How's Everyone Feeling Right Meow?

[emjay]

I don't put any stock in dreams whatsoever. I've had some pretty weird/fucked up/disturbing ones but I don't ascribe to them any meaning above and beyond the brain just consolidating learning in your sleep by flooding the system as it were with activation. Because neural learning happens whenever a neuron fires so learning and retrieval happen in the same step. So that's how I see it, with it consolidating learning for things you've been recently thinking about... the new additions as it were to your mental landscape. So if I watch three different horror films and then see aspects from them all, however weirdly connected/related in my dreams, I'm not at all surprised.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yeah, I generally look at dreams as mental housekeeping.

That doesn't stop some of them from affecting me emotionally.

[Athene]

True enough.

I had one one this evening that rattled me a bit. It's fucking with my head a little.
Disturbing.

[vorlon13]

I don't put any stock in dreams whatsoever. I've had some pretty weird/fucked up/disturbing ones but I don't ascribe to them any meaning above and beyond the brain just consolidating learning in your sleep by flooding the system as it were with activation. Because neural learning happens whenever a neuron fires so learning and retrieval happen in the same step. So that's how I see it, with it consolidating learning for things you've been recently thinking about... the new additions as it were to your mental landscape. So if I watch three different horror films and then see aspects from them all, however weirdly connected/related in my dreams, I'm not at all surprised.

What about the one where big spiders paralyze you and then eat your eyeballs right out of your head ??

[Thumpalumpacus]

True enough.

I had one one this evening that rattled me a bit. It's fucking with my head a little.
Disturbing.

Your own advice is just as good for you as it is for me ... out of mind is a good place for that sort of stuff.

[Longhorn]

Dreams can fuck you up for a while. That's all I know for sure. Hugs Thump

[Longhorn]

I feel confused. So everything is pretty much back to normal.

I'm tired of playing Freud with myself. No, me. I don't actually know what the fuck is your problem. I'm done pretending I know what you need.

[Athene]

Like my giddyup's gone and went.

A trip to 7 eleven will fix that easy enough, though.

[emjay]

Yeah, I generally look at dreams as mental housekeeping.

That doesn't stop some of them from affecting me emotionally.

Yeah, the last major disturbing one I had did require a little bit of extra effort to see like this because the temptation was definitely to read meaning into it and it would have been so easy to do so, but if I had I would have just ended up wallowing in it and treating it essentially like a horoscope (mentally I mean... using it to prompt/prime what I focused on in waking life and therefore probably perceive even more meaning in it). So no, I don't read anything into any dreams, even if my gut reaction would be to do so.

[emjay]

I don't put any stock in dreams whatsoever. I've had some pretty weird/fucked up/disturbing ones but I don't ascribe to them any meaning above and beyond the brain just consolidating learning in your sleep by flooding the system as it were with activation. Because neural learning happens whenever a neuron fires so learning and retrieval happen in the same step. So that's how I see it, with it consolidating learning for things you've been recently thinking about... the new additions as it were to your mental landscape. So if I watch three different horror films and then see aspects from them all, however weirdly connected/related in my dreams, I'm not at all surprised.

What about the one where big spiders paralyze you and then eat your eyeballs right out of your head ??

No idea... I take it you didn't watch a horror film to that effect? I don't know... it is just a working theory... general enough to feel confident that something like that is happening... for the sake of how I approach dreams mentally in real life... but not confident enough to be sure of the details and why certain things activate more than others or what their in-dream connections represent... whether there actually is an associative connection between things that seem related in a dream or whether it's just the flow of the dream that makes it feel like that. Or whether strange connections are just an intermediate stage of the 'settling' process where neurons are in the process of learning what to represent, not just how strong to represent. Because neural networks are self-organising so a neuron will take up the job of representing a new pattern it finds in its inputs, through a basically statistical, iterative process. And that's why I think that sleep/dreaming could well be a necessary thing to provide space for that process to occur. In my thinking it would happen in daily life as well - in the sense that neurons are always learning - but that at night it can consolidate and strengthen what already exists without sensory interruption from the outside world.