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Suffering from stunted dream development and have crappy pitiful dream experiences. Let's fix that with some dream training!
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Original Message
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Dreaming is a very great skill to develop. On average, every human produces 3-5 dreams every night. Every mammal with a brain dreams and some birds dream. Dreaming is part of our cognitive development and a major role dreams play is long-term memory consolidation known as 'replay'. This 'replay' of our waking life experiences help build better memory for the skills and experiences we acquire in our lives.
It has taken a long time for science to understand why we dream, more so that dreaming is a developmental skill like learning to read, learning to play the piano and our mind does develop neural pathways (white-matter) and neurons (grey-matter) to process the information that produces the dream experience.
If you struggle with dream recall, this is linked to stunted development in the medial pre-frontal cortex where fMRI research into dream recall between people who have high-frequency dream recall and those who have low-frequency dream recall. The difference between these two groups of people is neural-pathway (white-matter) density.
Here is the study:
Dream Recall Frequency Is Associated With Medial Prefrontal Cortex White-Matter Density
[link to internal-journal.frontiersin.org (secure)]
People who have stunted dream development largely make no effort to remember dreams ergo these neural pathways go into a state of cognitive atrophy. Neural Pathways develop with repeat use of a skill and decline if we stop using a skill. Much like muscles which develop with stimulation through exercise, so to does the dreaming mind when we start to actively participate in the 3-5 dreams we produce each night.
The stunted development of the dreaming mind also affects the somatosensory cortex and regions that deal with our 5 senses. If you only have visual/audible dreams but lack touch, taste, smell then these other regions of the brain that deal with sensory-replay of the five senses are also under developed and in a state of atrophy. Just like memory regions, research into the somatosensory cortex and regions show the same development of neural pathways for those who have sensory replay of specific senses vs those who do not get those sensory experiences as replay in their dreams.
Dreaming should be all five senses in replay. We also know that the sensory regions of the brain store sensory memory and this is what our brain references for the sensory replay within our dream experience. This to can be corrected with proper stimulation training and it's well worth training for sensory-replay as it provides a richer, more realistic dream environment that makes dreaming natures perfected virtual reality simulator.
Another region of the dreaming mind that often become stunted and under-developed is in the prefrontal cortex where your sense of self-awareness, reason, logic and personality resides. When this shuts down you have no awareness that you are dreaming and this too can be developed with stimulation training so you can become fully self-aware and active in the dream experience, just as you are now. What this brings to the table is your ability to think and make choices that otherwise is lost to a trance-like state where most are unable to realize they are dreaming at all until they wake up.
Where this practice becomes fun is we can exploit the 'replay' aspect of how dreams consolidate long-term memory and use 'source-material' like a video game, movie, TV show, walk in the park as reference for active dream-replay so dreams can become very artistic fun and entertaining. What ever 'source-material' you decide to use for dream training is a personal choice. Using an animated audible/visual source-material helps with stimulation and like any artist who uses a reference for their art, an active dreamer can use anything from our waking world as a resource for creative dreaming. I leave that up to you as everyone is different with different tastes. I just recommend not using 'source-material' that might invoke fear and produce nightmares. Make it pleasant and fun.
Since dreaming is developmental it does take time to address cognitive atrophy and develop the skill required to produce epic dream experiences. But the reward is having a nice skill to invoke really great experiences that sometimes can be even better than waking life. With a little training and know-how dream participation can be a rewarding skill to learn.
Check it out... and start living your second-life. You deserve it.
[link to dreamingforgamers.com (secure)]
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