False memory

As if to punish me for mocking her creation yesterday, last night Neuralgia the Goddess of Headaches caused me to wake after only three hours sleep with a splitting headache. It was so bad I had to get up and take a couple of painkillers rather than just lie there and hope it would go away again.

Well I'm sorry, but that actually proves my point. In pre-painkiller days all one could have done about such pain would be to have gone back to bed and hope to sleep it off. Well, duh. Nocturnal headaches, especially ones that wake you up, are even more pointless that the regular variety. Where is the evolutionary advantage in them?

Still at least being awake at such an unusual hour - that is awake after approximately two to three hours sleep rather than at around two am - did give me the opportunity to observe the dream engine running at capacity whilst awake. In particular I was impressed by what was going on in my visual cortex. Every time I closed my eyes I was assaulted by a intricate brightly coloured symmetrical moving pattern of ever increasing complexity.

I am curious as to what this actually was. The visual cortex going through a self-diagnostic test? Or was it just that I'd interrupted a dream by waking up when the dream software was still running at full capacity, necessitating a few minutes for it to shut down?

And it was only a few minutes. By the time I'd got back into bed again after pill-popping, it had gone, replaced by the standard murky slow moving shapes I always see when closing my eyes at night. With the occasional fluorescent pineapple ring floating past.

I am inclined to think of it as some kind of diagnostic mode for the visual cortex as these a patterns are similar to those seen when under the influence of a psychedelic. Apparently. Perhaps hallucinations are caused by this mechanism being accidentally tripped?

Whatever the mechanism of dreams though, I still wonder where some of the memories in them come from. What a memory actually consists of is still poorly understood even now, but one would hope that it's something reasonably permanent. What puzzles me therefore is when, in a dream, one "remembers" something which quite patently isn't true in the real world and which one has never dreamed before. For example, the kind of thing I'm talking about is when one "remembers" that "...of course there's always been an underground tunnel linking Brighton and London which only takes ten minutes to traverse".

I wonder if these false memories are actually constructed on the spot by the dreaming brain or whether all that is happening is the experience of remembering being faked? Whichever one it is, imagine the implications for the entertainment industry when this can be harnessed for total immersive interactive movies...

One memory that's always popping up in dreams is how to fly. Now I wonder where that comes from?

Popular posts from this blog

Talking shit

Image
One of the things people say about me is that I'm quiet. Sometimes this is a criticism, other times not. I've already explained that part of the reason for this is because I find small talk difficult . Well, not just difficult, I find it pointless. If there's something worth discussing, I'm quite capable of amputating the hindquarters of a member of Equus africanus asinus with my garrulousness. Some people just can't help themselves though. As Douglas Adams once said " if they don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working ". I usually come across them whilst I'm out and about, on public transport or in shops. You can hardly call it eavesdropping; to avoid overhearing these types you really have to be listening to Napalm Death on your iPod. Its incredible just how much you can overhear without picking up any genuine content. It's all filler, conversational fluff designed to prevent the other person getting a word in edgeways and
Read more

The Invisible Sign

Image
For a long time I was conviced that I was simply rubbish at life. Throw me into a social situation with a whole bunch of humans and I didn't have the first idea how to even begin to attempt to join in. People would seem to collapse into these stable little groups of two or three leaving me floating around like a stray electron. Against my best instincts I often tried attaching myself to these groups but joining in with the conversation was impossible. Besides, I really felt like I was interrupting. It was rude . Even if I did dare to say something I'd get odd looks. I still consider my crowning achievement in this Biggest Outsider Challenge to be when I ended up spending time standing around on my own at the very bash being held for me leaving a job I'd been in for 16 years... Now that was impressive. Of course well-intentioned people kept telling me to try harder, giving me tips and tricks, but nothing really seemed to work. I'd hear variations of "We all feel aw
Read more

The Most Effectual Top Cat

Image
Thinking back to my earliest memories, I recall myself as having been surprisingly (mentally) articulate even as a very young child. Perhaps what I was thinking wasn't necessarily in adult English or even in words but it was still recognisably me doing the thinking, exactly the same person, the same mind that is doing the typing now.  Particularly recognisable is the way things use to puzzle and bother me, in exactly the same way then as now. Why was Fred Flintstone ordering a deckchair to be delivered to his car , and what was the deal with Top Cat? Firstly it bugged me that he was called Boss Cat in the Radio Times and on the TV continuity announcements but that in the theme tune and throughout the show he was Top Cat or TC. My mother did explain that this was because the BBC didn't allow advertising and that there was already a brand of cat food called "Top Cat", but this explanation didn't stand up to scrutiny for me. If this was the case, why didn't
Read more