Dreams

[nibot]

I woke up from a dream, feeling well-rested and generally refreshed, with sunshine streaming in through my window onto my face. The sunlight appeared in my dream, as my vision in the dream had become very strange. Horizontal bands of light or something.

I think that being woken up `gently` really helps with the remembering of dreams. I rarely (a small number of times per year) remember my dreams, or even that I had been dreaming. However, a few times this year I remembered my dreams after being woken up by the radio; but these memories were only ephemoral, and faded quickly. The alarm clock is a harsh jolt into reality, involving the piercing noise and a walk across the room. I wonder how difficult it would be to make a home-made EEG (electroencephalograph) to monitor sleep patterns. This could be monitored by a simple device which could produce external stimulus (sound, light) in pursuit of a number of goals: a) wake up optimally so as to remember dreams; b) wake up at the proper point in the sleep cycle so as to feel optimally refreshed; c) investigate lucid dreaming.

When I was much younger, specifically in the third grade, I remembered my dreams vividly, and could usually influence my actions in the dream. This was very exciting not only because the laws of physics did not apply (I could usually fly) but also because my dreams frequently verged on the nightmarish. This phenomenon suddenly disappeared towards the end of grade school and since then I've never really remembered my dreams at all, and I've always wondered why.

Feynmann did some personal `research` on the matter, and his main conclusion was that it is simply necessary to train your memory (by writing down everything you can remember about your dreams when you wake up, for example) in order to (re-)develop the lucid dreaming capacity.

I've talked to my roommate a little about it, and we both have noticed that we tend to remember our dreams a lot more frequently when we're on some kind of vacation from school; somehow the daily stress of school destroys the memory of dreams, but perhaps this is just a result of the sudden-return-to-awakening addressed above. I dunno. It would be fun to make an EEG and investigate the phenomenon quantitatively.

Comments

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

SQUID = Superconducting Quantum Interferance Detector.

I find that I remember dreams better when I have time off from school/work. I've always figured that the stress of planning what to do next would switch my brain away from dreamstate sooner than it would happen otherwise. The longer I stay there, the better the recall.. And if I go through them and write them down, they last practically forever. I've got almost 5 years worth written down, and reading them brings them back almost like that day...

I've got plans for a parallel-port 8bit 8-channel ADC system around here somewhere. If I remember correctly, it required only 3 chips, and fairly cheap ones at that. I wonder if I can find them... The tricky part of a system like this is actually acquiring the signals in the first place. The signals we want are microvolts, and scalp muscles can provide millivolts. Anything that's hooked up to a human has to be triple-isolated, so that means either expensive isolation amps, or using battery power for the human side.

I'm looking for a source of inexpensive electrodes and gel.. It can make quite a difference...

When I had my (professional) EEG done, opening my eyes would cause many needles to jo crazy jumpy. Watching the noiselevel should be able to show if someone's eyes are open, and by measuring the brainwave frequency, we can determine if the brain is in a sleepstate.

The signals are fairly low-frequency, no more than 30hz. Unless we did a modulating trick, it wouldn't really be suitable for a soundcard... such devices almost always block DC and other low-frequency sources.

I'm in for a homebrew EEG community.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

homebrew eeg community. just need to remember it exists, I suppose.

okay: eeg