too far out of whack.

Originally posted by inimalist
through the same mechanisms that allow you to imagine the faces of people you have never seen before.

Also maybe you have seen these people but was not aware of it at the time.All my dreams I have people I know and don't know but I have a feeling that I will met them or had already.

Originally posted by inimalist
thats the amazing thing about it though

all of those "real world" experience are only so vivid because of our perceptual systems. We do not experience the world around us, but reconfigure sensory information to produce a representation of that world.

Because these same sensory modalities are active during our dreams, it is percieved just as vividly.

see, the one that gets me are people who claim they see colours that don't exist in nature when they hallucinate. This sort of implies that our sensory neurons can fire in such a way that, while dreaming or hallucinating or whatever, we may actually be able to experience sensory phenomena that would never be activated by real world stimuli. maybe that isn't as amazing or trippy to you, but to me it blows my mind.

There was just another study that came out about how we sort of "see it when we believe it". I take that they're suggesting that the brain guesses about an object and then starts fixing that guess while you keep looking.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-brain-visual-circuits-error.html

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
There was just another study that came out about how we sort of "see it when we believe it". I take that they're suggesting that the brain guesses about an object and then starts fixing that guess while you keep looking.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-brain-visual-circuits-error.html

interesting study, especially as it is expanding stuff to the FFA. Not to just shit on it or anything, but that type of "top-down" priming has been known for a while now, and can even be seen in the lowest levels of feature detection. very interesting, though, not entirely unexpected as the article makes it sound. No serious vision researchers take "feature detection" models that seriously these days.

My personal view is that the distinction between "top down" and "bottom up" is entirely ficticious, but that is a very technical rant...

You can see this kind of "filling in" in a few other situations:

just look at this image, don't scroll down until you know what it is

http://www.moillusions.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Mysterious-Dalmatian-Optical-Illusion.jpg





































so, the image seems ambigious at first, because there are no triggers for the "top-down" part of your brain to fill in the identity of what you are looking at. However, once you see it, the ambiguity goes away entirely. I can't look at the image any more without instantly seeing what is there, even though there has been no addition of information. It is just that top down correction and filling in that allows you to know what you are looking at.

Dreams are said to be the projected result of processing and re-ordering the amount of input your brain has to face each day. Conscious experiences, memories, emotions and also your imagination.
This vast catolog of data can make anything possible in your dreams, just imagine how many faces you see during week that you can't recall later, while your brain has stored a great deal of these images in the 'temporary files folder'.

Originally posted by inimalist
thats the amazing thing about it though

all of those "real world" experience are only so vivid because of our perceptual systems. We do not experience the world around us, but reconfigure sensory information to produce a representation of that world.

Because these same sensory modalities are active during our dreams, it is percieved just as vividly.

see, the one that gets me are people who claim they see colours that don't exist in nature when they hallucinate. This sort of implies that our sensory neurons can fire in such a way that, while dreaming or hallucinating or whatever, we may actually be able to experience sensory phenomena that would never be activated by real world stimuli. maybe that isn't as amazing or trippy to you, but to me it blows my mind.

Yeah, just read a study (had many faults) about "tricking" peoples' eyes to see colors that "don't exist."

On top of that, there's ways to make colors appear "more colorful" by overstimulating our "brain" to certain colors and making other colors more vivid: green grass becomes really green if you are walking on a really bright red or pink road...when you stare at the road for a bit, and then at the grass, the grass seems absurdly green.


I find that fun.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
An abstract sort of philosophical reason is very unlikely. If we had to sleep in order to sort out the issues in our life then we would expect to find simple "low level" animals (lacking such long term or abstract concerns) that have no need for sleep, but instead we find that everything with a brain sleeps.

according to the text book for a course I am TA-ing, sleep does play a big role in the consolidation of long term memories. It might be like a "defreag" process for memories.

obviously it also plays a role in bodily regeneration, which would explain why animals without complex cognitive structures would still need it, and I think everything with a brain has long term memory (?)

Originally posted by dadudemon
Yeah, just read a study (had many faults) about "tricking" peoples' eyes to see colors that "don't exist."

lol

well, you certainly aren't tricking the eyes. The eyes only have 3 colour receptive detectors, that work in an on/off manner. They can't really be tricked. It would be either in V1 or some later colour processing area (maybe V4....(?)) . The reason it is possible we might see "non-real" colours would be because it is theoretically possible that some mechanism would cause those cells to activate in ways nature can't produce through the eyes.

Originally posted by dadudemon
On top of that, there's ways to make colors appear "more colorful" by overstimulating our "brain" to certain colors and making other colors more vivid: green grass becomes really green if you are walking on a really bright red or pink road...when you stare at the road for a bit, and then at the grass, the grass seems absurdly green.

ya, this is much different. After the eyes, there are what are called "opponent process" pathways. Its the same reason that if you look at a green object for a while, then look at a white wall, you will see an afterimage of that object, only in red. Green vs red, blue vs yellow, black vs white (though, this last one is more used for the perception of motion vs the perception of colour).

So, if you used a blue road, you wouldn't get as powerful of an effect, if you got one at all, because blue uses a different opponent pathway than green.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I find that fun.

Just had my first lucid dream in forever after a month trying. Pretty neat.

Originally posted by King Kandy
Just had my first lucid dream in forever after a month trying. Pretty neat. Cool. What happened?

"woke up", realized I was dreaming but kind of fumbled over to a light switch to make sure, sure enough it didn't change. Went to my back yard and tried flying, but it was hard and I made pretty minimal progress. Felt like I was waking up so used spinning technique to stay in the dream, then decided I wanted to see this girl I knew, drove over to her area and started looking around but nobody knew where she was, then I woke up.

Quite oversimplified, of course.

Originally posted by King Kandy
"woke up", realized I was dreaming but kind of fumbled over to a light switch to make sure, sure enough it didn't change. Went to my back yard and tried flying, but it was hard and I made pretty minimal progress. Felt like I was waking up so used spinning technique to stay in the dream, then decided I wanted to see this girl I knew, drove over to her area and started looking around but nobody knew where she was, then I woke up. Do you feel the spinning technique helped?

I feel an agenda set beforehand (eg, "When I know I'm dreaming, I want to look in a mirror" sometimes helps, this way I can get right to my 'experiment' before I wake up or the lucidity fades.

I think the spinning technique helped a lot (I used it twice over the course). Setting an agenda is good, but since I never lucid dream, I ultimately stopped it because it was a waste. But, i'll probably start doing it again.

I've had a couple of lucid dreams years ago, it's a pretty odd experience. The one that I remember best started a bit like a nightmare, I was being chased by someone through some neighbourhood and then somehow I noticed just to many things being out of place and became aware that it was a dream, but I didn't wake up. I was then able to manipulate the dream to some extend, like being able to fly and even changing my appearance to scare the chaser. Still, I was bound to the 'story' of the dream as he kept chasing me and I never got Inception-style control of the dream.

Originally posted by Pandemoniac
Still, I was bound to the 'story' of the dream as he kept chasing me and I never got Inception-style control of the dream. It would appear dreams have their own agenda; best to enter into a partnership than try to take over.

Originally posted by inimalist
lol

well, you certainly aren't tricking the eyes. The eyes only have 3 colour receptive detectors, that work in an on/off manner. They can't really be tricked. It would be either in V1 or some later colour processing area (maybe V4....(?)) . The reason it is possible we might see "non-real" colours would be because it is theoretically possible that some mechanism would cause those cells to activate in ways nature can't produce through the eyes.

Indeed, which is why I put "tricked" in quotes because "imaginary colors" were being done in the brain, not the eyes doing it.

And, that was the conclusion from that study: we could create impossible visual experiences with only visual stimulation.


I suspect that figuring out how to make the brain "think" in different ways is a much better path to doing the above, however. Right now, we aren't even close.



Originally posted by inimalist
ya, this is much different. After the eyes, there are what are called "opponent process" pathways. Its the same reason that if you look at a green object for a while, then look at a white wall, you will see an afterimage of that object, only in red. Green vs red, blue vs yellow, black vs white (though, this last one is more used for the perception of motion vs the perception of colour).

So, if you used a blue road, you wouldn't get as powerful of an effect, if you got one at all, because blue uses a different opponent pathway than green.





Yes, that is what they called them: "opponent pathways." And, yes, that comment was completely unrelated to the study I mentioned prior.

creativity, sensory/memory synthesis.