{"id":3384,"date":"2014-05-16T14:25:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T18:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3384"},"modified":"2014-07-11T16:27:59","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T20:27:59","slug":"q-did-you-do-a-lot-of-research-about-dreams-for-the-vault-of-dreamers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/the-vault-of-dreamers\/q-did-you-do-a-lot-of-research-about-dreams-for-the-vault-of-dreamers\/","title":{"rendered":"Q. Did You Do a Lot of Research about Dreams for The Vault of Dreamers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A.\u00a0Like many other people, I\u2019m pretty fascinated by dreams.\u00a0 I feel like we escape into private madness every night, and at the same time, our dream states are vital to our health and well-being once we\u2019re awake again.\u00a0 I love the fleeting, tantalizing glimpse of a dream I have on waking, and I wish I could remember my dreams more.<\/p>\n

\"Salvador<\/a>

Salvador Dali, Apparition of the Face of Aphrodite<\/p><\/div>\n

So researching about dreams for The Vault of Dreamers<\/i><\/a> was a real pleasure, and it led me to surprising discoveries.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go in the Freud<\/a> direction of interpretation.\u00a0 I was more interested in the physiology of dreams, and how brain signals are recorded when subjects fall into REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, and for this I consulted chapters in the textbook Neuroscience<\/i><\/a> by Purves et al as I was writing.\u00a0 I learned some interesting facts along the way, like how dolphins have essentially two brains, one that is awake while the other is asleep, so a dolphin can always be alert for predators.<\/p>\n

I was also interested in lucid dreaming, where people train to be able to control or guide their dreams. In a recent study by Ursula Voss<\/a>, German scientists induced currents in volunteer dreamers who then reported they had more self-awareness and control of the plots in their dreams. I also noted studies where scientists recorded visual brain activity of dreamers<\/a>, so they could essentially see what the dreamers saw.<\/p>\n

We also have a mythology about how artists and creative people draw from their dreams. I love examples like how R. L. Stevenson\u2019s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/i><\/a> was inspired by a nightmare, and I\u2019m intrigued by the haunting dreamscapes of Salvador Dali<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was terrific fodder for a novel about an arts school where students are required to sleep for 12 hours a night. It was very important to me, however, that my research served to support my story, and not the other way around. I was true to the science up to a point, but I was writing fiction about a world 50 years from now, when even more incredible things can be done with medicine and technology, and I definitely played with ideas. Imagine if we could consciously tap into our dreams, or those of others. The possibilities are intriguing, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A.\u00a0Like many other people, I\u2019m pretty fascinated by dreams.\u00a0 I feel like we escape into private madness every night, and at the same time, our dream states are vital to our health and well-being once we\u2019re awake again.\u00a0 I love the fleeting, tantalizing glimpse of a dream I have on waking, and I wish I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[464,450],"class_list":["post-3384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-vault-of-dreamers","tag-dreams","tag-the-vault-of-dreamers-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3384"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3570,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions\/3570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}