Dream Recall: The Highs and the Lows
Why is it so hard to remember dreams? Scientific evidence dating back to the 1950’s has shown the brain is active in various ways throughout the sleep cycle. Yet when we wake up we often can’t remember more than a few fleeting images that disappear from our minds almost immediately. Why can’t... [Read more of this post]
Dreaming in Adolescence
In the current issue of the IASD journal Dreaming (Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 240-252) I have an article with results of a blind word search analysis of a teenage girl’s dream series. (Many thanks to the anonymous dreamer, “Bea,” and to Bill Domhoff for mediating our interactions.) The... [Read more of this post]
Tracking Robert Bosnak’s Dreams
The Sleep and Dream Database has just added a new series of dreams to its collection, thanks to the generosity of Robert Bosnak. In his 1996 book Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming he included an appendix with a series of 51 dreams recorded during a seven-week period of travel and personal transition. ... [Read more of this post]
What’s In a Lucid Dream?
What do people dream about when they have lucid dreams? What’s going on in the dream when someone has the realization, “I am dreaming”? Here’s another example of how the word search function of the SDDb can help get a research project started. The database includes a set... [Read more of this post]
Dreaming of the Dead: Patterns of Word Usage in Visitation Dreams
Here’s a good example of how to use the word search function of the Sleep and Dream Database. It focuses on “visitation dreams,” i.e., dreams in which people who are dead appear as if alive. These vivid and highly memorable dreams have been reported in cultures all over the world,... [Read more of this post]
My Worst and Best Nights of Sleep
In the previous post I noted that my monthly average ZQ over the past 3+ years (August 6, 2009 to December 19, 2012) has regularly hovered around 90, with the highest monthly average being 96 and the lowest 86. Now, looking more closely at the data, I can see that my worst and best nights of sleep... [Read more of this post]
1001 Zeo Nights
Last night (December 19, 2012) I recorded my 1001st night of sleep data using the Zeo sleep monitoring system. I first started using the Zeo on August 6, 2009, and have worn it 81.25% of the time since (1001 out of 1232 nights). Most of the non-Zeo nights have been due to miscellaneous technical... [Read more of this post]
We Have a Winner!
Congratulations to Michael Paul Coder, the winner of the dream research contest I posed last week. Michael correctly identified the gender, age, and dream type of six sets of dreams using only word search frequencies and my baseline hypotheses to make his inferences. He also correctly identified... [Read more of this post]
A Dream Research Contest
To help test the initial hypotheses arising from the SDDb baselines, I am offering a dream research contest, open to anyone willing to give it a try. The first person to send me (at bulkeleyk@gmail.com) the correct answers will win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com. The contest challenges... [Read more of this post]
The Distinguishing Features of Big Dreams
If someone presented you with two sets of dreams, one of most recent dreams and one of highly memorable dreams, you could predict with a high degree of confidence which type of dream was in which set, based only on word usage frequencies. The set with more references to flying, air, family, animals,... [Read more of this post]
