From: rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: "Falling" Asleep
Date: 22 Jan 93 23:30:35 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <C18q4v.507@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net 
     (Ken Easlon) writes:

>As I understand it, Mickey's view is that the dream head might be at any
>random orientation, but lines up with the real head upon awakening, giving
>the illusion that the dream world is at a ninety degree angle with the real
>world.

That's not really my view.  My view (please don't ask what orientation
this view has :-) is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about
a dream head having an orientation.  I think that, because it seems to
me that the dream head is an imaginary percept having no relationship
whatsoever to our external reality.

>My view is that the dream head and real head are always in alignment, and
>that the 90 degree relationship between the real world and the dream world
>is actual and not illusory.
>
>My primary data for this belief is a lot of experience in a hypnagogic
>state where I can see dream imagery and real world imagery at the same
>time, and they are at right angles.  There is no sense of shifting head
>orientation.  

And *my* explanation of that was that as you drift back into
consciousness, your imaginary head lines up with your real head.  That
might sound like a contradiction to my statement that your imaginary
head doesn't have an orientation, but what I mean by "lining up" is
that your perceptions of the outside world begin to merge with your
dream "perceptions".  So far as I can tell, your imaginary head still
has no "orientation", it's just that you have two percepts of your
body--one coming from your sensors, and the other coming from, perhaps
your RAS--as you wake up.  These two percepts are fused as you wake.
You similarly have two sets of percepts about your surroundings, and I
suspect (based in part on your phenomenal descriptions) that these are
merged by the dissolution of your imaginary surroundings after the
discrepancy between where you are and where you imagine you are
becomes clear.

>My backup argument is that conceptual imagery has a top and bottom which is
>usually aligned with the top and bottom of the head.

If I understand that, I don't agree with it either, but please don't
follow it up...

>In any event, I think Mickey and I agree that the sense of "down" in dreams
>is imaginary.  This would be consistent with my explanation of Ginzberg's
>falling sensation as being the normal sleep-time loss of gravity perception
>at a time before sleep has fully arrived.

It's also consistent with you losing your major source of information
about which direction is down when you fall asleep.  As you lose your
somatosensory perception you feel as if the bed, floor, chair,
whatever, is dropping out from under you.  That's more in line with
what *I* experience when I get a falling sensation when I'm on the
edge of sleep.  Does anybody else want to throw in their two cents, or
am I putting you all to sleep :-)

>As regards concept/dream orientation (the angle of a conceptual or dream
>image with respect to the head),  I'm willing to go on talking about it as
>long as anybody wants to.

I'm really going to try not to respond, because I don't see us getting
any where.  But then again I've tried to hold back before...

>Ken Easlon
>ken@holonet.net

Mickey Rowe     (rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu)