From: rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: "Falling" Asleep
Date: 6 Jan 93 20:30:10 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <C0EzME.HrB@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net 
    (Ken Easlon) writes: 

>Like I said, I don't know if there has been any research on the topic.  My
>data comes strictly from my own experience in the hypnagogic state and
>dream remberences on awakening.  Since I rarely awake in the middle of a
>sound sleep (during some phase of which REM would presumably occur) my data
>is based on a kind of mental activity that sleep investigators might have a
>name for other than dreams.

Probably not.  Hypnogogic is likely to be the only other relevant
term.  If you are remembering dreams, though, you most likely awoke
directly from REMS.  People do sometimes remember dreams when they
awake from other sleep stages, but this is rare compared to the
remembrance of dreams when awaking from REMS.  That's the principal
piece of evidence linking dreams with REMS.

>Nonetheless, whenever I awake I can almost always remember the most recent
>flash or two of the mental activity that I call dreams.  Over the years
>I've developed a pretty good idea of some of the properties common to these
>dreams, and some of the more interesting include:
>
>     A sense of "down" in the direction of my feet rather than in the
>     direction of the center of the earth.
>
>     A pronounced absence of gravitational sensation, such as:
>          . the sense of effort in maintaining the kind of posture the
>          dream depicted  or
>          . the pressure of the real bed or dream ground pressing itself
>          against my body
>
>To my (decidedly unscientific) mind this says "gravity disconnect" in
>rather pronounced terms, and I'll be very surprised if the idea doesn't
>show up in the scientific literature sooner or later.

I'd still be surprised if it did.  To me your descriptions sound like
part of the separation between our dream world and our immediate
world.  What seems inconsistent to me is your insistence that the
separation is incomplete with respect to our proprioceptive inputs
(i.e. that our dream world incorporates information about our posture
much more than it incorporates information about other aspects of
sensation). 

>When I slip into dreamland, I still imagine myself erect with respect to
>the dream ground, but gone is the sense of effort that connects me to my
>reclining body.  If I pay close attention (as much as can be expected in a
>hypnogogic state) I notice that the dream world is at a ninety degree angle
>with respect to the real world.

It seems to me that what you're saying is that in your hallucinatory
state you *think* that you are right side up.  This is at variance
with your actual orientation, and you become aware of the discrepancy
as you drift back into consciousness.  What I'm saying is that it
seems silly to think of this as your hallucinatory orientation being
lined up with your actual orientation with only the environment
rotated.  As you fall asleep you're not becoming unaware of gravity;
you're becoming unaware of everything in your external reality (in
which I include all sensations--including proprioceptive ones).
Conversely as you wake up you begin to become aware of everything
around you again.  I wouldn't be surprised if the first thing that
lines up between your dream world and real world is your awareness of
your body.  But I doubt that the connection between the two "worlds"
goes much further back than that.

>This shifting of "world" orientation suggests to me that my dream self is
>sharing body awareness with my sleeping self, since I don't get a sense of
>my body changing orientation in the transition, just the environment.

And I disagree; I suspect that the body positions of your dream self
and sleeping self are completely uncorrelated (though I've suggested a
way for you to convince me otherwise--if you want to actually perform
the experiment, have your confederate start watching for indications
of REMS about an hour to an hour and a half after you've first fallen
asleep, and again during the last hour before you typically wake up.
These are times when you're likely to be dreaming.)

>Ken Easlon                | "...somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."

Mickey Rowe     (rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.bio