h a l f b a k e r yNot so much a thought experiment as a single neuron misfire.
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If you have those pesky dreams where you’re uncontrollably falling to certain doom... you may need the Fall Dream Canceling Bed
using a electroencephalograph (link) or something similar installed in one of my delightfully comfy beds, would identify the falling sensation dream and actuate the
hydraulic bed legs, pushing the bed towards the ceiling thereby canceling out the brain interpreted downward motion in your dream. There are many other side uses for the bed as well. For the sky-divers among us... you may opt to leave you bed in the fully raised position causing the opposite effect of enhancing the fall. Even the built in alarm is practical... Deep sleeper? turn the hydraulic pressure up to max to propel yourself into a sleep ending contact with the roof over your head (guest bed?).
Electromagnet mattress
http://www.halfbake...romagnet_20Mattress
The technology is here [hippo, Oct 04 2004]
Lucid Dreams- Bunch of info
http://brain.web-us...uciddreamingFAQ.htm
[Dub, Nov 15 2005]
EHS
http://en.wikipedia...oding_head_syndrome
All you never wanted to know about Exploding Head Syndrome. [shapu, Nov 15 2005]
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Annotation:
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Won't a sudden jarring upward motion make you think you've landed? |
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Perhaps so [worldgineer] shortening the fall is effective... but I was thinking more match the speed somehow. |
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How about a fan that starts blowing in your face accompanied by a "whistle" sound effect ? Reinforce the illusion... |
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If you dream until you hit the bottom over and over again, then the shocking effect wears off. I hit rock bottom when I was 10 just to dispel the myth that "when you hit bottom you die." ... ever since then it hasn't scared me ... perhapse accelerating the fall may make folks more comfortable with the falling part -- or scar them for life ... then let them sleep in the guest lobotamy bed as a cure ... |
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I quite like the actual falling too, but I hate when you wake up with a sharp jerk. Therefore it gets my bun. |
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I don’t ever fall in my sleep, but I tend to float off, so the rising bed could follow me. Yes, that would be a good thing, if it could keep up. It will be able to go through walls, right? |
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The same technology could produce the drunk-cancelling bed, detecting and subtly couterbalancing the imagined pitching, yawing, and spinning sensations you get when you try to sleep drunk. |
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// wakes up with a sharp jerk every morning // |
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*must... resist... immature... pun...* |
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("Time for your injection Mr Detly.
You may feel a slight prick") |
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I've heard it said that the amount of elapsed time in your dream can far exceed the amount of time your real body spends in the dreaming state. If that is true then it might be that your dream-experience of a 20 second fall takes place within (say) 1/2 a second of real-world time. This being the case, the bed would have to respond to whatever motion you were dreaming about by moving in the opposite direction at a considerable pace. If you dreamt of falling at say 10 meters per second but your dream-time was running 100 times faster than real time, the bed would have to push you upwards at 1000 meters per second to compensate. When you dreamt that you'd hit the floor and stopped, the bed would stop and you would presumably collide with the ceiling at this speed. I suspect that would be more traumatic than the dream itself. + for the thinking behind the idea. |
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Wake up Rods Tiger - you're talking in your sleep! |
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I often dream that I'm sinking way down into quick sand or mud or under ice. Make a bed that counteracts that and I'll buy one, endorse it on telly when I'm famous, tell all my friends and family to get one, give them as christmas presents and make donations to the company. For now though, you'll have to make do with a bun. |
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I often dream that I'm flying around and can't land! Maybe I need a bed that starts on the ceiling and drops towards the floor. |
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Flip it into custom skydiving mode phundug. |
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How about a bed that counters those occaisional moments of complete paralysis upon waking? They're a lot more scary that falling. |
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I can't remember the name of that, but I think it's something like sleep paralysis...the mind wakes up, but the body is still paralysed (you're body 'shuts down' when you sleep so you don't hurt yourself by throwing yourself around the room). You wake up, but can't move because you aren't completely waken up. Hallucinations are often involved, usually something terrifying...I've had at least three extraordinarily nasty experiences through this. There is a theory that this is where some ghost/alien/monster/etc sightings come from (paralysis, distorted sensory perception, terror, the hallucinating). I guess the opposite of this is the Myoclonic twitch mentioned earlier, which I guess is where the paralysis _doesn't_ kick in...I'm chronic for this. I also never wake before I land, this often leads to the waking and paralysis, maybe there's a link here? Finally, if Freud thought that flying dreams were really about sex, what were sex dreams about? |
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The few of these I've had involve me trying to surface in water, but not being able to. I wake up and find I can't breathe, but it passes after a few seconds. |
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[dobtabulous] I'd like to corroborate your real-time vs dream-time thing. In my adolescence, before class, I'd often have several dreams per minute. My alarm woke me up, I noted the time, I had a dream and woke up and noted the same time, this repeated until I had a long dream or else a non-dream and the alarm woke me up again. Though dreams can't be instantaneous, my alarm often interrupted one. |
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[Unabubba] I'd like to speak about your dream myths. First of all I came up with the death myth all on my own. When I have nightmares it seems that they're a little worse than a little stage fright with no pants or an exam. I really do fear for my soul in those dreams. When I wake up the feeling persists. I don't remember ever 'losing' one of those dreams. Though maybe the part that 'lost' dies, so I'd never remember, eh? |
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However if it's not a nightmare I can be killed, and have been frequently, and I always wake up with the same feeling. Recently I was in a dream where I couldn't move fast and a panther was hunting. I woke up with the "I died" feeling. So that myth's rather busted. :P |
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Oddly I can easily breathe water in my dreams. Also, though I have a suffocating falling sensation, I can often land without harm. |
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I think the harm befalling incomplete dreams is that they're probably artifacts of some regenerative process, and should, ideally, be uninterrupted. Subjects deprived of REM sleep go insane, after all. |
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I sometimes dream that an alligator is chasing me and that I cant move until it gets close. Ive had this dream for years, since i was a kid, so it doesnt scare me. I just get annoyed that the gator is so slow. |
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There's books on the subject of lucid dreaming. I've browsed one, and it reckons that if you sleep, wake up after a few hours, and nod-off again (or, I think, have a few hours awake and then nod-off) you're more likely to dream some more. [link] |
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I like the idea of your bed accelerating you towards your ceiling...A good practical joke to play on people with one of these beds is to fix an aerial view of their town to the ceiling when they go to sleep. |
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Can you build a bed for exploding head syndrome? |
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if I dream I am running, I know I am having a lucid dream - as yet it has not occurred to me to do anything magical with this knowledge. I just shrug and say, hey I am dreaming. this is so frustrating. |
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I could shag Mel Gibson in this state... |
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not that I need to be in this state to shag Mel Gibson - oh, you know what I mean... |
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I often dream I am still a cigarette smoker - as yet, this has not triggered the 'I am dreaming' response |
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I think the falling dreams have to do with our ancestors falling out of trees. the ones that hit ground were least likely to have progeny. the ones who fell and survived lived to have children who had memories of falling and not hitting the ground. |
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//the ones who fell and survived lived to have children who had memories of falling and not hitting the ground.// ...and now we call them birds. |
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re: smoking trigger... the book I saw reckons that the act of thinking you might have a lucid dream usually promotes the likelihood of having one. If you make notes of that sort of thing (smoking/shagging <insert name>) after each dream, and remember that if you see yourself smoking/what-/who-ever you'll remember you don't, and _then_ you'll trigger the ability to, say, call-up Mr Gibson, and arrange some nipple painting... |
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One, two, three ... "Myclonic jerk". |
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