Trouble separating dreams from reality

[Crunchy Cat]

The solution you are referring to is called lucid dreaming. It only works if your brain is operating at a level where it can issue the question "am I dreaming?"; otherwise, it won't work. Additionally, the control of a dream gained through lucid dreaming is not guaranteed. You can have a lucid dream with immense control and you can have a lucid dream with no control.

If your memory allows you to remember dream content but not remember waking up then that is not normal for humans.

 

[Repo Man]

"If you have trouble telling the difference between what's real, and what's unreal, can I borrow some money?" - Jack Handey

 

[universaldistress]

The solution you are referring to is called lucid dreaming. It only works if your brain is operating at a level where it can issue the question "am I dreaming?"; otherwise, it won't work. Additionally, the control of a dream gained through lucid dreaming is not guaranteed. You can have a lucid dream with immense control and you can have a lucid dream with no control.

If your memory allows you to remember dream content but not remember waking up then that is not normal for humans.

The lucid dreaming is part of the solution. It is the ability to differentiate (from reality) and remember dreams that is the key here.

Bad memory is very normal. If the dream was a powerful memory it can stick whereas the mundane can be lost very quickly. The technique I mention is not a guarantee, but it is definitely something to try in this case. It could help. Do you have any better suggestions? This is a dilemma we are trying to solve here.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

The lucid dreaming is part of the solution. It is the ability to differentiate (from reality) and remember dreams that is the key here.

Bad memory is very normal. If the dream was a powerful memory it can stick whereas the mundane can be lost very quickly. The technique I mention is not a guarantee, but it is definitely something to try in this case. It could help. Do you have any better suggestions? This is a dilemma we are trying to solve here.

That's just it, there is no guarantee. That's why when you wake up, you should realize that the experience you just had was a dream...

 

[universaldistress]

It is difficult though when the remembered dream is a crossover from an early in the night REM period. The dreamer may wake up with no definite recollection of any dreams but the memory is still there, just a bit deeper. If the marker to help differentiate isn't there because the memory is buried, or because the dreamer has bad memory recall in general and has mixed up the memories, then mistakes in memory allocation can be made. This is definitely a disfunction, but a disfunction caused by relatively common circumstances in certain individuals.

 

[chimpkin]

I just miss my hypnagogic audio hallucinations.
Those were cool.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

It is difficult though when the remembered dream is a crossover from an early in the night REM period. The dreamer may wake up with no definite recollection of any dreams but the memory is still there, just a bit deeper. If the marker to help differentiate isn't there because the memory is buried, or because the dreamer has bad memory recall in general and has mixed up the memories, then mistakes in memory allocation can be made. This is definitely a disfunction, but a disfunction caused by relatively common circumstances in certain individuals.

Yep, that's a definite brain malfunction. If you don't remember your dream immediately after waking up then it's supposed to be discarded by your brain. If it gets committed to long term memory instead of being discarded in this scenario then that's a pretty severe brain defect... in fact I think it may be a unique defect as I can't find any evidence of this happening before. My recommendation would be to see a doctor. It's possible that this issue is due to brain trauma of some kind that might be correctable. If it is simply a result of how you developed then I suspect you may be referred to various psychology/neurology specialists in an effort to manage the defect.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

I just miss my hypnagogic audio hallucinations.
Those were cool.

I find hypnopompics even cooler because they come with visual goodies most of the time :3.

 

[Arioch]

@Crunchy --

I prefer weed myself...

 

[Crunchy Cat]

@Crunchy --

I prefer weed myself...

Weed is good but it doesn't make you hallucinate unless you eat nearly a full batch of weed-laden brownies... but by that point you can't even feel yourself breathing so the experience just isn't as rich.

 

[Arioch]

I guess I'm lucky that I'm a lightweight, I don't need nearly that much to experience auditory hallucinations.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

I guess I'm lucky that I'm a lightweight, I don't need nearly that much to experience auditory hallucinations.

Bonus.

 

[universaldistress]

Yep, that's a definite brain malfunction. If you don't remember your dream immediately after waking up then it's supposed to be discarded by your brain. If it gets committed to long term memory instead of being discarded in this scenario then that's a pretty severe brain defect... in fact I think it may be a unique defect as I can't find any evidence of this happening before. My recommendation would be to see a doctor. It's possible that this issue is due to brain trauma of some kind that might be correctable. If it is simply a result of how you developed then I suspect you may be referred to various psychology/neurology specialists in an effort to manage the defect.

I am sorry Crunchy but you a way off base on this one.

http://arno.unimaas.nl/show.cgi?fid=2494

As you will see the percentages of people admitting this problem ranges from 7.1% to 16.1% respectively for each study/survey. This would suggest it is indeed a relatively common occurrence and not one to be running off to a neurologist about. I admit I haven't read the whole text but the general gist is that imaginative subjects tend to experience this effect more. I would also hazard a guess that bad memory also has a role to play hear. But a bad memory is not a hanging offence or even an uncommon thing.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

I am sorry Crunchy but you a way off base on this one.

http://arno.unimaas.nl/show.cgi?fid=2494

As you will see the percentages of people admitting this problem ranges from 7.1% to 16.1% respectively for each study/survey. This would suggest it is indeed a relatively common occurrence and not one to be running off to a neurologist about. I admit I haven't read the whole text but the general gist is that imaginative subjects tend to experience this effect more. I would also hazard a guess that bad memory also has a role to play hear. But a bad memory is not a hanging offence or even an uncommon thing.

The study concerns people who have hypnagogic hallucinations, dreams, and hynapompic hallucinations and remember them right after having them. Their issue is that at some future point they may not remember that the experience was hallucinatory. That makes sense, if you remember your natural hallucinations a lot then at some point you may forget that a particular experience was in fact hallucination.

You are in a different category. You wake up with no dream recall but somehow your dream gets stored in long term memory only to be recalled later. That is something that appears to be totally new and it's not by any means how your brain is supposed to operate. It's a bad thing and again I recommend seeing a doctor about it.

 

[kwhilborn]

I have a seemingly unique ability to Wake up fully and then return to the same dream I was having. I can even change it or add elements to it. Some call this lucid dreaming.

Some dreams can seem very real, there is full color, sense, smells, and very intricate design. It's almost as if your dream is scripted and well planned in advance but it is not.

I could see where someone could remember a dream as reality. Most people dream obscure things that don't make sense in reality.

In your dream you may find it is very rational to be driving your car up an office building. You may justify it in your dream as a new type of car and everyone has them now. But it is so far from reality that mistakes cannot be made.

I agree that this is not parapsychology and whoever put his here is tripping.

I have not to my knowledge substituted dream memories for reality, however I can see it happening easily enough. I believe some kinds of sleeping pills inhibit dreams, and might help; although dreams are there for a reason.

 

[universaldistress]

The study concerns people who have hypnagogic hallucinations, dreams, and hynapompic hallucinations and remember them right after having them. Their issue is that at some future point they may not remember that the experience was hallucinatory. That makes sense, if you remember your natural hallucinations a lot then at some point you may forget that a particular experience was in fact hallucination.

The survey was titled "When Dreams Become a Royal Road to Confusion: Realistic Dreams, Dissociation, and Fantasy Proneness"

The stats I quoted are from a survey done on DREAMERS exclusively:

Study 1
Participants
Undergraduate students (N 5 85; 77 women) completed
a short questionnaire about dreams. Mean age
of this sample was 22.4 years (SD 5 4.8; range: 19 to
48 years).
Results
The questionnaire contained five items. First, participants
were asked whether they had ever experienced
such a realistic dream that, for a short period
of time after waking up, it left them thinking it had
really happened. Fifty-eight participants (68%) acknowledged
having experienced such realistic
dreams. The second item concerned the frequency
of this type of dream: its average frequency was 2.0
times per month (SD 5 3.4). The third item addressed
sleep disturbances: none of the participants
reported such disturbances. The next two questions
addressed whether realistic dreams sometimes tend
to take the form of false memories. Participants
were asked whether they had ever acted against
others on the basis of dream content; this seemed to
apply to five respondents (5.8%). The question of
whether participants, at present, had memories that
they were unable to trace to a real event or dream
was endorsed by six respondents (7.1%). Given that
one respondent endorsed the latter two questions, it
can be argued that 10 participants (11.8%) reported
having experienced realistic dreams with possible
behavioral consequences.
Study 2
Participants
In a second study, we sought to replicate the
results of study 1. Thereto, a similar, yet more extended
questionnaire was completed by 255 respondents
(175 women). Mean age was 21.1 years (SD 5
2.3; range: 18 to 38 years).
Results
Here, 199 respondents (78%) reported familiarity
with highly realistic dreams. The mean frequency of
such dreams was 2.3 per month (SD 5 3.3).3 Participants
were asked to indicate how realistic these
dreams were using a visual analogue scale (VAS)
ranging from 0 (moderately) to 100 (extremely). The
mean score on this VAS was 64.5 (SD 5 18.6). A total
of 115 respondents (58%) indicated that they experienced
realistic dreams primarily during awakening,
6 respondents (3%) reported dreaming realistically
during sleep onset, and 78 participants (39%)
were unable to indicate during which stage realistic
dreams generally occurred. Although none of the
participants suffered from serious sleep disturbances,
58 respondents (29.1%) reported irregular
sleep patterns. In this sample, 25 participants (9.8%)
reported having acted against others on the basis of
what turned out to be a dream instead of a real
event. Forty-one participants (16.1%) currently had
memories of which the origin (dream vs. real event)
was unclear to them. In sum, as in study 1, a small
but considerable minority reported having experienced
dreams with possible behavioral consequences,
and thus with the potential to develop false
memories. Table 1 summarizes the main findings of
the two studies.

If you read through the survey you will notice that this survey is done on a random test group. And of that test group many claimed that they had mixed up dreams with reality. I have stated that this is pretty common and the evidence backs it up. You can't refute this. At no point did I say that the type you metion below (in next quotes) is an exclusivity, or that I have managed to precisely pinpoint the method of the very few occasions this has happened to me, I was merely hypothesizing on possibilities:

You are in a different category. You wake up with no dream recall but somehow your dream gets stored in long term memory only to be recalled later. That is something that appears to be totally new and it's not by any means how your brain is supposed to operate. It's a bad thing and again I recommend seeing a doctor about it.

I was talking about both possible scenarios actually. I said:

OR because the dreamer has bad memory recall in general and has mixed up the memories, then mistakes in memory allocation can be made. This is definitely a disfunction, but a disfunction caused by relatively common circumstances in certain individuals.

This is perfectly valid for the type of mix up in the survey where recalled dreams are mixed up later on (through bad memory obviously), which is as I stated a very common occurrence actually and not as you claim, something to see a neurologist about as you claimed in post #5, before I even laid out my two different possibilities of memory mixup:

Originally Posted by Crunchy Cat
Doesn't the act of waking up suggest that all the events that occured between that moment and going to sleep were dream content? If that doesn't then you might have some kind of bizarre neurological problem.

Surely in light of the survey's results proving that mixing up memories of dreams is very common you will have to rescind your possibility (detailed in quote immediately above) and admit that this type of mixing up of dream memories and thinking they are real experiences is in fact a common occurrence probably down to bad memory/mixing up, and nothing to worry about as it is very common?

There is nothing wrong in exploring different possible methods of dream mixups. The whole issue isn't all about one specific form of mixing up of the memories (as explored in survey) more the different ways the memories could possibly be mixed (I am not sure how it happened to me, so I have tried to think of different possibilities). Did I say that I had mixed up memories of dreams in any one definite specific way? That I was sure that any one process was the process definitely involved in the few cases this has happened to me? No. I was covering both bases.

At no point did I say I was in any category.

All I said was:

It is difficult though when the remembered dream is a crossover from an early in the night REM period. The dreamer may wake up with no definite recollection of any dreams but the memory is still there, just a bit deeper. If the marker to help differentiate isn't there because the memory is buried, or because the dreamer has bad memory recall in general and has mixed up the memories, then mistakes in memory allocation can be made. This is definitely a disfunction, but a disfunction caused by relatively common circumstances in certain individuals.

So lets break it down. The first couple of sentences establish a context of memories of dreams being buried deeper. But then I state In the third sentence "If the marker to help differentiate isn't there because the memory is buried, OR because the dreamer has bad memory recall in general and has mixed up the memories," This is two distinct possibilities of disfunction. The first is as you said undocumented (as far as I know) and COULD be rare (though I don't know, I was just hypothesising). The second regards poor memory recall where I was linking to the idea that the differentiation is lost at a later date. Hence the OR.

You just made an assumption as I didn't claim I was referring to me at any point when I explored the "deeper" memories possibility. If I don't know the method of how this happened to me because I can't remember (many years ago) than how can I place myself within any category?

You said:

That's just it, there is no guarantee. That's why when you wake up, you should realize that the experience you just had was a dream...

I said:

It is difficult though when the remembered dream is a crossover from an early in the night REM period. The dreamer may wake up with no definite recollection of any dreams but the memory is still there, just a bit deeper. If the marker to help differentiate isn't there because the memory is buried, or because the dreamer has bad memory recall in general and has mixed up the memories, then mistakes in memory allocation can be made. This is definitely a disfunction, but a disfunction caused by relatively common circumstances in certain individuals.

Did I claim any affiliation to either possible process, either my suggested one or the one detailed in the survey? You are being assumptive.

And clearly when you said: "That's why when you wake up, you should realize that the experience you just had was a dream... " you were right, but you didn't account for the susceptibility of the human memory to corruption and mix up as being a normal weakness.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

The survey was titled "When Dreams Become a Royal Road to Confusion: Realistic Dreams, Dissociation, and Fantasy Proneness"

The stats I quoted are from a survey done on DREAMERS exclusively:

This is incorrect and here is why. On page 479 (right before the results of study 1 are listed), the authors reference the work of Ohanyon et al (1996) to show statistical analysis of hynagogic hallucination and hypnopompic hallucination from that particular study (which was targeted at vivid realistic dreams). In the original work of Ohanyon et al, he correctly does not refer to hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations as dreams, but keeps them the separate entites that they are (which is why they are identified by words other than "dream"). The author of *this* publication "When Dreams Become... and Fantasy Proneness", refer to hynagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations as dreams (and incorrectly so). This establishes that the authors are lumping dreaming, hynagogia, and hynopompia into the same bucket.

The authors' survey questions make no attempt to differentiate whether the people being surveyed experienced real dreams, hynagogic hallucinations, or hynopompic hallucinations. The questions don't educate people as to the distinction (and most people will not know it) and the questions have no inherent mechanism of weeding out hynagogia and hypnopompia. The result is that the survey will contain results for all three (dreams, hynogogia, and hynopompia), and the exclusive use of the word "dream" in the publication's title or suvery questions doesn't change that.

If you read through the survey you will notice that this survey is done on a random test group. And of that test group many claimed that they had mixed up dreams with reality. I have stated that this is pretty common and the evidence backs it up. You can't refute this.

I am not sure why you think I am trying to.

At no point did I say that the type you metion below (in next quotes) is an exclusivity, or that I have managed to precisely pinpoint the method of the very few occasions this has happened to me, I was merely hypothesizing on possibilities:

I will address this in my last response.

I was talking about both possible scenarios actually. I said:

This is perfectly valid for the type of mix up in the survey where recalled dreams are mixed up later on (through bad memory obviously), which is as I stated a very common occurrence actually and not as you claim, something to see a neurologist about as you claimed in post #5, before I even laid out my two different possibilities of memory mixup:

You are missing a point. I am not addressing poor memory / fuzzy morning brain reasons. I am addressing one specific scenario that the thread creator explained and you claimed to have experienced (I'll re-post what you stated in my last response). Now, if your claim was incorrect / not fully formed, then this part of the conversation is moot.

Surely in light of the survey's results proving that mixing up memories of dreams is very common you will have to rescind your possibility (detailed in quote immediately above) and admit that this type of mixing up of dream memories and thinking they are real experiences is in fact a common occurrence probably down to bad memory/mixing up, and nothing to worry about as it is very common?

Absolutely not. My statement that you quoted was directed to someone who appeared to be trying hard to distinguish between dreams and reality but was failing at it. My statement was intended to be part of a solution requiring a little bit of discipline in the morning. Specifically identifying waking up as the hard boundry between the dream and reality and then taking the time to *think* and consciously acknowledge the dream content as being... dream content. That of course turned out to be moot because the person whom I was addressing had zero recollection of the dream when he/she woke up.

There is nothing wrong in exploring different possible methods of dream mixups. The whole issue isn't all about one specific form of mixing up of the memories (as explored in survey) more the different ways the memories could possibly be mixed (I am not sure how it happened to me, so I have tried to think of different possibilities). Did I say that I had mixed up memories of dreams in any one definite specific way? That I was sure that any one process was the process definitely involved in the few cases this has happened to me? No. I was covering both bases.

I agree that exporation of possibilities is fine, but yes you did state that your experience was very specific. Based on your response here, I suspect that you didn't realize that's what was done. I'll repost what you stated as part of my last response.

At no point did I say I was in any category.

All I said was:

So lets break it down. The first couple of sentences establish a context of memories of dreams being buried deeper. But then I state In the third sentence "If the marker to help differentiate isn't there because the memory is buried, OR because the dreamer has bad memory recall in general and has mixed up the memories," This is two distinct possibilities of disfunction. The first is as you said undocumented (as far as I know) and COULD be rare (though I don't know, I was just hypothesising). The second regards poor memory recall where I was linking to the idea that the differentiation is lost at a later date. Hence the OR.

You just made an assumption as I didn't claim I was referring to me at any point when I explored the "deeper" memories possibility. If I don't know the method of how this happened to me because I can't remember (many years ago) than how can I place myself within any category?

I'll direct you to my last response.

You said:


I said:

Did I claim any affiliation to either possible process, either my suggested one or the one detailed in the survey? You are being assumptive.

And clearly when you said: "That's why when you wake up, you should realize that the experience you just had was a dream... " you were right, but you didn't account for the susceptibility of the human memory to corruption and mix up as being a normal weakness.

I want to show you the context I have been operating under. I strongly suspect that you didn't realize it had been set up this way. Below is where you state that you have woken up during a dream, didn't remember the dream immediately after, and later remembered the dream's content as if it was something that actually happened. You did put a qualifier on the claim which implied that the result of the experience wasn't nearly as severe for you as it was for Just_Not_There.

I have a dream in which, for example I have a conversation with someone I know, but don't remember it the morning as a dream….and then at some point days later I remember the dream as an actual event which I believe really happen.

Doesn't the act of waking up suggest that all the events that occured between that moment and going to sleep were dream content?...

Well I don't remember it... Normally i am left seriously confused and unable to explain what i remember

I have to admit I have experienced the phenomenon explained here, but no where near to the same extent.

Again, I don't think you had meant to set up the context like this where you were having a specific issue. Your last responses strongly suggests that and on top of it, you did correctly realize and articulate the underlying contradiction of the scenario. Specifically, if you are fortunate enough to identify a memory which you believed was valid but was actually false, how do you know that it came from a dream if you don't remember your dreams even when first waking up?

 

[universaldistress]

That's BS. Dreams means dreams. Your reading is off big time. You have to follow the essay's author's context.

I wasn't saying I have had the same exact experience as Just Not There, but that I have mistaken dreams for reality before. I have stated I am not sure of the mechanism (fair play you acknowledge this in your post).

Absolutely not. My statement that you quoted was directed to someone who appeared to be trying hard to distinguish between dreams and reality but was failing at it.

Hence my suggested treatment.

I agree that exploration of possibilities is fine, but yes you did state that your experience was very specific. Based on your response here, I suspect that you didn't realize that's what was done. I'll repost what you stated as part of my last response.

I have said that I have mixed up dreams with reality before (only a few times whilst younger). I didn't elaborate on the mechanism of how it happened to me. You assumed my experience was the same as the thread creator's, and I can see how you assumed this. I will clear it up now: I was saying simply that the phenomenon of dreams being mistaken for reality is something I have experienced, and not a copy cat of Just Not There's experience.

Specifically, if you are fortunate enough to identify a memory which you believed was valid but was actually false, how do you know that it came from a dream if you don't remember your dreams even when first waking up?

Ok we are going forward now The way you realise is by talking to someone who was involved in the memory, and them having no recollection of of the scenario. This is ultimately never logically conclusive because one could always assume the other party simply can't remember the conversation/scenario due to THEIR bad memory!

I must say that I do not agree with your assessment of the survey's text. I believe the survey was done on dreamers, as it states so. Please reread the intro to the essay:

Scientific discussions about false memories have, so far, mainly focused on
external determinants (e.g., therapeutic interventions). However, in some cases,
false memories might develop more spontaneously. For example, difficulties in
distinguishing between dreams and reality may lead to false memories. The present
article discusses two studies (N 5 85 and 255, respectively) that examined to what
extent such difficulties occur. In both studies, a nontrivial minority of respondents
(11.8% and 25.9%, respectively) reported that they had had the experience of not
being able to discriminate between dream and reality.

There is no mention here of anything other than DREAMS. Whether they are experienced in deep sleep, shallower sleep whilst falling asleep or waking up is irrelevant to the mixing up. A dream is a dream. A dream becoming a false memory is a dream becoming a false memory. The mention of "sleep" in the describing paragraph of the study means that they were studying DREAMERS. People were reporting dreams experienced whilst SLEEPING:

These authors found that a substantial percentage
of healthy volunteers reported to have very
vivid and realistic dreams at least twice a week.
Thirty-seven percent of the respondents experienced
such dreams during sleep onset (hypnagogic
hallucinations), whereas 12% experienced these
dreams primarily during awakening (hypnopompic
hallucinations).

So the DREAMS were either whilst asleep (work out the remaining percentage!), whilst waking from sleep, whilst falling to sleep. Dreams all. No mention in the study-specific text refers to hallucinations whilst awake.

So do you admit that the phenomenon of MISTAKING DREAMS FOR REALITY is a common occurrence? (Oh, and by the way. Just Not There does not specify when in the night the dreams occur; so could be any one of the three)

 

[Crunchy Cat]

That's BS. Dreams means dreams. Your interpretation of what you assume the authors to mean is in variance with what the words say. Your reading is off big time.

Claiming something is true doesn't make it true. I demonstrated that the author classifies dreams, hynagogia, and hynopompia as a single entity... "dreams".

I noted that dreams, hypnagogia, and hynopompia are are not the same... which is why we have different words for them in the English language.

I noted that the authors did not educate their test subject on the difference between dreams, hynogogia, and hypnopompia .

I noted that the authors survey questions did not have any elements to differentiate between dreams, hypnogogia, and hypnopompia (in study 1). In study 2 the questions did separate hypnogogia reasonably.

Maybe you didn't understand the conclusion so I will assert it clearly. A randomly selected group of people are not going to have the same education. Because of this, they will consist of members who don't know the difference between dreams, hynogogia, and hypnopompia.

You're welcome to show otherwise; however, you will need to demonstrate rather than claim.

I wasn't saying I have had the same exact experience as Just Not There, but that I have mistaken dreams for reality before. I have stated I am not sure of the mechanism (fair play you acknowledge this in your post).

I realize that wasn't what you were saying. The statement you used was:

"I have to admit I have experienced the phenomenon explained here"

And the phenomena explained was very specific. A better way of stating what you meant might be:

"I have to admit I have mistaken dreams for reality"

I have said that I have mixed up dreams with reality before (only a few times whilst younger). I didn't elaborate on the mechanism of how it happened to me. You assumed my experience was the same as the thread creator's, and I can see how you assumed this. I will clear it up now: I was saying simply that the phenomenon of dreams being mistaken for reality is something I have experienced, and not a copy cat of Just Not There's experience.

mmhmm.

Ok we are going forward now The way you realise is by talking to someone who was involved in the memory, and them having no recollection of of the scenario. This is ultimately never logically conclusive because one could always assume the other party simply can't remember the conversation/scenario due to THEIR bad memory!

Wouldn't that just mean the memory is false? How do you know that the false memory originated from a dream?

I must say that I do not agree with your assessment of the survey's text. I believe the survey was done on dreamers, as it states so. Please reread the intro to the essay:

There is no mention here of anything other than DREAMS. Whether they are experienced in deep sleep, shallower sleep whilst falling asleep or waking up is irrelevant to the mixing up. A dream is a dream. A dream becoming a false memory is a dream becoming a false memory. The mention of "sleep" in the describing paragraph of the study means that they were studying DREAMERS. People were reporting dreams experienced whilst SLEEPING:

There's no definition of "dream" that was established. Do you think everyone who was surveyed inherently understands the difference between hynagogia, dreams, and hynopompia?

So the DREAMS were either whilst asleep, whilst waking from sleep, whilst falling to sleep. Dreams all.

That's a technical error on the side of the publication. Hallucinatory experiences while falling asleep are NOT dreams. They are called hypnagogic hallucinations. They are explicitly defined separate from dreams because they are a unique phenomena. Similarly, hallucinatry experiences while waking up are NOT dreams. They are called hynopompic hallucinations. The authors of the article INCORRECTLY classified them as dreams, but they are in fact separate and unique phenomena.

You can learn about these distinctions in various cognitive/neurology/psychology classes or read about them in publications such as:

Mavromatis, A. (1987). Hypnagogia: the Unique State of Consciousness Between Wakefulness and Sleep. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

T. Balkin, A. Braun, et al., "The process of awakening: A PET study of regional brain activity patterns mediating the reestablishment of alertness and consciousness," Brain, vol. 125, 2002, pp. 2308–19.

So do you admit that the phenomenon of MISTAKING DREAMS FOR REALITY is a common occurrence?

I am not sure why you would want me to admit something I am not arguing against; however, the answer to your question is "no, I cannot". The primary reason is because your question is too subjective. To try and objectify it a little, we can observe that the context of the question defines the word "common" as "frequent". The definition of the word "frequent" means occurring or appearing quite often or at close intervals. Now, we're dealing a little more firmness, but how often qualifies as "quite often?" and how close qualifies as "close intervals"? What I can say from reading the publication is that if we define a "common occurence" as 25% of the time then the answer to your question is no.

 

[universaldistress]

The surveys 1 and 2 look at sleepers exclusively. The stats show this is common.

The term hypnagogic/hypnopompic experiences, apart from falling-asleep and waking dreams, also includes lucid DREAMS (you state hynagogia is separate to dreams so why are lucid DREAMS included within the term???), out of body experiences and hallucinations. At no point do the authors mention all types of hynagogia were surveyed in their studys 1 or 2. They mention SLEEPING experiences as in DREAMS. They chose to use the term DREAM because it was applicable in this case. They were only interested in hypnagogia involved in sleeping dreams, hence their terminology. But they weren't narrowing it down to only hynagogia exclusively. They were looking at all DREAMS as in sleeping related. They frequently mention SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP as related to their test-group.

So again, it has been proven by the survey that sleeping dreams (hynagogia can be classified as dreams when experienced during sleep, beginning, middle or end) can quite often be mistaken for reality by a random test-group, within a short survey's time-period. So therefore over a life-span the chances of an individual experiencing the phenomenon in question -

Trouble separating dreams from reality

(threads title no less)- is probably a reasonably high percentage.

The reason I know my memories were dreams was because after the other party said they weren't there in the experience, and then pondering for a few days over the scenario, I remembered that they were in fact dreams.