JITOTM28: Dream Consciousness 1

Now we're getting into the good stuff. We've talked about dreams before, but we've never really delved deeply into the experiences that await the lucky visitor to dreamland.

This is some of the very richest, most intriguing territory in the world of consciousness studies, so we're going to present this discussion in three parts. I originally thought it might be "sleep, dreams, and weirdness" ... but right off the top, Jay pointed out that non-dreaming sleep isn't really consciousness anyway.

Good point - but then, isn't it odd that dreaming IS considered consciousness? After all, you're lying there prone and inactive, just as you are during the rest of the night... but when your mind enters the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, you become AWARE even though you're not AWAKE.

And in that state of mind, what dreams may come? It's difficult to investigate dreams scientifically, but we're collectively learning lots as we go along. And it's clear that dream studies offer some of the most exciting insights into the workings of human consciousness.

The trouble is that all dream reports are completely subjective- we can only know what goes on in a dream from the dreamer's perspective. On the other hand, that means our own experiences of dreams are fine fodder for discussion: Jay's, mine, and yours too, we hope.

Enter, sandman... in this episode of JITOTM, Dream Consciousness 1.

Behind the Curtain:

• The lobotomy prize: here's how the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Egaz Moniz in 1949 for the development of the frontal lobotomy.
  
  
• Alan Hobson wrote The Dreaming Brain among others.
  
  
• Robert Stickgold has a whole whack of dream-related articles to his credit.
  
  
• Sound fixed! The issues we had when we first left the studio setting have been dealt with. We're now recording on location, but without the strange stereo split that was caused by using two seperate lavalier mics. We're now using a single stero mic, into a Canon XL1 digital camera, and post-processing using Audacity, in case anyone wondered.
  
  
• What's the rustling? Jay's 1960s era bean bag chairs. Seriously. They are really, really comfortable for conversation, but it turns out, they show up on the tape. I kinda like it.
  
  
• Brainard is back! We missed David Matheson's theme music.
  

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