Do You Use All Your Senses in Your Dreams?

[erobert]

This might be a strange question to ask but I've been wondering about it for the past couple of days.

Do you use all your senses in your dreams?

The reason I ask is because I had a dream last night where a cat bit my leg. I actually felt it in my dream just like I would in reality and woke up. I've even tasted and smelled things before in dreams. Which can be cool because my dreams are becoming more lucid... who knew you can feel a cool breeze in a dream?

Am I just more sensitive with my senses than others? A lot of people I speak to say they can only use one or two senses in their dreams and are lucky if they even remember them.

 

[DigitalFudge]

Fuck my sense I just want to be able to run.

I can never run.

 

[MoufOfKhaos]

I had a sex dream last night that was so vivid that when I woke up I had to uhmm, check myself. I was REALLY hard, but no "money shot".

So, in a word, I believe so, yeah.

 

[erobert]

I was waiting to see how long it took to bring up sex in dreams, not long around here.

Wet dreams are fun but the clean up afterward is not. It's your brain's way of telling you're not doing something regularly enough- so it does it for you in your dreams. Amazing how the mind can do that.

thatgirl, hmm... I smell things all the time my dreams. Taste doesn't happen as often but I can recall a few times.

 

[sleepsalot]

Yep, all of them. Try reading something in your dream and see if it makes any sense...then read it again and see that it has changed.

 

[Anders123]

I would be interested to hear a response from someone more educated than myself on the matter. I recall reading a case study some time ago about researchers applying 'noxious' stimuli to volunteers' bodies during REM sleep whilst sampling brain activity using various functional neuro-imaging techniques.

From memory, I think the studies were determined to be inconclusive due to the fact that they were based upon the interpretive assumption that the brain responses elicited by nociceptive stimuli actually reflect the activity of a distinctive cortical network that is only partially specific for pain.

The study was undertaken to determine whether or not pain felt inside the dream was simply reflective of pain felt externally (most commonly cramping or 'pins and needles', I believe), but I don't think a definitive percentage of the participants experienced noticeable pain whilst dreaming with the pain stimuli attached.

I also vaguely recall it being theorised that the sensations felt during dreams were simply a product of 'flashbacks'. Something like the memory of a similar pain psychologically being applied to the situation concocted in the dream, ie. a person falling in their dream, and waking just prior to impact with subdued feelings of pain in their legs which quickly faded upon the cognition of reality (the pain being nothing more than the memory of a similar situation). Personally, I think this theory is perfectly viable, considering that in my experience, any sensations during dreams tend to be less comprehensive / lucid than the reality (which would mean my memories cannot accurately construct explicit sensations).

It was quite some time ago that I read about this, and my memory is notoriously deficient, so perhaps that's not how the theories / studies went, but I would be greatly interested to hear of any substantiated theories. So if anybody here knows of any, it would save me a whole lot of searching / digging.

 

[MoufOfKhaos]

I was waiting to see how long it took to bring up sex in dreams, not long around here.

The sex was that good.
(it's also disappointing to realize the best sex i've had all year was in a damn dream...)

 

[erobert]

but I don't think a definitive percentage of the participants experienced noticeable pain whilst dreaming with the pain stimuli attached.

I also vaguely recall it being theorised that the sensations felt during dreams were simply a product of 'flashbacks'. Something like the memory of a similar pain psychologically being applied to the situation concocted in the dream, ie. a person falling in their dream, and waking just prior to impact with subdued feelings of pain in their legs which quickly faded upon the cognition of reality (the pain being nothing more than the memory of a similar situation).

That's the interesting thing though, I've never been bitten by a cat or any animal and hopefully never will so it's wasn't a memory of the feeling of that kind of pain. I also wasn't experiencing any physical pain while sleeping (getting charlie horses are terrible when you're sleeping).

Where did that feeling come from then? It was very real and hurt enough to wake me up and make me check my leg for bite marks.

I'm more intrigued than anything else.

 

[Swellegant]

My dreams tend to be very removed, like watching a movie or observing something like a ghost in the room. I don't taste or feel anything, as a rule; it's just audiovisual... and sometimes not even that much. Sometimes my dreams are purely emotional and have no visuals or sounds involved.

Potty dreams, however, I feel. I hate those because I always wake up in a panic thinking I pissed or shat my bed.

 

[Swellegant]

^ They usually are nightmares, or rather, anxiety dreams. I'm simply in the dark feeling feelings, usually not happy ones. I'll wake up crying and there will be no audiovisual memory to go with it. Yick.

My dreams are a lot more boring than waking life, I've found. Every once in a while I'll remember a really weird one, but I more often dream about things like lying in bed and not being able to sleep.

 

[Kioygan]

I've been stabbed in my dreams before, and yeah it was pretty... painful and at the same time ticklish (I was probably sleeping on something)..

 

[Ram]

If I can use my sense of smell while sleeping, it is probably because I pissed myself.

 

[Spiff]

I would be greatly interested to hear of any substantiated theories. So if anybody here knows of any, it would save me a whole lot of searching / digging.

There simply is no actual proof either way. It's similar to trying to prove what happens after death. "Substantiated theories", now that's an oxymoron.