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Since all potentially serious questions concering psychology and/or the human brain is at risk to totally drown in my couch thread, I decided to open a new thread, where I will try to answer questions about the human mind and brain in general.

For those of you who doesn't know me already, I might add that I am (would you believe it!) a licensed psychologist, specialiced in neuropsychology, which a science trying to describe and investigate how our minds and psychological functions can be described and explained in terms of biological, anatomical and electrochemical processes. I am also a neuroscientist (yes, I have two educations) and for the last 2.5 years I have only worked with research, not with patients. In fact, I'm a pretty lousy clinician.

posted by Tybaltus
Well Ive got a question for you, CE: Do you think dreams are powerful enough to give you answers to true delemma's in life? I mean I have always been fascinated in dreams. I know there are metaphors for true life issues like drowning in a dream may signify a situation where youre over your head in work or other things. But can a dream solve a problem, rather than just illustrating it?

Dreams are interesting, and the more so since we don't actually know what it is. They do however play an important role in human life, not only because we subjectively may find them interesting. Studies show that dreaming is important for consolidation of long-term memory and learning. If you deprive people selectively of REM sleep, the stage when we are dreaming the most, they show disturbances in memory and have difficulties learning new things. This together with other observation has led to the hypothesis that dreams are a product of a process where our brain is organising information.

With our present level of technology and knowledge, it is very difficult to provide any scientific support for the question of whether dreams can actually solve a problem or not. I myself, as many professionals, view dreams not like a mysterious inner message but rather as a different way from working through information, than the one you use consciously when you are awake. Also remember than only a small percentage of the brain is actually "resting" while you sleep, there is a lot of activity although it is partly different from the type of activity you see in the awake brain. When you sleep, you still have access to everything you know when you are awake, and in the stream of information your brain goes through while you are dreaming, it is not impossible that you will come up with other views and solutions to current problems, than when you are awake. It is nothing weird with this, many people have experienced that they suddenly have got a new idea or approach to a problem while sleeping, or when they have just awoke. This is probably due to the reorganisation that occurs when we sleep, and as I said above, going through the same information in a totally different way (like when we dream) can sometimes lead to the production of good ideas and new solutions.

However, we do not know more when we sleep, and we are certainly not wiser, so anything we find out in a dream should IMO be thoughly rethinked when we are awake. In dreams, things often feel so natural and obvious, although they are not. Just like when people are influenced by drugs, they may wake up and feel they have got a genious idea - just to find it is total crap the next morning, or when recovered from the drug influence. Dreams do not have the power to tell you more than you already know, but sometimes, they may tell you what you know in a different way, so that you can make good use of it in reality.

Hope that makes sense.

Certainly does make sense. I have always believed that the subconcious thought is just as strong as concious thought, and there are times where I have wondered whether the subconcious thought is even stronger than normal thought. I guess you would say that it is equally strong, right?

So it would be fiction then, if you watched yourself die in a dream, that you would never wake up??? "ie coma"

@Tybaltus: I would say it is impossible to say what is strongest, conscious or unconscious forces. I would say it differs a lot between different types of situations and areas. There are also vast individual differences. For instance, I would say falling in love and sexual attraction is goverend mostly by unconscious processes for most people, whereas what job we want to have, is often a decision based on mostly conscious thinking.

@Nomer: Yes, that would be fiction. It is common that people dream that they die.
If you are in a coma you can't dream btw, one of the things that differs between sleep and coma, is that you don't dream.

Originally posted by C Elegans


@Nomer: Yes, that would be fiction. It is common that people dream that they die.
If you are in a coma you can't dream btw, one of the things that differs between sleep and coma, is that you don't dream.

Really?!?! So a person in a coma would have minimal brain waves, just enough for the body to function??

Originally posted by Nomer
Really?!?! So a person in a coma would have minimal brain waves, just enough for the body to function??

In Sweden (I'm not sure it's the same everywhere), 4 levels of coma are usually defined. Level 1, the most superficial one, is fairly close to deep sleep, but you can't be awoken and you don't dream. Brain activity is lower than when you sleep, but all bodily functions are normal. The deepest level of coma, 4, is so deep that vital body fuctions are not upheld anymore and the person is dependant on medical care for survival. Coma levels are measured by a special scale, based on degree of responsiveness from the patients.

So level 4 coma, they are coming to the family and asking if they want to continue life support or pull the plug?

Originally posted by Nomer
So level 4 coma, they are coming to the family and asking if they want to continue life support or pull the plug?

No, not necessarily, the patient may recover depending on the reason why s/he has fallen into such a deep coma. Brain injury is of course a common reason, and often the brain will recover over time since it has fantastic abilites to compensate. Sometimes a patient will be deliberately put into lvl 4 coma to minimise secondary effects of an injury and save energy for the body (in a deep coma, metabolism, oxygen consumption etc is lowered).

Originally posted by C Elegans


No, not necessarily, the patient may recover depending on the reason why s/he has fallen into such a deep coma. Brain injury is of course a common reason, and often the brain will recover over time since it has fantastic abilites to compensate. Sometimes a patient will be deliberately put into lvl 4 coma to minimise secondary effects of an injury and save energy for the body (in a deep coma, metabolism, oxygen consumption etc is lowered).

I often wondered, if we could use the whole brain, what our capabilities would be???? Probably something unfathomable.

Originally posted by Nomer
I often wondered, if we could use the whole brain, what our capabilities would be???? Probably something unfathomable.

We use our whole brain, it is a media myth that we only use part of our brains. This topic was recently discussed in this thread.

I just remembered a dream I had a while ago-so heres the story:

Well I love birds so I got a tropical bird for a pet. He was one of my closest friends and he was very close to me, he brought joy to my life, and I tried to make his life as good as I could, etc. I could go into details of how I tought songs to him and we sung together sometimes, but I wont go into it. Basically what Im trying to say: We were close.

One night I had a dream where there was a tropical bird that talked to me, what exactly the conversation was, I dont remember. It had something to do with leaving. I woke up that morning to find my 9-year old bird dead in his sleep of natural causes. So what I am wondering, was it a coincidence that there was a bird that was talking about leaving in the very same night that my bird died, or was it something else? Because I found it strange that on the same night that I have a strange dream like that, that something relavent in life went in concordance to the dream.

What a lovely story Tybaltus, I am sad you hear your bird is now dead.

As I see it, there are three different possible explanations for your dream:

1. It was a coincidence. Coincidences occur all the time, and we humans have a strong tendency to perceive and organise information into patterns, thus often overvaluing or even read in connections that aren't objectively there. Who knows, maybe you had even had similar dreams before, but not noticed since nothing special happened at the same time.

2. We humans percept a lot of things we are not fully aware of. There is nothing mystical with this, it is just part of the sensory system we share with many different animals. For instence, we pick up a lot of information by our chemical senses. We pick up molecules that other being emit, but we are not conscious about this. An example would be that women living together get their menstruation cycles synchronised. This probably happens by the women picking up hormonal substances from each other by smell, and their body then reacts to this.
We are also good at picking up other people's emotions with our sense of smell. It is interesting to note that people who lose their sense of smell as adults, develop social inabilities although they weren't socially inept before. This probably shows that the smell is crucial for understanding and reading of other people in social situations.
When you sleep, only a part of you sleeps. You may have picked up some information regarding your bird's conditions in your sleep, especially if you slept in the same room. Or, you may unconsciously picked up that your bird was behaving differently or sending out something, in the evening before you went to bed. Things happen with the body when we are about to die. Some animals know when they are about to die, and it seems humans in certain cultures also understands this. It is not impossible that you unconsciously picked up something about your bird that led to you unconsciously interpreting it as he was about to die. Then you dreamt about it - since it was on your mind when you went to sleep.

3. You knew/understood that you bird would leave you due to some hitherto unknown mechanism that can't be explained, perhaps mystical or spiritual processes.

Hmmmm. That is interesting to think about the second and third explinations. That dream is just something I think about now and again. I still miss my bird a good deal, he was a good and loyal friend.

I will try and think of more situations regarding the brain, but thats all Ive got for now.

Hmm, im sorry if this question sounds ignorant or wrong to ask, but I've always wondered what is different about a retarded person's mind and my own?

I have a serious question, though it's not completely about the brain. How come people high on marijuana get 'the munchies'? It doesn't matter if you're out doing 10km walks or just sitting on a couch giggling, for some reason that I don't know the munchies always appear.
What's with that?

Originally posted by Vinin
Hmm, im sorry if this question sounds ignorant or wrong to ask, but I've always wondered what is different about a retarded person's mind and my own?

Am I glad I didn't ask that question

der...well i was just wondering, because my history class was across the hall from one of the special education classes, and never being one to maek fun of them, I've always wondered how they are different. Apperently C Elegans doesnt wanna touch this either...

I dont know. She'll probably say something about it, she hasnt been on SYM in a little while. Give her time, and Im sure she will come.

Originally posted by Vinin

der...well i was just wondering, because my history class was across the hall from one of the special education classes, and never being one to maek fun of them, I've always wondered how they are different. Apperently C Elegans doesnt wanna touch this either...

I have yet to see CE be intimidated by any subject

OK, here's one for you @CE. What are the physiological causes and effects of migraines? And why does sticking my head in a bucket of cold water help alleviate the pain?