Dreams?

BCT research about dreams

[luciditybct-blog]

MULTIPLE WORLDS REFLECTION - ETHAN

QUANTITATIVE - ETHAN DAYA

Do I still need to be quantitative still...am I still thinking in numbers...or do I get the chance to be analytical and look at the broad spectrum of what we have accomplished. Im going to guess the latter and if I’m wrong then blame it on the transdisciplinary model and its effect of my work ethic and processes.

This was without a single doubt in my interdisciplinary mind the most out there and alternative project I have ever worked on in my entire life. It was a very interesting style of assignment with equally as interesting and frustrating content. However this did definitely push me a long way out of my comfort zone.

This assignment was all about maintaining our disciplinary positions whilst working in an inter/trans/multi/intra disciplinary framework. This in reality is a near impossible process as our understanding are all formed by the use of all the types of knowledge we discussed. This is probably what the intention of this assignment was; to show us that the greatest results were not seen in the individual closed work but in the trans elements in which we are completely mixed and immersed in multiple disciplines. 

The qualitative role I was assigned was ten times more difficult than I’d imagined. I struggled to find real resources to back up the theories and ideas proposed by my fellow team members. I really had to rely on them to point me in a different direction and give me ideas from their research to look for new facts. This meant that the more I tried to maintain my position the more isolated and difficult to work with I became. 

Our best definitely arose out of collaborations; this was evident in the discussions we had together in the latter stage of our work as Hayden, Tim and I drummed out our knowledge and how they worked together, Kryten and I discussed the effects of dreams and our emotional influence. Without this collaboration and evolution from multi to intra / trans we would have never been able to come up with the ideas we did. 

I think what we did well as a group was the contributions to each other and the latter development. It was evident to me very early on that the original idea of everyone researching on their own was a very bad idea because it meant we were all spiralling off in random directions and weren't actually trying to legitimise a point...which was our problem. 

Our final idea of testing people to prove what reality they were in seems kinda cool and I was quite pleased with the highly simple logic and black and white facts I could use to back it up. But realistically its highly theoretical and there’s no proof or a hive coexistent mind, other temporal dimensions or dream states...its all theoretical.  

As I’ve said before in the land of quantitative this would be a solid fail. But it isn't just about me; marginalizing our positions isn't necessarily done by working or learning about other ideas. Maybe its the reverse but the more knowledge we observe in order to help us understand our own hat or knowledge goal would be highly beneficial. 

I did enjoy this project especially the way we transferred from one field or way of collaboration. We began as mulit, transformed to intro and finished in the creation of a single trans outcome with input from each team member to form what we believe in some ways to be true.

[luciditybct-blog]

Reflection - Anni

I like the theme for our project, it was different from what else we did in school since I have never researched about this. My role is analytical, this methodology is what I like, but for this project, this way seems difficult to me. I was confused it with theoretical at the beginning, but I found that analysis includes wider field than theory later, it’s not only analyzing the thing itself, but also analyzing it with experiments and so on. Hence, I researched how the dream is formed first, and refer to scientists’ experiments, then combine them with my experience. What unforgettable in my learning research is REM period, that’s the most frequent word in my research. That’s what I learned except from working in a group with clearly different thinking ways. For the presentation, I think it was nice for the video we had first, but I didn’t have enough preparation for my speech. I wasn’t plan to speak for the presentation, but when I saw everyone in my group except me came in front of all the class, I thought I should also say something to explain my role. It was a hurry for my short speech, maybe some of my words even make no sense, but it’s a good lesson for me. I will have enough preparation for my later presentation.

[luciditybct-blog]

Reflection - Kryten

This project has been very interesting and I have learned qutie a bit about both teams disciplines and dreams. For this project I was the qualitative investigator, so in the aspect of dreams I had to inquire about the emotional thoughts and underlying opinions and feelings about dreams. This was very different from what I was used to and what I am most comfortable with and so this was a bit of an adjustment and a learning experience for me. From our general research as a team it shows that the solid information about dreams and consequently sleep is basically non-existent. So we had to investigate many different theories ranging from native american ideas to the well renowned sigmund freud and all of these theories had different views on how why and what dreams are and so how emotions affect dreams. As a team we worked together well once we got things going and had a solid goal and idea of what we each needed to do. The presentation and creation of our artifact was done very well I think and could only be done better with a bit more time allowed to present and possibly more time to prepare a proper full presentation of what each of us is going to say and do.

[luciditybct-blog]

Reflection - Tim

I was chosen to be the theoretical hat within our group.

Firstly, I found this quite challenging as I am more of a practical thinker, meaning I was a bit out of my comfort zone for this assignment.

I wanted to do a good job of being the theoretical thinker, so I started off by researching different theories behind sleep and dreaming. This task was quite easy, just as a lot of research is, but I found the one thing about researching theories that got to me was just that. They are theories, not factual. This made me feel somewhat uncomfortable writing about something that may or may not be true, but after my second research post I had gotten more used to the idea.

Besides this, I thoroughly enjoyed having a change from my normal role.  The theoretical hat ended up playing a huge part in the artifact as it's all based around a theory that we may be living a world combined with the awake and the asleep. I enjoyed this, as the idea of trying to convince people that a totally make-believe theory was, in fact, true.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this assignment, although it was received at an awkward time (working with our other projects) I enjoyed working with a new group and having a new way of thinking has broadened my horizons as a thinker.

[luciditybct-blog]

Team Two Manifesto -hayden

Team Two Manifesto

-Explore Dreaming from a Multidisciplinary Approach

-Focus on our designated roles whilst unpacking the concept of dreaming

-Integrate dreaming knowledge and methods in an interdisciplinary approach

-Production of an artifact that represents our legitimized knowledge

[transtechtrading]

#ctec503 intergrativepractise

[transtechtrading]

#ctec503 intergrativepractise

[transtechtrading]

#ctec503 intergrativepractise

[transtechtrading]

#ctec503 intergrativepractise

[transtechtrading]

#ctec503 intergrativepractise

[luciditybct-blog]

Research - Tim

Recently, I have started tracking my sleep patterns with a FitBit tracker. Collating this information was useful as it allowed me to see how long I slept for and how many times during the night I was restless or awake.

As you can see, the blue lines are the times during the night where I was rolling around. And the red lines define the points at which I was awake. While this information was better suited to Hayden as he is the practical thinker of our group, I was still able to make some use of it.

I found this factual information to be quite interesting as it could possibly be applied to some theories that I researched earlier in the week, and most importantly a theory that Ethan had put forward to us. He wondered what if instead of falling to sleep each night, we are in fact waking up to reality? The theory became even more interesting when we discussed how any given person could be in a different state at any given time as they are all intertwined somehow.

Imagine five people in a room together. Everything would seem normal, right? they are all able to communicate with each other because they are in so called ‘reality’ but what if two of the five people were instead dreaming... Confusing.

Basically, all we are saying that there is some middle ground that allows both people in reality and the dream state to interact with each other.

We have decided to test this theory during our presentation on Monday. We have done some research into delta and theta waves that can be listened to, causing people to quickly fall to sleep at a faster pace. What if we presented a combination of audio and visual medias that help induce this sleepy state? hopefully, it allows us to test our theory.

We will use this presentation so people can determine if they are in fact in a dream or in reality state. We will play the presentation to the class after explaining our idea to them, and we will observe those who get sleepy and those who don’t seem to have any change at all.

[luciditybct-blog]

Further Research - Anni

How the length of sleep will affect the dream & Stage of dream: REM refers to "rapid eye movement," the darting of the eyes under closed lids. In this state we dream the most and our brain activity eerily resembles that of waking life. Yet, at the same time, our muscles go slack and we lie paralyzed—a toe might wiggle, but essentially we can't move, as if our brain is protecting our bodies from acting out the stories we dream. Sleep is divided into REM and four stages of non-REM; each has a distinct brain wave frequency. Stage one of non-REM is the nodding off period where one is between sleeping and waking; it's sometimes punctuated with a sensation of falling into a hole. In stage two the brain slows with only a few bursts of activity. Then the brain practically shuts off in stages three and four and shifts into slow-wave sleep, where heart and breathing rates drop dramatically. Only after 70 minutes of non-REM sleep do we experience our first period of REM, and it lasts only five minutes. A total non-REM–REM cycle is 90 minutes; this pattern repeats about five times over the course of a night. As the night progresses, however, non-REM stages shorten and the REM periods grow, giving us a 40-minute dreamscape just before waking. Reference:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-less-sleep-means-more-dreams/

The number of dreams: The average person has about 3 to 5 dreams per night, but some may have up to 7 dreams in one night. The dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full 8-hour night sleep, two hours of it is spent dreaming. It is not at all unusual for a person to have more than one dream per night. Most people over the age of 10 have 4 to 6 dreams every night. Those numbers times 365 days in one year makes for between 1,460 and 2,190 dreams every year. We dream during REM periods (Rapid Eye Movement) which can range anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour long. In the course of one night this happens multiple times. We might not remember all of them, because we forget between 95% to 99% of all the dreams we have. Reference:http://www.omgfacts.com/news/297/11-Shocking-Facts-about-Dreams-that-will-Rock-Your-World Reference:http://www.life.arizona.edu/docs/ra-section/dreams.pdf?sfvrsn=2

People in our dreams: Most people think that we cannot dream someone we haven’t seen before.The strangers in our dream might just because we don’t remember them, but our brain stored the data of those faces automatically. These strangers could be some random people we saw on street or on TV. We don’t know them but we do see them somewhere before. Reference:https://www.quora.com/Can-we-dream-about-the-stranger-we-have-never-met https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/328ofx/eli5_when_strangers_appear_in_our_dreams_are_they/

After researching this, it reminds me of that I always have lots of dreams even when I take a short nap, it might because when non-REM stages shorten and the REM periods grow. I saw my mother sleep when I was a child, I found that her eyes were darting and sometimes her fingers wiggled. I thought she might still awake at that time. Maybe she felt not very comfortable when she was sleep, might because of the light or bed. Now I know she was during Rapid Eye Movement Period at that time.

[luciditybct-blog]

OUTCOME DEVELOPED! -ETHAN

QUANTITATIVE - ETHAN DAYA

Our outcome for this journey has now been finished and developed. We have created an audio visual test for our point of knowledge.

Logic says that once you are asleep you can’t fall asleep again; or from what is know to us quantitatively / qualitatively anyway. Our test uses audio and visual aids to cause sleep. Tim has created a sound piece using theta and delta waves which are the waves produced during dreams and nightmares. The piece also uses sounds the brain associates with calmness and this calm process is needed to begin to enter into the REM (Dream stage) part of our sleep. 

The video i have created using on screen text as well as subliminal messaging to get across to the audience that they should begin to fall asleep. The onscreen text displays that they will soon to begin to feel sleepy and the subliminal messaging gets progressively more and more intense until you can sometimes see the flicker of the message if you look very closely. 

Sometime we discussed previously was his work for Air New Zealand in which he created a video for long haul flights to help people sleep; he used these same waves of sound to induce sleep. He told us about how another important factor in making people sleep was the placebo. The video said it would make them fall asleep and our brains respond by accepting the command and sleep. 

Our test says that if you cant sleep then we know you are in your dream reality. However I as the quantitative thinker must look for the statistics and numbers around the effects of our test. I am not sure how long we will actually get to test the theory as we will need to setup as well as turning off all lights and shutting all the blinds as well as getting the class to shut all their devices off and become very calm and silent. 

I think our test will be successful as long as someone admits to being sleepy. The likelihood that everyone stays awake is high however the length of time they need to be subjected to this to fall asleep as well as a number of other uncontrollables mean that if someone begins to feel sleepy when others feel completely awake will provide some proof of our theory...but as the quantitative thinker id have to regard that as hearsay until further research can be done! 

I’m excited for what Monday brings and what the outcomes of our test!

[luciditybct-blog]

TO SLEEP OR NOT TO SLEEP - ETHAN

QUANTITATIVE - ETHAN DAYA

A lot of time recently has been spent thinking about how we can successfully legitimise our point of knowledge. That being that 

“We traverse the realms of two realises woven together. We share a state of co-existence in which we, as one individual, can interject and interact a seperate individuals reality or dreams.

What that means is that although there may be 5 to 6 people around you in your reality; 2 of them may actually be asleep in their reality and the person you see in front of you is in fact in the middle of a dream and has become intertwined in your reality. 

We’ve come to this based upon a number of things, but a lot of it is based for me as the quantitative thinker around the way in which REM sleep affects the brains activity. Research done by Cristina Marzano at the University of Rome (Marzano et al., 2011) indicates that our brains exhibit the same style of brain waves when we dream as the waves we exhibit when fully awake. These  frontal theta waves produced by someone mid dream look near exactly like the electrical oscillations in the frontal cortex that make the recollection of episodic memories possible; in other words what your brain looks like when you remember a previous memory.

Another quantitative measure relating to the emotional side of dreams was that when people are highly emotional or they are dealing with stress they seem to have vivid dreams. Research done by the same research time used MRI to investigate the influence emotion has on dreams However these dreams are also affecting the hippocampus which is the part of the brain which consolidates short term to long term memory. 

These factors all seem to point to the fact that whilst we dream we live in another reality as we can’t seem to move our body but everything else is working in near overtime as our eyes rapidly move, our brain activity is slow and rapid at the same time and we seems to be almost generating a new world inside our brain.

Our belief is that it isn’t an invented world but a real one that we enter into when we sleep. When you wake in one reality, you fall asleep in the other and when you go back to sleep you enter back into your dream reality. Every single one of our realises are intertwined in that we are all in our dream reality or asleep at any one point in time; we just don’t know it.

This lead us as a group to come up with a final artefact to prove our point of knowledge. When you are asleep, you cannot fall asleep as you already are asleep. So if you cannot fall asleep in one reality, it means you are currently in your dream reality and as such we have a test for who is in which reality. This was a really groundbreaking idea for us as we realised how simple yet perfectly effective it was; you cannot enter a state of being that you are already in…

Sleep is the vehicle for dreams as it is the regular place in which we move from one reality to each other according to our research and combined work. Tim and I have come to the conclusion from both his research and mine that our sleeping patterns and dreams are indicative of the other realities events. When there is turmoil in your dream reality your sleep may become jarred as your normal self will try to seek escape or a quick break from the other reality.

Im keen to test our theory during our presentation as it will be a unique and different outcome!

REFERENCES

Marzano, C., Ferrara, M., Mauro, F., Moroni, F., Gorgoni, M., & Tempesta, D. et al. (2011). Recalling and Forgetting Dreams: Theta and Alpha Oscillations during Sleep Predict Subsequent Dream Recall. Journal Of Neuroscience, 31(18), 6674-6683. http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.0412-11.2011

[luciditybct-blog]

Research - Tim

I got chosen for the ‘theoretical’ hat in our integrative practice group; this meant  I had to research our thematic idea of dreaming in a theoretical manner.

I started my weekend by researching theories on dreaming, and quite quickly I managed to find a lot of extensive information.

One of the first sources that I came across (1) talked about 10 theories on why we dream. After reading this article, it became clear to me that a lot of the study around dreams was pioneered by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who was born in 1856. The first, and one of the most interesting theories that Sigmund published was that we dreamed for “wish fulfilment”. Sigmund’s theory meant that we really only dreamed about things we wished for, and even though some dreams are too bizarre to make sense of this theory, it does intact make a bit of sense to me. The site uses an example of dreaming that your mother is dying, but I can’t relate to “wishful dreaming” on this dark level, although I do recall having dreams about raining electronic devices and other things that I may be wishing for at the time.

Another intriguing theory that I came across on the site (1) was that of “garbage collection”. The theory states that we dream in order to dispose of memories that we don’t want/need. These memories don’t even have to be something that has actually happened, and more often just odd scenarios that our brains conceive. I do like this theory, as it makes more sense as to why we have bad nightmares and completely weird dreams. The source states that “Basically, dreams are garbage collection mechanisms, clearing our minds of useless thoughts and making way for better ones. “ I really like the idea of getting rid of the bad memories to make way for that good ones.

The last somewhat interesting theory was that we dream to “consolidating what we’ve learnt” I found this interesting because the theory states that we input all the information we learn by dreaming them into our brains. I found that this was one of the most out there theories I found on my first day of research.

APA citations:

(1) 10 theories that explain why we dream. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2015, from http://io9.com/10-theories-that-explain-why-we-dream-897195110

[luciditybct-blog]

DREAMCEPTION - ETHAN

QUANTITATIVE - ETHAN DAYA

Its been a week and I am so incredibly frustrated by the fact I have to be quantitative…I never thought I’d say that ever. Though does that mean that this whole multi thing is working if I’m struggling to do something myself without infringing on other disciplines and having to seek their help…Theres a lot to think about in this post and I really want to try and convey it as simply as possible so I can explain the things I’ve discovered and the things I’ve learnt from other peoples research. 

As a group we’ve been discussing the way in which well be progressing towards the end goal of legitimising a single point of knowledge around dreaming. Unsure of what that was that we could all contribute and actually be able to prove was an interesting task. Tim and I had some great discussions about what that would look like and how we would go about doing it. On this whole spectrum of multi / intra / trans disciplinary positions I’d definitely say that as a group we’ve migrated from the point of multi to intra. We were once all singular and individual in our work; we researched what we thought was important to us and how we alone could solve our part of the puzzle. However fruitful that was or wasn’t we soon realised to that to truly complete the goal of legitimising a piece of knowledge holistically it would involve a great deal of co existence.   

This new found co existence and exchange of research led our group to begin to drum out an idea and how we would try to solve or prove our point. Our initial ideas were to try and prove that dreams were another reality, but from a number of discussion Tim and I had stemmed the idea that we are all essentially in different realities all the time; but we singularly “control" our own actions whether we’re asleep or not.   

That probably doesn’t make a lot of sense…this is where I, in the land of quantitativeness, could back up the theoretical point Tim and I had come too after comparing his theories with my facts. Now my biggest problem was how shallow my facts were. A lot of our research and ideas dealt with the REM sleep and how when we reach that incredibly deep state of sleep our muscles become somewhat paralysed but our brain activity is incredibly busy and our eyes flick randomly around while we sleep. If people wake during this "Stage 5" type of sleep people seem to be able to perceive having dreamed as I mentioned in my last post. (Robinson, 2015)

Essentially its as if we are awake and actively doing something but our bodies don’t move. So if our brains are incredibly active…but our body is completely still…are we moving somewhere else.   

Im excited by the concept of this and I know there is so much more research i can do to try and legitimise it. Im feeling confident in our idea and also this new intra view of working together. I can keep my position but still have influence and be influenced by another disciplinary position.

REFERENCES

Robinson, J. (2015). Basics on Sleep. WebMD. Retrieved 13 October 2015, from http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/sleep-101

[luciditybct-blog]

Artifact - Kryten

We have all done over the past weeks research within our own fields, but now with the final due date drawing near we are going to be pulling together on friday to compile our knowledge and research to create as a team and in a collaborative way our final artifact and  presentation for monday. We are currently tossing around the idea of creating a video and presenting our finished theory and see what everyone makes of it. we want to make the class question themselves and leave them wondering and wanting to know more.