What Do Our Brains Do When We're Dreaming?- with Mark Solms

I always keep a notebook next to my bed so that I can capture the fleeting memories of my dreams. It's amazing because after months you essentially have a bunch of short stories based virtually on your unconscious and re-reading them is quite a wonderous experience.

As a child, I had frequent nightmares where I had no control. Then, one night, it was as if the 'logic' part of my mind suddenly switched back on. I remember thinking "I'm being pursued, but my legs won't move and I'm stuck. However, my arms still work, so what can I grab as a weapon." From that night on, my dreams changed, and nightmares became extremely rare. I'm sure this is related to the mental state I find when I have a lucid dream.

If you have bongos, play a beat to this while you listen; it really enhances the lecture. It also gives the subject matter the intensity it deserves.

I've dreamed every night I've been asleep for as long as I can remember. When I was young, I found it easy to remember my dreams in a waking state. I could also control what I was dreaming to an extent. And what I dreamed in many ways actually predicted some key events in my life, some of which happened literally by chance and not by actively seeking them out. In my later years I still dream but am no longer aware at any time during dreaming and can only remember snippets of some dreams when I am awake. If I had one waking aspiration it would be that some day what a person is dreaming could (with their permission - ethical) be rendered on a computer screen. I really think it would be possible (and my hunches are usually correct). Thankyou very much for a most interesting and enthralling presentation.

Had a brain injury about 17 years ago. Car accident. My dreams have been almost non-existent since then. I have maybe 2 per year. I have also suffered from depression or lack of motivation, basically a lack of dopamine from what I understand. This talk finally brought the two together! Brilliant!

I'm going to listen to this tonight as I fall asleep. I dream a lot and often remember them. I have a few recurring themes, and often, my dreams take place in the same locale- my dream city and its surrounding areas. I've drawn maps of it, even. I often fly, float (levitate), and swim in my dreams. Every night I look forward to falling asleep and experiencing the next set of my dreams- it's like visiting a weird and fascinating existence that I know is wholly within my mind.

You've got to hand it to Freud. His reputation will grow by leaps and bounds thanks to Mark Solms' brilliant work.

58:28 I love the way the child has drawn little thought clouds that bend down to the large dream thought cloud. Good little artist there.

Came here to find out what our brains do when we're dreaming ... Left understanding the function of dreams. Unbelievable presentation. Loved it!

I've been lucid dreaming since I was about 12 (30 now). Something interesting I've noticed is that the further "off path" I take my dream the more obstacles are put in place to stop me/redirect me to the narrative. If I push it too far I wake up without fail. I can also recount 99 percent of my dreams with the same accuracy as telling someone about my waking experiences. Even days, weeks, or months later

Bringing the psyche back into neuropsychiatry is a wonderful and pithy way to describe this research! This talk was incredibly insightful and I found it encouraging to see the ways that we can use new tools to bring falsifiability to old ideas. They should be adequately falsified (or not falsified) instead of just seen as ideas of less advanced people from an earlier time. Intuition is powerful, and bringing new tools to old ideas is brilliant!

Why are the most fascinating dreams, ones that tell an elaborate story become lost from memory even fifteen seconds after waking? It’s as though someone has hit the delete key.

Great talk. I shared the stage with this guy about 10 years ago in SA and he was so generous and kind as I stumbled through a talk on lucid dreaming 🤓🙏🏼

Random anecdote 2: One summer day when I was watering the garden, I had what may have been abnormal temporal lobe activity in which details and feelings of dozens of past dreams came flooding back, one after the other and continuously for what must have been 10-15 minutes. (I kept on watering the flower beds wondering how long this would go one for.) Maybe it was just a dream version of deja vu and I never actually had them, but it certainly seemed like that and the 'feelings' and atmosphere were very dreamlike.

Absolute badass. Thanks for having Solms on.

An absolutely fascinating talk. I went through a period of experiencing extremely vivid dreams and found that I didn't feel as refreshed when I woke up from them. So although I have no doubt that dreams help good sleep I think the depth of ones sleep while dreaming is also important to feel fully rested.

I have consistent nightmares/night terrors, where I can wake up and it takes a white to reorientation myself to my own room and sometimes the line between dreams and reality are blurred.

I have had recurring nightmares for most of my life about tornadoes. I dont live in a tornado prone area and have never seen one. But the dreams are absolutely terrifying. Even if it is just off in the distance on the horizon miles away, I still have this terror and know it's coming for me. Probably every 2 months or so. For decades.

I've found I can sometimes solve a problem the next day after a night's sleep. It seems to me I'm thinking about the problem when I'm half awake or nearly asleep. This has happened so often that I became aware of it. Sometimes the solutions don't work at all, are outlandish, like fitting a square peg in a round hole, but other times they do work. Anyway, I forced myself to listen to all this and am intrigued again by the scientists who refuse to deal with everything but still insist their's is the only truth. They need to emphasise all the time, we don't know the full story, ...they don't do that, except when it's not challenging anything important. ....from Ireland.

The suffering we inflict on animals in the name of science is abominable