Paintballing in Old Places

Last night there was another dream. This time I was paintballing, which would be odd except that my friends and I have long standing plans to go this weekend. This dream stood out due to the changes in surroundings. I would take cover behind an object, and it would either disappear or diminish until I was within the enemy sights. There would also be large scale alterations, such as that north and south would suddenly change orientation (how in the dream I was sure of this I do not know, only that I was indeed aware of it), or there would suddenly be a creek and some trees as part of the course where there were not before. Strangely enough, I do not believe that anyone involved in the game was someone I knew, or at least no one I could put a name to.

Before hitting publish on this post I have come back to look at it a few days latter, and what really stand out to me is the memory recall just from reading the paragraph above. A few hours after I had the dream I couldn't remember any of the details, but from the description of it there are very distinct memories that return. I know that the game of paintball was held in Miadu Park, which is near to where I used to live in California. I also know that I had the classic trouble with movement that is experienced in dreams, which is I guess ironic because it turned out to be really muddy when we actually went paintballing, and impossible to to move anywhere.

References

Just to formally acknowledge some of our sources that were not directly cited or paraphrased but definitely have lead to our interpretation of dreaming and/or lucid dreaming, here is a list of references that contain further information.

1.         LaBerge S, Levitan L, Dement WC. Lucid dreaming: Physiological correlates of consciousness during REM sleep. J Mind Behavior 1986;7:251-58

2.         Weissburg, Michael. REM sleep and consciousness, Interview by Jacob Cooper, Allison Strauss, Mari Weyman. Boulder Sleep Clinic, 11-8-2012

3.         Voss, U. Holzmann, R., Tuin, I., Hobson, JA. 2009. Lucid dreaming: A state of

            consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming. SLEEP. 32(9):

            1191-1200.

4.         Antonio Zadra, Sophie Desjardins, Éric Marcotte, Evolutionary function of dreams: A test of the threat simulation theory in recurrent dreams, Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 15, Issue 2, June 2006, Pages 450-463, ISSN 1053-8100, 10.1016/j.concog.2005.02.002.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810005000498)

5.         Michelle Neider, Edward F. Pace-Schott, Erica Forselius, Brian Pittman, Peter T. Morgan, Lucid dreaming and ventromedial versus dorsolateral prefrontal task performance, Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 20, Issue 2, June 2011, Pages 234-244, ISSN 1053-8100, 10.1016/j.concog.2010.08.001.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810010001492)

6.         Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Melanie Schädlich, Michael Schredl, Induction of lucid dreams: A systematic review of evidence, Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2012, Pages 1456-1475, ISSN 1053-8100, 10.1016/j.concog.2012.07.003.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810012001614)

          7.         Dresler, M., Wehrle, R., Spoormaker, V., Koch, S., Hoisboer, F., Steiger, A., Obrig,

H., Samann, P., Czisch, M. 2012. Neural correlates of dream lucidity obtained from

contrasting lucid versus non-lucid REM sleep: A combined EEG/fMRI case study.

SLEEP. 35(7): 1017-1020.

       http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedterm=Neural%20correlates%20of%20dream%20lucidity

8.         Michael Schredl, Daniel Erlacher, Lucid dreaming frequency and personality, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 37, Issue 7, November 2004, Pages 1463-1473, ISSN 0191-8869, 10.1016/j.paid.2004.02.003.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886904000352)

9.         István Bókkon, Jiapei Dai, István Antal, Picture representation during REM dreams: A redox molecular hypothesis, Biosystems, Volume 100, Issue 2, May 2010, Pages 79-86, ISSN 0303-2647, 10.1016/j.biosystems.2010.01.005.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264710000158)

10.       Eva Murzyn, Do we only dream in colour? A comparison of reported dream colour in younger and older adults with different experiences of black and white media, Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 17, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 1228-1237, ISSN 1053-8100, 10.1016/j.concog.2008.09.002.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810008001323)

11.       Christof Koch, Susan Greenfield, How does Consciousness Happen? Scientific American, October 2007, Pages 76-86

12.       Jennifer Knight, Lecture Notes: Sleep and the Reticular system. University of Colorado Boulder, September 2012