Evening star., 1939-08-31
Of Stars, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Field, Laboratory
And Study

In Field, Laboratory
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.
One falls asleep in five stages.
Such is the theory of DR.. Joshua
Rosett, director Of the Brain Research
Foundation of Columbia University, in
a volume just issued describing his re-
searches.
In the first stage, he says, thought be-
comes active and particular occurrences
of the day, or of days past, are sub
jectively Inexperienced ana correlated
with other experiences. This period pre-
ceeds other states characterized by inn
agery, hallucinations, startling move
ments and finally the fifth stage during
which the person is completely uncon-
scious and relaxed. Waking, he says, is
simply reversal Of the order Of falling
asleep.
Says DR.. Rosett: THE vague and
relatively accurate representations of
thought merge by insensible gradations
into the more vivid and more inaccurate
representations of imagery. 1t is at this
stage of falling asleep that castles are
built in the air by those whose waking
hours are filled with strivings for beauty,
pleasure, fame, riches or power. The
imagery of artistic persons is likely to be
intense during this period.
During the third, or hallucination
stage, although the activity of sensory
receptive apparatus, through the media
ton of which person is kept constantly
in touch with present surroundings,
ceases to very great extent, it is not
entirely extinguished. Many persons have
vivid dreams while in this stage which
have certain amount of orientation in
the present surroundings. This orienta-
ton guides and controls orientation in
the past in the content of the dream.
Some dreams are initiated by imme-
diate external stimuli. For instance the
stimuli Of rumbling noise, possibly Gre
ated by traffic in the street, and cold
breeze was effective in one case in evok-
ing recall of a flood by a person in the
third stage of sleep. Other dreams are
due to the truth of the proposition that,
in the absence Of any external repre-
sentative stimuli, recurring states of the
body suffice to account for certain
thoughts at certain times.
The fourth stage of sleep is char
acterized by the occurrence of startling
movements. Such movement generally
wakes the person, and it is at the mo-
ment of awakening that the dream Of
falling takes place.
Words are often substituted in a
dream on the basis of similarity of
sounds After reading the book Jesuits
in North America I was impressed by
the capacity of the Indians for the idle
and silly banter with which they inces-
sanity pelted one another. On one of
the following mornings dreamed of the
savage Indians described in that book,
and in order to assure myself that they
were the very same Indians with whom
the Jesuits lived l searched for some
characteristic feature. I decided must
look for the banner Immediately I saw
banner standing against the wall. Its
incongruity troubled me, and I tried to
justify it's existence by assuming that
perhaps the Indians used it in war expe-
ditions. After waking realized what I
was really searching for, as proof that
the Indians saw were the very ones de-
scribed in the book, was their banter
But the word banter was a relatively
late acquisition, and it largely dropped
out in that stage of sleep. All that was
left of 1t was its phonetic quality, which
was similar to that of an earlier ac-
quired word, banter
THE fact that dreams are remembered
is significant of more or less permanent
modification of the pathways of the
cerebral corteX. Future nerve impulses,
in passing along such modified nerve
spondingly modified.
Reading book is an objective expert
ence. The disturbance impaired to the
receptors is productive of certain sensa-
tions, with an accompanying internal
disturbance which makes for more or less
permanent changes in the body. Re-
reading the book resulted in a greater
degree Of permanency and deflniteness
of these changes. If the act is sub
jectively Inexperienced in thought-if
the contents of the book are gone over
mentally, the permanence and definite
ness of the changes in question are
further enhanced. In this respect, there
fore, subjective re-experience has the
same effect as actual objective expert
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