Dreams

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What do you think is the purpose of dreaming at night? Why do we think differently when we dream? Why don't we just fall asleep and keep thinking like we normally do rather than change our consciousness?

Aside from it's other functions sleep is a time for the body and the mind to digest all the happenings of the previous time awake and readjust what it knows in relation to the new data. It is unlikely that dreaming is just a random ramble through accumulated data and probably is an attempt to explore new possibilities that the new data offers. The conscious mind, despite what many people think, is an artifact of the nervous system to deal with reality in some effective way and not a master controller.During sleep that artifact is shorn of its capability of disbelief to deal with new configurations as if they were reality so that the mind in toto can practice its reactions.

I'm just wondering... do we on the autistic spectrum experience dreaming somewhat different from the NTs?

o.o ..... Just as i read that thread.....there was an ad regarding "Dreams 101, learn to interpret dreams" right under.....

Hmm, I haven't really seen anything to indicate that.

You're half there... you have seen your own dreams, haven't you?

Well, when I compare my dreams with others, I don't really see any noticable differences. Do you?

Yes. Most of the people I know are disturbed by "violent" dreams. I enjoy them. I recently had a dream where someone was cutting through my flesh with a knife. I did not find it disturbing. I have dreamt of dying several times, sometimes drowning, sometimes shot, sometimes stabbed. Not many of the "typicals" have been able to dream past their death.

I also have lucid dreams, that seems to be atypical.

Then again, I might be just plain crazy, in addition of having AS.

I started to dream lucidly (where I have some conscious control over the dream works) about forty years ago. I have not had a nightmare since.

ruveyn

If wikipedia's article on alexithymia is to be believed, then to some extent yes. Many if not most people with AS have some degree of alexithymia, and wikipedia describes one of the features of alexithymia as a tendency towards unusually mundane dreams. See >>>alexithymia<<<.

I have had the odd experience of having a dream and then it coming true within the next few weeks. I rarely remember dreams other than these, and when I do, it's obvious to me whether they're going to be real or not. These experiences caused me to warn my sister when I dreamed that she died. As to whether that affected the outcome? I cannot say. I believe it was a prescient dream, but whether it was or not is a separate matter.

I do not believe that these dreams are some psychic ability to tell the future. Rather, it's a logical interpretation of events of my life and how they are leading up. As such, these dreams are most often mundane, such as someone's response to something I (eventually) say.

Although I have had a few lucid dreams when I was curious about them when awake, I passed through that phase and have had none recently. Perhaps the most outstanding feature of a good many of my dreams is my reconstructions of places I know into environments that I return to in my dreams. Fantasy versions of several cities in which I have lived with extraordinary and highly detailed architecture. When I find myself in these fantasy cities in my dreams I search out special places to revisit and examine for possible discoveries. But there are always emotional bases underlying each dream experience, whether is is a matter of perilous experiences while driving, being lost in a weird place, re-living the horrors of keeping my now deceased quadriplegic son alive, being attacked and eaten by huge insects or other strange events. I frequently can fly in my dreams which is not a sexual reference but rather something of an ego trip in that I have a special talent which is never secure. I usually have about four or five separate dreams each night.

I have about 4 or 5 dreams a night too. I wake up in the morning and remember them or I'll wake up at night and rehash them. Often times I'll forget them later on in the day but I remember that I remembered them. I used to write them down all the time but now I only do it if it really stands out as important. Sometimes if I am in a really relaxed state, which is usually before I go to bed, I will remember a dream I had forgotten. Memory is very interesting in respect to dreaming.

Hypnosis is interesting too. Dreams are very valuable if they are analyzed properly. At first glance it seems like a bunch of delusional rubbish, but dreams contain hidden meanings and information that went over our heads during the day.

I've had some déja vu experiences, where i could almost physicly predict what was going to happen in the next few minutes, nothing radical ever happenned though, it was more like if i say this precise thing, x will get mad at me. o.O

Outside of dreams, anytime I close my eyes I see scenes. Frequently, if they are of people's faces they meld into each other with features quickly dissolving, changing, as if my memory was running through the faces in a huge data file. When riding a bus with my eyes closed I see imaginary detailed landscapes outside the bus passing by at the same rate the bus is moving but having little if any relation to what is actually passing by. I see stores with various contents in the display windows, highly detailed, but not existent in reality. If I close my eyes and press them I see photographic scenes, some of them quite memorable. I remember seeing a group of huge blue lobster like creatures in the control room of a space ship. I have no idea where these images arise and all are quite strange and unexpected. When I was a kid I thought everybody saw these images but as I grew up I discovered not many people do.

Dreams are what stop us from dying of boredom during sleep.