Dreams…bedrock of creativity… mysticism and subconscious meets here…

Dreams have inspired humanity ever since we identified ourselves with species homo sapiens. The earliest recorded dreams have been found on clay tablets dating back as far as 5000 years. Ancient cave paintings are the hallmarks of the dreams of the artists involved.

Greeks and Romans used dreams to directly interface with the divine. Pythia, commonly known as Oracle of Delhi was known for her prophecies that she claimed being relayed to her by Apollo himself in her dreams.

Aboriginal communities use elaborate rituals to recreate the dreamtime stories to establish and maintain contact with spirits of their ancestors, however these rituals and the link to actual dreaming in everyday sense is not well understood.

Even though dreams have been widely used as a creative source of art, science and philosophy, little is known about their origin and what they actually mean to the dreamer.

So what are dreams anyway?

Wikipedia defines dreams as successions of images, ideas, emotions and sensations that occurs involuntarily in mind during certain stages of sleep i.e the rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep. Although dreaming happens during other stages of sleep, REM sleep dreams leave a more vivid impression and are often memorable.

What is really happening during dreams is not very well understood.

There are many theories about dreaming, the theories like; Freudian interpretations of ways to fulfil unconscious wishes or fantasies that we can’t fulfil in state of wakefulness; Jungian interpretations of dream as messages or revelations from subconscious to conscious to uncover and resolve the underlying emotional issues; Gestalt projections of inner self that have been ignored suppressed or rejected in past.

Some neurologists suggest that dreams arise when our brain cortex tries to make meaning out of random neural impulses, while others describe them as random thoughts resulting from execution of neural housekeeping routines when memory is being reorganised as we sleep.

In a recent study published in science, scientist were able to identify the objects of dreams from analysis of fMRI scans taken from people in various dreaming states. They developed a database of neural correlates up to a point where they could actually predict what the dream was about.

Since dreams are not just about objects they are often interlaced with colour, actions and emotions so this model is still primitive according to scientists (Yukiyasu Kamitani and colleagues at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto). However I think it is still a significant stepping stone towards demystifying the elusive nature of dreams.

What happens during REM sleep?

During REM sleep cycle the body remains in a paralysed stage, only muscles responsible for breathing and eye movements remain active. What a fail safe mechanism for the body in the dream. In dreamland the impossible becomes possible and if the body was directed to follow the mental acrobatics that are often associated with dreaming it could have disastrous consequences.

What is even more interesting is that the signature eye movement during REM sleep also match the visual field movements in the dream world. So effectively your real eyes move to see what you want to see even in a dream state. This provides a major clue to support the notion that;

What is out there is not what we see, what we see is what we want to see.

Studies have revealed that primary visual cortex area of the brain shows very little activity during REM sleep. This is the region that makes sense of what we see out there. It tells us what is happening around us by detecting patterns of light and interpreting them. This is where the optic nerve gets to, after passing through six synaptic connections all the way from the retina.

In contrast to primary visual cortex, the extrastriate visual areas that basically take the data from the primary visual cortex and process it further seem to be lot more active in the brain. This is bit strange especially when no external signal is being received by the visual cortex. It seems as if we are trying to interpret something from memory and not from the sensory input.

Another area that is highly active during REM sleep is the Limbic system. The hippocampus in limbic system is associated with memory formation and associations. Heightened hippocampal activity in REM sleep not only suggests why we dream about recent experiences but also why our dreams are muddled up and associated to unrelated imagery.

However it is quite possible that unrelated things are actually related at the subconscious level and we just don’t see the relationships or in other words relationships are not available to conscious self.

But why?

May be the relationships are either not important for our conscious functioning and are dropped out of stream of our consciousness or are being processed at subconscious level. This is an important insight into nature of unconscious bias.

Amygdala is another region of brain that is reported to be active in a dream state, this is our fear and aggression centre, no wonder why some of our dreams are violet, fear laden and nightmarish in nature.

In contrast to the limbic system, the prefrontal cortex of the brain is relatively quiet during REM cycle, prefrontal cortex is involved in thought and judgment. This is the seat of logic, a good enough reason for dreams to be weird and nonsensical.

Although REM sleep is an important and interesting aspects of our dreams, NON REM sleep offers additional insight into dreaming. N-REM is the state associated with lucid dreaming and hypnagogic hallucinations. It is state when we are dreaming, we know we are dreaming and we have a degree of control over our participation in the dream. So effectively we can control and navigate the dream to some extent.

Lucid dreaming provides access to a new creative design space, space to redesign ourselves, redesign in a flexible environment where boundaries are relaxed, our mental models are not in the way of creativity, our concepts are not entangled in rigid imagery, emotions are still alive and active, where new combinations can be tried and explored in a safe environment.

This is the space where mysticism and our subconscious meet. I think with bit of practice everyone can enjoy this free pass to explore oneself in utmost privacy guaranteed by our biology.

Moreover it is not just a speculative domain, there are several examples where scientific insight originated in dream land, be it formation of benzene ring, structure of DNA or Rene Descartes philosophy of scientific method.

Now after learning all this about dreams, I don’t see dreams as a complete waste of time. Dreams are the bedrock of creativity, they provide a unique perspective into our subconscious selves thus opening up new opportunities to mend our relationships with the past and build a better and productive future.

Originally published at scriptgrandeur.wordpress.com on April 3, 2015.