A Sleep Researcher's Attempt to Build a Bank for Dreams | Hacker News Reader

A Sleep Researcher's Attempt to Build a Bank for Dreams

atlasobscura.com

64 pointsrshrsh18 comments

Long ago I built a simple open-source app that emails every morning asking about your dreams[1]. Because I check email when I wake up, I always record my dreams (there are about 100 other users who do the same).

After about a year I ran some basic text analysis on my dreams to see if I could extract anything meaningful[2]. My conclusion was no, not really, but it's still interesting how dreams can reflect subconscious worries and struggles. This is especially noticeable in retrospect, but in the moment it's often difficult or pointless to interpret dreams. The Stanford analysis looks deeper than my very cursory text analysis, and it's not surprising that my approach - which just took a few minutes - wasn't great. Very interesting stuff.

[1] http://keepdream.me/

[2] http://www.ianww.com/2013/04/14/an-analysis-of-my-dreams-ove...

I wonder if dreams are nothing but visualization of the weights in our brains neural networks. May be shifting around the weights while training the network to retain long term memories.

If dreams aren't something very close to that then this would be really spooky: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/06/inceptionism-goin...

So what happens when you're one of these people that never remember their dreams?

I rarely remembered dreams for a few years. Started taking a highly rated fish oil and remember them frequently now.

So could be a vitamin deficiency.

DMAE (in addition to being great for focus) really makes dreams memorable. It does occur naturally in fish and although I've never noticed dreams being more memorable when taking fish oil (maybe because I got the cheap stuff), I can certainly believe it after a regimen of DMAE.

You can train this, and incidentally, the steps to do so also help prep you for increased frequency of lucid dreaming.

Start a dream journal and keep it right next to your bed. First thing you do when you wake up (even if in the middle of the night) is write down ANYTHING you remember from your dreams.

Do this for a few weeks and I'd be shocked if you didn't have better recall.

I started keeping a diary of my dreams years ago but i abandoned the effort because of laziness.

I am one of those (lucky??)people who sometimes gain awareness of themselves dreaming and have the ability to control the dream.

Being aware of oneself dreaming and knowing fully well that i can simply get out of it when i choose to simply by waking myself up gives me a sense of peace and control that i have never felt in real life.

I attempted something more personal (and elaborate) in the 2009 - 2011 period: https://oneirolog.wordpress.com/

It was later abandoned due to lack of time. Looking at this, article, I wish I had continued.

Whenever I feel regret such, as you're expressing, I am reminded by the proverb: "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, the second best time is now. Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree." Sometimes that helps me get back to what I had wanted to do.

Cool stuff. I tweet my dreams @rickydreams I'd love to follow anyone else who @namedreams too. Tweeting dreams is so easy if you're into tracking them. The good thing is, you can keep it anonymous(ish) too if you want.

Lovecraftian horror!

Edit: or in other words can this help us discover any shared dreams like in call of the chthulu. How would you eliminate collusion?

Genuine question: since there are a few millions neurons in our stomach, why don't we ever look there for neuronal activities?

Is there a link to the database?

http://www.dreambank.net/search.html

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