Do You Micro-Dream?

Dreams are one of those realities that just fascinates the hell out of me. I dream almost all the time whenever I fall asleep, and I immediately forget the dream when I wake up.

The weirdest experience for me is micro-dreaming. This occurs when I nod off, and instantly find myself in a dream. It happens a lot to me at work sitting at my desk. I will have whole scenes play out with people talking to me in my dream, and suddenly I snap back to reality. Amazingly, even though it felt like I was out for awhile, only 30 seconds have passed. For me, the passage of time in a dream state is much greater than real time.

One of my scariest experiences occured when I was driving and getting sleepy. Suddenly I saw a pillar in the middle of the highway and I remember bracing myself for impact then I jolted awake. I was so anxious that it kept me alert the rest of the drive. I like to think it was God’s way of giving me a loud wake up call!
Is this a normal occurance? I recall reading that you have to be in deep REM state to start dreaming, but it can happen immediately for me.

Yes, i get this too. Check out Wiki’s entry on hypnagogia.

Hey, not to be one of those douches who can make any quirk sound like a horrible disease, but I had the same thing before I got my CPAP machine for sleep apnea. I don’t miss the tiredness, high blood pressure, and atrial fibrillation it caused, but I kind of miss the hypnogogic states. Those were pretty interesting.

You may want to take a self assessment for sleep apnea, just in case.

Stop me if you’ve heard this (I’ve mentioned it before in this forum.)

I once had the experience of sleeping very briefly and, not only being able to remember my dream, but being able to remember the whole chain of thought from before falling asleep. Thinking smoothly transitioned to daydreaming and into dreaming.

The conclusion I draw from this is that dreaming is not really distinct from thinking; it’s just unfocused thinking. It’s what thinking would be without sensory input and with the consciousness module shut down (where the “consciousness module” is whatever-it-is that directs attention and gives purpose to thought).

I remember I passed out one time while having blood taken, and after I woke up I felt really exhausted and I remember dreaming.

I recall reading somewhere that time doesn’t speed up or slow down when you dream; you dream basically in “real time” (i.e. the same amount of time passes in the dream as it does when you’re awake). I read this a long time ago though, does anyone know any new information on this?

I have found that when I am napping on the couch I tend to vocalize more (making “heh” sounds in response to something I’m dreaming, for example). I generally don’t talk in my sleep but when I nap I do vocalize and it always, always wakes me right up.

When I took Ambien to help me sleep, I found I could slip directly from being awake to asleep while remaining conscious it was happening. That was awesome and I wish I hadn’t gotten immune to Ambien.

That’s fascinating - do you have a link, or could you repost it?

I have this early in the morning, usually when I have to be awake earlier than I ought to be. I’ll nod off for just a half a minute or so and immediately form nonsensical thoughts. A few mornings ago I had the clock radio tuned to NPR and was trying to convince Steve Inskeep that peanut butter might make a suitable roofing compound because the euro was so unstable.

Had one of those during a slide show in SW American Archaeology class. In it I was sitting in class and listening to the lecture, but I realized the dream was every bit as boring as the lecture and I forced myself to wake up. Had it involved the girl in the next desk, though…

ALL of my dreams are boring, as befits a boring man. Last night I spent hours trying to find my way out of the basements of the Sears Tower, which included fine boutiques and restaurants and not sub-basement stuff. It was like mapping the Colossal Cave, without monsters. Monsters would’ve made it interesting.

Ha! I was doing this just this morning. I was facing my clock, so I could see that I dozed off about 10 times for no longer than 2 minutes. Lots of really crazy dreams!

my theory is that brain works as 2 separate processors running at vastly different speeds. In order for all possibilities to be considered in a thought or dream the faster processor runs without the rules of logic to slow it down. And without structured logic behind the thought the resulting dream cannot be remembered because it can’t be defined logically. I’ve woken up from very vivid dreams that made sense in the fleeting moments of wakefulness and then fade because it no longer makes any sense at all.

I’ve had flashes of insight before where a problem was dissected and all the parameters worked through to a solution in the blink of an eye. It was literally like watching a movie complete with computer modeling flash by and be coherent enough to comprehend it.

It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that autistic people use the creative side of their brains for cognitive thinking.

Yes I do this sometimes, and I hate it. I was probably feeling fine, no more than a bit tired or enervated, before I nodded off (often at the computer, sometimes watching TV), and I nod off, have the little dream and then wake up from it from it feeling both confused and extremely groggy. The confusion doesn’t last too long (unless I nod off again, sometimes this happens in serial bouts) but the grogginess can take ages to clear up (and when it is on me I don’t have the wit or will to get myself to bed).

Thanks Bill. Yeah, I’m pretty much certain I have sleep apnea. I snore loudly and been told I take gasps of breath. I also talk a lot in my sleep. I’m trying to lose weight and hoping that will cure it. Really don’t want to have to use a machine to sleep.

I didn’t write anything beyond what I wrote here.

Mine is that the brain is constantly thinking many thoughts in parallel. Maybe “thoughts” is not the right word: processing, sensory input triggering memories, extrapolating, connecting with other thoughts, triggering more memories… Like a crowd where people are talking in groups, wandering to other groups, groups are splitting and merging, information and ideas flowing here and there.

I don’t think any part of the brain is running fast. Different parts of the brain may be processing different aspects of a problem and the different solutions make a rather sudden connection into a final answer. Or the consciousness module may become suddenly aware of the solution that has been below the radar for some time.

I have experienced “micro-dreams” usually during a boring late afternoon meeting when I am nodding off; I will snap back awake and have a second of confusion halfway beetween the dream and reality. I just know one of these days I am going to say something completely nonsensical like “since the cat is blue then the hamburger on the roof”.

This is sort of true. However 2 things -

  1. people that talk in their sleep (you didn’t say this - just pointing it out) probably aren’t dreaming.

  2. Most people need to go through a complete sleep cycle of light (1 & 2), deep (3 & 4 now just 3), light(2 and 1) before they get into REM [REM and deep are different - usually people that study sleep use deep to refer to stage 3 sleep (or older method breaking it into 3 & 4).

I say most as there is something called early onset REM or Sleep Onset REM. People that experience this go into rem sleep very soon after sleeping. I have ~ 400 days of sleep data on myself and this happens to me on the vast majority of days.

Sleep-onset REM periods have been linked to narcolepsy, schizophrenia, depression, and delirium tremors. My grandmother had narcolepsy - and she hit a post in the middle of a road - which is when she was diagnosed - she hadn’t known up to then. I read through these real quick - so sorry if I missed if you considered this.

Are your dreams especially vivid? Although I have the early onset rem - I don’t believe my dreams are different in intensity than the average person - nor do I usually remember them.

Yes, it happens to me. But they aren’t “full dreams” where anything could happen. For instance it happened to me yesterday while reading the dope. I kept “reading” it while I had in fact fallen asleep. So I was trying to make sense of some nonsentical garbage my brain was making up. Before I was woken up (I was at my workplace :eek: ) the dream was devolving towards something more dream-like, but not similar to usual real dreams, though.

I’ve hallucinated during class due to sleep deprivation. If I’m sleepy enough, I can start to dream right away before I lose consciousness and kind of stay aware that I’m dreaming.

The oddest thing I find about dreams is that they seem linear at the time but when I wake I can’t figure out the proper order because, say, sequence A and B both make sense right before C but not at any other point. The only way it could work is with some kind of >-- narrative structure. I wonder if different parts of my brain are having two different dreams that eventually merge.

How about faces swimming in your vision right before you nod off?