Synesthesia in dreams?

[The Vorpal Tribble]

So, I had a dream last night where I was like a shapeshifter. I turned into an owl and flew all night. Then dawn came and I got hungry so I landed and turned into a tree to have some sunlight. I could literally taste it on my skin. For some reason it was alike to honey and bar-b-cue sauce.

Is this really something that's your brain is supposed to be capable of?

[Xallace]

Oh, definitely. Smell (and by extension, taste) are more hard-wired into our memories than sight and sound. And of course, since your frontal lobes shut down during dream time, stuff you would consider illogical - like tasting on your skin- are now just fine and dandy. Put the two together, I'd say your brain's working just fine.

[Zanaril]

I often try to read in dreams. Only the words always seem to be spelt wrongly, or to change while I'm realing them - I really have to work to figure out what something says.

Or otherwise something illogical happens, and I spend the whole dream trying to figure out what on earth is going on.

Then there's the fun dream, where I realize I'm in a dream and start flying through walls and stuff. :smallbiggrin:

[Player_Zero]

I don't even dream in colour as far as I can tell, let alone taste, smell, etc.

[Atelm]

My dreams are almost always too psychedelic to make sense of afterwards.

The only real exceptions to these are dreams where I seem to be like a detective of sorts, puzzling various nonsensical or mundane stuff out.

I literally spent one dream, which seemed almost like an ordinary day in life, trying to figure out what year it was (what year the dream was set in). I finally figured it to be set in 2014 or thereabouts, based on evidence real life friends appearing in the dream provided me with. :smallamused:

[The Vorpal Tribble]

I don't even dream in colour as far as I can tell, let alone taste, smell, etc.
Yeah, many don't I've heard. I wonder what determines that.

All mine are in color and I can use every sense in my dreams.

I can't even have music or a news broadcast going while I sleep without me working it into a dream. George Noory with Coast to Coast am is a baaad idea. Had incredibly lucid nightmares for several nights when I fell asleep to it... found out were discussions about aliens and dissections and shadow people and similar. I'd hear something about government cover ups and dream of being chased by the military because I could move things with my mind.

[Ellen]

The only odd part, I would think, is that people aren't supposed to often have dreams that involve smell and taste. I think the theory is that smell still functioned as an early warning system for certain kinds of danger (smoke, stinky predators, etc) back in the days when we had a stronger sense of smell (the general theory on that, interestingly, is that the part of our brains devoted to smell decreased with the domestication of dogs, who do a better job of smelling things than we ever did and could be trusted to handle the job).

So, our sense of smell weakened, but not the underlying circutry. Taste is interlocked with smell enough that the same rules seem to apply.

Even so, we do sometimes dream smells and tastes. The synesthesia aspect, mixing one sense with another, probably isn't weird in the context of a dream where dream logic told your brain it should be happening that way (or that's one layman's opinion, I only know what I pick up here and there).

Not being able to read something in a dream is another common problem. The part of our brain that recognizes letters and words is one of the parts that's supposed to be off when we're dreaming. So, staring at words you can't make out is a relatively common dream.

[Zanaril]

So, staring at words you can't make out is a relatively common dream.

But I can make them out. It's just very hard.

I have a lot of dream where I'm flying, and am surprised when everyone is surprised that I can fly. :smallconfused:

[The Vorpal Tribble]

But I can make them out. It's just very hard.
Yeah, I can read in my dreams. In fact, I write in my dreams. I come up with some awesome stuff and am SO ticked when I wake up and find I didn't get to put it down. Then usually forget most of it before i can get over to my comp.


I have a lot of dream where I'm flying, and am surprised when everyone is surprised that I can fly. :smallconfused:
I've yet to simply fly. I either turn into a flying thing or levitate. That's another instance of synesthesia. I swear it feels like I have an extra muscle in my mind that I use to lift myself up.

[bluewind95]

Not being able to read something in a dream is another common problem. The part of our brain that recognizes letters and words is one of the parts that's supposed to be off when we're dreaming. So, staring at words you can't make out is a relatively common dream.

I can read pretty much as well dreaming as I can when awake. I've even dreamed things like chatting with people and going on forums and I'm able to read anything there. It's not very often that there will be readable things when I'm dreaming, but if they are there, I can read them just fine.

[Mauve Shirt]

I almost always remember my dreams. They're in color, I can feel and hear things but I've never smelled or tasted anything. I've been on the forums in my dreams, but I never read so much as understand what I'm supposed to read. I don't see the words, I just get the point. I can't read usernames either, but the avatar is always recognizable.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

I don't see the words, I just get the point. I can't read usernames either, but the avatar is always recognizable.
That's my standard for when I'm awake :smallamused:

[Temotei]

I had a dream last night about being a vampire. It was quite long, actually.

There was some God of War-esque gliding, a huge monster, a sword that when swung created a bunch of wind that pushed even the biggest enemy back, and a bunch of other vampires that hung out with me. It was pretty sweet. :smallcool:

It was in color, by the way. Vampires in my dream could appear in their vampire or their human "form," which was basically the difference of skin color (white versus peach/brown) and the ability to fly/glide (I got to glide, but the girl vampire who was my partner could fly). We escaped the big monster thing in vampire form. Girl flies away quickly, I just climb up to see some civilians having a fire on the cobblestone street (it was medieval style, I believe; however, it seemed we were in modern day). They started commenting on my skin color, but I quickly changed to "human form." They then stated that it must have been the fire's light playing tricks on them. I jumped onto a building, glided over to a bunch of other buildings (platforming game style), then ended up jumping onto a ledge, where another building was built. I went inside and met the girl partner, where she described "true names." Her true name was Ukisleel (pronounced "ail" at the end). Mine was undiscovered, but not surprisingly, since she described the process being hundreds of years long. She started in 1680, ending her search with "today," which turned out to be in the 1990's.

Very interesting dream. It was quite a bit longer, but that's the shorter version.

[Jallorn]

I have lots of strange dreams. I like the ones where I can fly. It used to one of the whole hold your arms stiff and flap kinda things, but nowadays it's more of a superman, exert some kind of force backwards sorta thing. Lately though I'll have dreams where I have powers, and then they sort of stop working, right when I'm about to rely upon them.... probably all sorts of implications in that.

Note: They rarely fail right when I need them (aside from flying or incredible speed when I'm fleeing a danger), but instead before I can get into massive trouble. Like if I can control minds, and I try to get someone to do something they normally wouldn't, and when I make the command, it doesn't work.

Anybody else have anything like that?

On another note, I tend to dream in color, but not vibrant ones. No smell or taste usually, unless it's a dream about food, and then just taste. Actually no, texture is more dominant, a little taste, but not much.

[Ravens_cry]

I always dream in colour, unless it is being influenced by a black and white source, like when I watched Schindlers List just before I went to bed. My sense of touch is. . .different. Water, for example, rarely feels wet exactly. It doesn't feel cool the same way water does in real life. However, when I had a lucid dream and touched the pavement, it felt as real as real. Taste and smell seem a little dampened, but are still there, like when I ate toasted cheese and ketchup.

[Temotei]

In that dream, falling was an experience that only the greatest of men (and women) were supposed to feel.

Basically, when you were falling in my dream, you felt really good.

Reminds me of the runner's high.

[Cobalt]

Bah. I either haven't had a dream in over two years or I'm hitting the point of no memory in under four hours each night. Which is depressing, as other people are apparently tasting foodstuffs on their arms and legs and whatnot.

[Starfols]

I haven't heard of that before. :smallconfused:

I am a synesthete, but I hardly ever remember my dreams.

I would say that your memory of what happened, or what form you were got mashed up at that point in the dream, or something.

[Toastkart]

I can always tell when I'm lucid dreaming because I can't feel my arthritis pain. For the most part, I don't remember much of what I dream. I do, however, often switch between 1st and 3rd person in my dreams. It's somewhat disconcerting, I've never had a dream where I felt like I was in control, mostly I feel like I'm watching a movie.

[Fifty-Eyed Fred]

My dreams also seem to shift in perspective from 1st to 3rd person, although not to the extent that you described; it is still very evidently me living out the dream. I believe I dream in colour, though it's difficult to tell, because you only remember snatches of dreams unless you record their contents soon after waking up. My dreams tend to proceed in a kind of logic that remembers what is immediately supposed to be going on, but forgets what preceded the immediate, going off on tangents and never resolving anything. It's my life, but with the memory of a goldfish.

[Soterion]

I can always tell when I'm lucid dreaming because I can't feel my arthritis pain. For the most part, I don't remember much of what I dream. I do, however, often switch between 1st and 3rd person in my dreams. It's somewhat disconcerting, I've never had a dream where I felt like I was in control, mostly I feel like I'm watching a movie.

What's really weird is when you're dreaming in 1st person and 3rd person at the same time. That's trippy.

I had a dream recently where I had to get all the Wild Things to the prom on time. I was Max, in case you were wondering.

I also had a dream where one of my teeth came out (a common dream for me) and I pulled it out of my mouth and it was about the size of a elephant's molar and there was still gum on the end of it and the gum was still alive, and so I kept jamming the tooth back in my mouth while I frantically tried to find out what insurance plan I had so I could contact a dentist.

Then there was the one where my grandmother died, but I managed to catch her breath in a paper bag. The sides of the paper bag kept inflating and deflating in time with her breathing, except there was a hole in the bottom of the bag, so I had to keep an eye on it in order to make sure the inhalations didn't gutter out. And when they began to fail, I had to blow more air into the bag. All the while, I was trying to flag down some paramedics so they could put her breath back in her and bring her to life. But as long as I kept the breathing going in the bag, she could still be saved.

[CrimsonAngel]

I've always wanted synesthesia... :smallfrown:

[Ellen]

Actually, I used to never be able to read anything in dreams until I read something explaining why people usually couldn't read in dreams. After that, although it's still usually harder to make things out, I can read in dreams.

I think my subconscious really doesn't like being told what it can and can't do.

Although it sounds like you guys have much funner dreams than I do. I tend towards really vivid nightmares. If I have superpowers, they generally fail at some critical point (usually when I'm trying to prove to a bunch of skeptics that I have superpowers).

On the other hand, I've noticed it's a lot more disappointing to wake up from good dreams and find out none of it's real, so maybe this isn't a bad thing.

[Icewalker]

Makes sense to me that you'd get stuff like that in dreams. Very extreme sensory stuff going on.

Curious though, are you a synesthete normally, VT? OR was it just in this dream?

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Makes sense to me that you'd get stuff like that in dreams. Very extreme sensory stuff going on.

Curious though, are you a synesthete normally, VT? OR was it just in this dream?
Only in dreams to my knowledge. Unless you count that I can hear music and it starts making stories in my head, but don't think that's the same thing.

[Raiki]

Only in dreams to my knowledge. Unless you count that I can hear music and it starts making stories in my head, but don't think that's the same thing.

No, not synesthesia, but definitely cool. That happens to me somtimes, altough more often it's a strange scrolling picture.

As far as dreams go, I usually don't remember mine, but when I do it's most often in color and mostly in third person. I don't recall ever smelling or tasting anything, but I have read before. The few times I can remember reading, though, it was always like Mauvey said; I don't think I was really seeing the words so much as knowing what they said.

~R~

[Athaniar]

I wish I could remember my dreams better than I already do. I think they'd make awesome stories.

[Prime32]

I rarely remember my dreams. When I do have them, they tend to rather vague - more strings of concepts than actual imagery.

[Asta Kask]

So, I had a dream last night where I was like a shapeshifter. I turned into an owl and flew all night. Then dawn came and I got hungry so I landed and turned into a tree to have some sunlight. I could literally taste it on my skin. For some reason it was alike to honey and bar-b-cue sauce.

Is this really something that's your brain is supposed to be capable of?

Well synesthesia can be triggered by LSD and suppressed by SSRIs, so it's apparently a latent function in some brains.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Huh, and I didn't even have any chemical help...

Skittles, hear the rainbow...

[Asta Kask]

It involves 5HT-2A receptors, if that says something.