Art by smbc-comics
Consciousness is often said to disappear in deep, dreamless sleep. We argue that this assumption is oversimplified. Unless dreamless sleep is defined as unconscious from the outset there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep.
Pubmed Articles
Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep?
Sciencealert Article We Were Wrong About Consciousness Disappearing in Dreamless Sleep, Say Scientists
Do you really have dreamless sleep or do you simply not remember the dream?
For a long time, mine was dreamless. It wasn’t until I turned off the TV before going to bed that I started to have dreams. I theorize that the external stimuli hindered my brain from creating dreams.
It was a super weird period because my dreams started as nightmares, like my brain didn’t know what the hell was going on. Then I drifted through a period of recurring dreams and then lucid dreams. They’ve settled down into more normal dreams, but I’m still super excited to dream each and every night. It feels like I found music after being deaf or seeing colors for the first time after being blind.
It wasn’t dreamless, you just weren’t remembering your dreams. If your sleep was truly dreamless for a lengthy period of time you’d be dead.
Often simply changing your sleeping habits in any significant way is enough to get you to start remembering dreams. That’s because you need to wake up “unexpectedly” in the middle of a REM sleep phase to have a chance to form memories of them. Normally your brain has its memory-forming mechanism disengaged during REM sleep because there’s no good reason to remember that stuff - it’s just a side effect of a mental housekeeping routine.
You can also “train” yourself to remember dreams more often, to some degree, by trying to record a dream journal or otherwise forcing your brain to lay down some memories of those dreams the moment you wake up and they’re still present in your short-term memory.
You’re not supposed to remember your dreams. When you remember your dreams it’s when you were woken unexpectedly, or when you consciously or unconsciously fled the dream before returning it to the Dreammaster.
We only borrow our dreams from him every night, but when we leave a dream prematurely we are stealing that dream - bringing it into our reality and hiding it away in our memories.
However precious or horrid your stolen dreams may be, remember that the Dreammaster will claim them back from you. He always does, in the end.
Thank you. The only scientific answer in this thread.
I for one welcome my sleep overlord.
Well usually you wake up after each dream circle. You just don’t remember it because you fall asleep almost instantly. That really was a problem when my father would wake me up in the morning and I couldn’t remember him waking me up and slept for another half an hour)
Then I started with a dream journal. I don’t do it anymore because I’m lazy, but I still remember waking up multiple times a night and remembering exactly what I just dreamed and notice the memory fading away.
When I journaled my dreams were extremely vivid. It isn’t like this anymore but I still sometimes have lucid dreams even though I can’t really stabilize and control them.
Weird
The majority of sleep is dreamless, I believe it’s just during REM that you dream, which I believe is usually 15-20% of normal sleep.
Technically, if you remember a dream it’s because you woke up during a REM cycle. If your sleep cycle completes fully, then you won’t remember your dream and will feel more rested.
I think this is false but I don’t have information to refute it other than my own experience. I used to write a dream diary. When I did, I remembered my dreams almost every time I woke up. Not just half the time or 80% but more like 96% of the time. And it was very detailed with multiple dreams tied to each other.
I remember I’ve had dreams but I only have a very vague sense of what they are about.
Also kept a dream journal.
The trick is not to focus on the story (what the dream is about or means) and to recall the emotional energy in the dream.
Learning to meditate and tune into my emotions was both aided by dream journaling, and an aid to dream journaling.
Plus the emotional content probably has more meaning than whatever story we tell ourselves.
Agreed. In my experience, dreams can be interpreted much like art can be interpreted. How you emotionally respond to the images and scenarios tells you a lot about what your mind is attempting to deal with while you are physically safe. I believe that dreams are a form of poetry that your mind is engaged with in order to integrate life experiences in a safe manner.
I kept a dream journal for a couple of years.
Subjectively there was no way for me to know if it was memory or just my tired brain making a story out of the left over bits of sleep.
It did fuel a lot of creative writing though (both in and out of the journal). And helped me be more in touch with my emotions.
It’s not false. I remember my dreams every morning, and often remember them for a long time. I also have sleep issues and never get restful sleep.
There’s naturally far more nuanced to the neuroscience, but it’s largely true.