Re: Some brain questions i need help with

From: John Hasenkam (johnh_at_faraway.)
Date: 09/24/04 

Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 10:48:44 +1000

"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:rkE4d.27315$bL1.1103684@news20.bellglobal.com...
> dan michaels wrote:
> [...]>
> >
> > Trying to analyze the dream contents, as per Freudianism, is probably
> > either mundane or hopeless.
>
> Mundane as an opposite to hoipeless???? How?

For the most part I think dreams are just a shambles of things coming
together and fading away but there are instances where dreams are pointing
to something more significant that can be helpful in our conscious lives. In
my current dreams I am attempting to get somewhere but being presented with
barriers. Nonetheless I am getting to where I want to be. In my current life
I am beset with some difficulties and sometimes feel that I am not going to
get to where I want to be. It would appear that "I" of my dreams is more
optimistic than me! Should we trust dreamers?

About 20 years ago I had a rare nightmare where I woke up in the early
morning hours drenched in sweat and quite terrified, in the dream I was just
about to be killed. This dream obsessed me for many months, somehow I knew
it carried an important message and it was very symbolic in nature. It
started me looking at Jung in great interest. When I finally came to
understand the dream the warning has passed its used by date, I had avoided
the looming peril but only in retrospect did I realise that it was this
peril the dream was warning me about. Reciting this dream to a friend one
day he looked at me in astonishment and replied that he knew someone in a
very similiar situation to that I was in at the time of the dream and they
had a very similiar dream which they had interpreted in the same manner as
myself. They also changed their life. Spooky, glad it only happened once
otherwise I would have to take this dreaming stuff more seriously.

> > However, conceptualizing the "mechanisms"
> > underlying them is much more interesting - and pertinent. Vivid visual
> > imagery, totally internally-generated. High emotional content, totally
> > internal. The feeling to the externally-unconscious "I" that it is
> > fully-conscious within the dream, experiencing the dream experiences,
> > and experiencing high-emotional affect due to the dream experiences.
> > All this totally internal. That's what's remarkable. Isn't it.
> > ============
> [...]
>
> It's just as remarkable as visual imagery etc "externally" generated.
> Because of course there's really no difference. IMO, all visual imagery
> is internally generated. The only difference between the "internally"
> and "externally" generated VI is the originating stimulus. That's why
> it's so hard to study VI - we have on the one hand the external visual
> environment, on the other the responses in the VC and other parts of the
> brain (including the speech centers when the subject reports on what's
> een, etc.) When dreaming, almost all the same parts of the brain are
> active as when awake. Now _that's_ interesting - it suggests (to me
> anyhow) that the "experience of seeing" in the waking state is as much a
> product of the internal processes of the brain as when we dream. Since
> in REM sleep the eyes move, and muscular contractions are potentiated
> and inhibited (otherwise you'd actually flap your arms while "flying"
> etc), there is also feedback between the VC and other parts of the
> brains. Now _that's_ interesting, too, since it suggests that seeing as
> a behaviour is far more complex than "processinmg visual inputs from the
> retina". It also suggests that the VC uses the feedback as much as it
> uses the retinal inputs. Etc. IOW, if the VC gets input from other parts
> of the brain, it responds as usual. It can't differentiate between
> signals originating as responses to some external stimulus and those
> originating from some internal process. The "I" can sometimes tell the
> difference, but exactly how it does this is not clear.

Recently read:

What Memory is For. Glenberg, A.M.(1997). Behavioral and Brain Sciences
20(1): 1-55

9
Berkowitz and Trocolli (1990) and Berkowitz, Jo, and Trocolli (1993)
illustrate the influence of the body on affect judgements. In one
experiments, subjects were asked to judge the personality of a fictitious
person described in neutral terms. Half the subjects listend to the
description while holding a pen between their teeth without using their
lips. This activity forces the face into a pattern similiar to that produced
by smiling. The other subjects listened to the description while biting down
hard on a towel. This activity forces the face into a pattern similiar to
that produced by frowning. The subjects who were smiling rated the person
described more positive than the subjects who were frowning. It is unlikely
that this effect arose due to demand characteristics of the expeirment for
the following reason. The effect was obtained only when the subjects were
distrated from their activities; when they were asked to focus ont he
activities, the subjects seemed to compensate for the forced smile (frown)
and rate the description more negatively (postively). What can acount for
this finding? Experienced emotion is embodied. When the body is manipoulated
into a state that is highly correlated with an emotion, the body constrains
other cogniive (that is embodied) processing.

2.3.2

Montello and Presson (1993) asked subjects to memorize the locations of
objects in a room. The subjects were then blindfolded and asked to point to
the objects. Pointing was fast and accurate. Half the subjects were then
asked to imagine rotating 90 degrees and to point to the objects again. That
is, if an object was originally directed in front of the subject and the
subject imagined rotating 90 degrees clockwise, the correct response would
be to point to a location towards the subject's left. In this condition, the
subjects were slow and inaccurate. The other subjects, while blindfolded,
were asked to actually rotate 90 degrees and to point to the objects. These
subjects were just about as fast and accurate as when pointing originally.
Thus, mentally keeping track of the locations of objects, a task that many
cognivive psychologist as being cognitive and divorced from the body, is in
fact strongly affect by literal body movements.

10

Thus, in imaging pendular motion, discharges to the eye muscles follow the
appropriate frequency, in imaging bicep curls there are discharges in the
biceps, and in imagining the taste of favorite food there is an increase in
saliva flow.

to page 15
---------------

For the time being I'm calling this "sensory logic" and I think it throws
some light on why we tolerate the physical absurdities we encounter in
dreams. The absurdities experienced in the dreaming state are not alarming
nor do they cause us to become fascinated by the same. Sounds like
psychosis? This brings me back to the report I read about the inhibition of
external sounds during auditory halluncinations. What we deem to be real may
be a matter of contrast and reinforcement by our senses. In psychosis the
loss of stimulation from external sources might be a significant factor. I
think Hobson travels down this road and it does remind me of those sensory
deprivation experiments.

In relation to the pendulum experiment, if it were possible to inhibit the
ocular muscles I wonder if we could still imagine a pendulum swinging. Any
ideas? In relation to the room visualisation, I wonder how a person would go
if they were sitting in a chair and the chair was rotated 90 degrees by the
experimenter. The subject would feel the change in orientation, but would
that be sufficient or is the muscular action and subsequent feedback
necessary to achieve the good results?

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