i once read a long time ago (probably in comic books 
that a person can’t read in their sleep; that the part of the brain that recognizes characters isn’t active when dreaming takes place. is this true?
I think I saw that in an episode of “Batman: The Series” (Bruce Wayne figured out he was dreaming by trying to read a book.)
I imagine that if the plot of your dream called for you to read something, you wouldn’t really read it, but you would think that you did. Just like dreaming about running–you’re actually paralyzed in the dream state.
DHR
I had heard the test as, you look at something written, look away, and look back, and if you’re dreaming, the text will most likely have changed. Since I’ve successfully applied this test while dreaming, and it requires the ability to “read” in the dream, I’d say that you can. Heck, I’ve read whole chapters of books in my dreams, when I fall asleep reading and I’m to impatient to wait 'till I wake up to finish it. Not, of course, that my dream versions correspond in any way to the original.
Yes, I know that you’re not really reading, but for that matter, you’re not really seeing anything, either.
Yeah, I’ve “read” in my dreams… even managed to retain that information after I’ve woken up.
I think you don’t actually read, but… you know how, when you’re dreaming, you “know” stuff in the dream world? Like, you can be dreaming you’re in a starship and you know where to walk around, or something like that… I think “dreamreading” is similar to that phenomenon.
Its a common excersize is developing lucid dreaming skills to try to re-read things as the second time you look at letters or numbers they tend to change. I’ve read in dreams but I’ve never managed to re-read anything.
almost.
the excercise of rereading is used to develop lucid dreaming, yes, but in a different way.
it is suggested to get in the habit of rereading things every so often while you are awake, for two reasons: to be conscious of the fact that you are awake, and to get in the habit so you continue the practice when sleeping.
if you get into this habit, you will find yourself trying to reread things when you are sleeping, and being conscious of your efforts. after not being able to reread something, you may then realise that you are indeed in a dream, and use that knowledge to your advantage. tada. lucid dreaming.
In dreams, I’ve experienced:
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Trying to read something and it was just impossible (like trying to run in dreams and you’re stuck); it didn’t strike me as odd in the dream that I couldn’t read, just fustrating (like there was something wrong with the book, and not me). I only realized this upon awakening.
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Trying to read something and it was just impossible. It was so odd that I couldn’t read that I started to realize that this must be a dream. Awakening confirmed that theory.
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Trying to read something and it was just impossible. It was so odd that I couldn’t read that I started to realize that this must be a dream and then I jumped into lucid dreaming mode.
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Reading something and it made sense. Upon awakening, what I remembered reading turned out to be complete nonsense and I said to myself, “idiot.”
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Reading something and it made sense. Upon awakening, what I remembered reading turned out that it did make sense. Sometimes, it was just a rehash of recently read knowledge or stuff I already knew. Just a few times, it was profound new knowledge.
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Reading something and then, when rereading it, it changed. At times, this didn’t strike me as odd until awakening. Other times, it clued me in that I was dreaming.
I’ve never experienced rereading something in a dream exactly the same twice; though, in the dream, I thought it was the same, but upon awakening, I said to myself, “idiot.”
Peace.
i think it was a newspaper that Batman read,
I read in a dream for the first time (as far as I can remember) the night after I first read this thread. In the dream I was on the SDMB and under the user’s name, where it’s supposed to say “member” it said “!!!wow yeah!!!” The second time I looked at it, it became unreadable.
A note about lucid dreams: As of about ten years ago there were still dream “experts” who disputed that lucid dreams were real. I have had about ten of them, so I know better.
Stephen Leberge’s work with lucid dreaming in the 80’s was routinely dismissed by big-name journals because of the assumption that LD didn’t exist.
You might know better through personal experience, but the LD deniers would simply say you weren’t really dreaming at all or you have false memories about a dream. Sounds like the typical “I saw ghost” and “No you didn’t” argument to me.
Um, if I may ask, what do the LD deniers say is the difference between actually having a dream, and just thinking that you’re having one? If a person says they see a ghost, it’s fine to be skeptical, but if a person says they had a dream, how are you going to dispute that?
The argument was if someone claimed to be conscious during a dream, knowing they were dreaming, then it was just a type of hynogogic state or typical daydreaming or their memory was clouded with false facts from the confusing experiece that is dreaming.
This is all stemmed from blindly following the rule that dreams are subconscious fragments with no meaning and thus you cannot have any kind of knowledge whats going on, let alone actually controlling it. The same way some people blindly follow the rule that it isn’t possible to see a ghost because they aren’t real.
What typically happens to me is that I’ll have a book or some manuscript that will either A) Solve all of the world’s problems, or B) Make me rich beyond avarice. All I have to do is follow the written instructions.
But what happens is that the words start floating around and jumbling up. I get so frustrated, I wake up.
. . . I’m pretty sure most people can’t smell or taste things in dreams. I never have, at least.
DHR
Most people, maybe, but I have. In one dream, I tasted pine nuts. In another I smelled Mary Todd Lincoln’s soap.
I read in a dream last night… I looked at a map that said “Texan Republic of Kosovo” … hey, no one ever said it had to make sense! 
Apparently I’ve been paying far too much attention to the news these days, though.
I am moderately proficient at classroom French. The strange thing is, when I dream, I sometimes have conversations in French using words that I know I do not know, but I somehow understand them.
Weird.
I can’t read in my sleep, 'cause my eyes is closed. :D:D
I sometimes fall asleep while I’m reading. Thing is, my dreams when this happens are all of me reading the book I was reading when I was awake. I’m even lying in bed! The interesting thing is this: I know I’m dreaming because the ‘words’ are random groupings of letters. I’m not very asleep when this happens, so I always wake up very soon after I realize I’m asleep. I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep soon afterwards. Yeah, not very interesting, but that’s just how I am.
I can do y’all one better. I’ve written in my dreams. I remember once in particular I “wrote” a poem, but I didn’t so much go through the process of writing as much as I just brought it into existence. I could see it, formed into stanzas, and at the time I thought it made perfect sense, beginning to end, but in the morning I could only remember snatches of it that actually made very little sense.