You have provided some fascinating questions for consideration. I will try and respond to them and provoke some further discussion!

I think the key to considering how lucid dreaming is like hypnosis is to remember that they are both activations of the REM programming state (as proposed by the expectation fulfilment theory).

Hypnosis is the activation of the REM state (via relaxation and the use of the right hemisphere/imagination/focused attention - which responds to pattern matching and suggestion). The strange thoughts and awareness of dream-like events or weird thought processes are what happens when your brain performs a ‘hemisphere switch’ from the left to the right in order that you can switch off and go to sleep. This means that your brain is using metaphors more and more, so you can appear to be having a weird dream, yet be aware of it at the same time. Your brain is thinking in metaphors (and all dreams are metaphors) because you’re in the right hemisphere, and that’s what the right hemisphere does. During this switch, at some point both your left hemisphere and right hemisphere are going to be working at the same time, hence you can be aware of the strange metaphorical thoughts going on and perhaps even train yourself to ‘direct’ them or at least be aware of them more - hence lucid dreaming, and why we no decent theory of dreaming can deny it is going on. I regularly experience this myself when I’m falling asleep - I suddenly become conscious (using my left brain) than I am sleepily thinking strange meandering fantastical thoughts, but the minute I recognise it in my left brain, the right brain thinking stops, as the brain flips back over to the left side.

REM sleep occurs during sleep (dreaming to dearouse us) but can also occur during our waking lives, either induced by someone else (hypnosis), by something else (hallucinogens) or whenever we learn something new (REM programming in the womb and when you get really absorbed in something and focus your attention) or go into a short trance to assimilate the information and learning bombarding us. I think it’s something like every 20 minutes we go into a short trance (REM) state to process information. We do a mini hemispherical ’switch’ from left brain to right brain so we can process this information from the left brain to the right (knowledge is contained in patterns).

Like everything else, the REM state needs to occur in balance to be healthy, as it is a very powerful tool - hypnosis can be very harmful if used by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, and so can taking hallucinogenic drugs. It’s worth remembering what can be triggered with unbalanced amounts of REM. Grossly simplified: too much REM sleep can trigger depression and too little can result in high stress levels and even psychosis/schizophrenia.

Well I have rambled on enough now i think!

Would you like me to forward your questions to Joe Griffin?

Eleanor

“The waking state of a subject after taking hallucinogenic compounds - is this experience accessing the REM state of mind?” - if the nature of the REM state has been correctly assessed then, yes, drugs are certainly a way of accessing the REM state! That is what hallucinations are, either stress induced in psychosis, or artificially induced with drugs - it’s waking reality processed through the dreaming brain.

I’d disagree as well. When I was remembering 90%+ of my dreams, I would say that the greater half were most certainly out of the ordinary, usually greatly so.

Interesting theory though.

-Hatter

“The strange thoughts and awareness of dream-like events or weird thought processes are what happens when your brain performs a ‘hemisphere switch’ from the left to the right in order that you can switch off and go to sleep.”

-and-

“We do a mini hemispherical ’switch’ from left brain to right brain so we can process this information from the left brain to the right (knowledge is contained in patterns).”

I’m just curious about the science behind those comments and where the information about the hemispheric switch came from. If Eleanor happens to read this and could direct me to the book/article/research paper about it, I’d be very grateful. I study the mind/brain for a living so I’m always interested in things of that nature.

-Kris

There is Ernest Rossi’s book called ‘The Twenty Minute Break’ (1991 Palisades Gateway Publishing) in which he recounts the research which shows how the brain switches from left neo-cortical functioning to right neo-cortical functioning about every ninety minutes lasting for about twenty minutes.
This ultradian rhythm lasts throughout the 24 hour cycle and it is following this switchover that dreams occur at nighttime.

Also in the book which explains the expectation fulfilment theory, Dreaming Reality: how dreaming can keep us sane or drive us mad (2006 Human Givens Publishing) expands on the importance of Silberer’s
almost overlooked research on the autosymbolic effect which occurs at sleep onset whereby the leftbrained thought can be observed being converted into rightbrain metaphor.

- Silberer, H. 1951 Report on a method of eliciting and observing certain symbolic hallucination phenomena. Organization and Pathology of Thought, transition and commentary by Rapaport, D. Columbia University Press, 195-233″ and

- Silberer (1909) Bericht uber eine Methode, gewisse symbolische halluzinations - erscheinungen hervozurufen und zu beobachten, Jarhbuch psychoanalit. psychopath. Forsch., 513. 114, 176, 460-61, 499, 645-8″ [sorry I’ve only got the german language reference for this!])

Hope this helps

Eleanor

Thanks so much for replying with that info. I think I’m going to order a copy of Rossi’s book this week. It sounds quite interesting. I wonder if people could apply his theory to perform that type of hemispheric switching at will. I’m sure there are many artists, musicians, and writers who would love to be able to shift their brain into a state dominated by the right hemisphere rather than the left. I know it can be achieved via certain types of brain/mind technology, and other techniques such as meditation also seem to trigger heightened right-brain activity in many people, but it would be very useful to be able to shift the dominant state back and forth at will.

Kris

Hm, as it happens every 90 minutes as a natural learning consolidation process, I don’t know whether it would be very useful to start trying to control it at will!

Hypnosis and meditation, which are both forms of focused attention, do engage the right hemisphere you’re absolutely right. But these states are useful more for ‘learning’ rather than for ‘creating’ I think, so you can still write and create art without specifically switching hemispheres!