#neurology and dreams

[psychicreading-live]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

today we got another vet visit, keep Kai in your thoughts please

[mindblowingscience]

Connecting our dream worlds to our conscious realities might be entirely possible, according to emerging research. A new study by three researchers from the US neurotechnology company, REMspace, has shown with a bit of training, some of us might be able to react and respond to devices around us while we are 'lucidly' dreaming. Lucid dreaming is the ability to recognize you are in a dream while you are in it. It's a trainable skill, although about half the population has experienced the phenomenon spontaneously.

Continue Reading.

[cyberrose2001]

A few nights ago I had a dream, and while I don't really remember it, I do vaguely remember Ratchet, and maybe Megatron, being in it. Might've possibly been spicey. I blame you for this, the Ratchet brain worms.

once again, my influence is unprecedented

also how does it feel to be gods favourite. I have never had a TF dream, let alone a spicy one

[battleangel]

Super Bowl Sunday: Brainwashing Kids & Brett Favre's Damaged Brain

On Super Bowl Sunday, while over 120 million Americans tune into the big game and hundreds of millions more watch worldwide, since I no longer watch football I wanted to examine how the NFL exploits & brainwashes children.

Fight For Every Inch

Reddit “I can't speak to non NFL players as they're not really contact sports, but in the NFL, you're taught from an early age to fight for every yard possible. Some guys are so insanely strong that while they're fighting for yards, they'll hurt themselves.” 

Youth Football Coach #1 — Reddit "Coaches used the “quick whistle” (so guys hit and continued 100% until the whistle but were instructed to stop at the whistle which was often blown at the onset of tackle/heavy contact) in a lot of drills/scrimmage and usually we started drills at like 75% and worked our way up to 100%."

Youth Football Coach #2 — Reddit "I’m even fond of doing team periods and whole practices in “thud” once or twice a week in-season with shoulder pads and shorts—and a VERY quick whistle and watchful coaches."

So, the play’s over but the ref hasn't blown the whistle so the ball is still in play.

No matter how injured a player becomes in this scenario — no matter how far away the player was from the actual ball, the play itself & the meaningful action on the field — whether during kickoff or during any other play — players when asked always say the same exact thing: that they have been trained since Pee Wee to "play through the whistle" and that the play isn't over until the ref blows his whistle.

Pee Wee is ages 5 to 9 — literal children being brainwashed to hit with everything they have until a whistle is blown and they are then allowed to stop.

How is that not Pavlovian conditioning?

They’re taught from the literal time they are children to hit not think, to play at absolute full tilt & full speed, every single play, 70 to 80 plays a game, until the all mighty whistle is blown.

Until then, they are trained as children to risk their lives, risk their limbs, risk their bodies, risk their brains, risk their minds on every single play, no matter how far away they actually are from the ball on the field.

They as a person, they as people, they as children, do not matter — all that matters is the ball, football.

That is Pavlovian conditioning!

That is brainwashing!

During mindless, endless, numbing hitting drills during training camps, the coaches push their adolescent, teenage and young adult male charges to their absolute limit and breaking point and the only time that they are allowed to stop — linemen hitting drills, red zone drills, 1 on 1 "beat your man" drills, etc. — is when the coach blows his whistle.

Until then, you are nothing but an inhuman battering ram smashing yourself repeatedly into your teammates in drills, practices & scrimmages and opponents during games, waiting to hear a merciful whistle to end your brain being battered.

Short bursts of violence, intensity, explosive action, balletic destruction that all comes to an instantaneous immediate stop the moment the ref whistles the play dead.

Until then, you unthinkingly unflinchingly risk catastrophic & debilitating injury, paralysis, concussion, physical & mental incapacitation, spinal cord injuries, broken necks, permanent brain damage, nerve damage, internal bleeding, punctured & collapsed lungs, broken collarbones, temporary memory loss, anterograde amnesia, loss of consciousness, blacking out, convulsions & seizures, fencing responses . . .

Never hesitating, never flinching, never thinking.

As the old NFL VHS series were called, Search and Destroy.

War Stories.

Strike Force and Merchants of Menace.

Simulated battle with actual real-life casualties.

Constant programming & brainwashing at all times at all levels of the sport.

How else do you get a human being to smash into another human being 70 to 80 times a game without thinking and without hesitation?

It's what the military does when brainwashing its recruits during basic training.

It's getting human beings to have absolutely no regard for their own physical well being. 

Attack!

Go over that hill!

Get into that bunker!

Get into those trenches!

Charge!

The parallels between the military & football are stark, undeniable, sobering, unnerving & fucking terrifying.

Same cold, militaristic, dehumanizing demands.

Same unthinking, unquestioned obedience to authority.

Sir, yes sir!

Yes, coach!

Same brainwashing tactics.

Same inhuman, inhumane, unreasonable, cruel demands.

Same breaking down of the mind, body and psyche.

Same militaristic ideals of masculinity, virtue, physical courage, valor & bravado.

Same willingness to die for the cause.

Same replacement of the individual with the group — the unit or squad in the military and the team in football.

I am soldier.

I am player.

I am football.

I will kill myself until I hear the whistle.

I will hurt and be hurt until then.

I will maim and be maimed.

Search & Destroy, as the NFL VHS 80s video series was called.

Injure and be injured.

Leap, jump, twist, grab, shove, pull, growl, grunt, push, crawl, fight, drag, scratch, claw, punch, stomp.

Anything for ball.

Anything for coach.

Anything goes.

In between the white lines and the whistle is where essential truth lies.

It's where I can test myself as a man against another grown ass man.

There's no hiding behind, going around, going up or over or getting someone else to do it for you or anything like that. 

The true measure of a man — just you and me, lined up against each other, squared up, pads against pads.

The distillation of manhood as we stare into each other, neither one willing to bend — so who breaks?

The ultimate test of manhood. 

Masculinity boiled down to its purest essence.

So rare in today's day and age of tweets, twitch and texts.

Who is a man? Who came to play?

Who came to hit?

Who wants it more?

Are you going to take it away from me or am I going to take it away from you?

We both want the same exact thing so the only question as we line up against each other is — who wants it more?

No excuses, no hiding, no running — just squared up against each other, me vs you.

The essence of manhood and war.

The only way past me is to run right through me.

To overpower me. To have a stronger will than me.

To want it more than me. 

To be more of a man than me. 

A true battle of wills unparalleled anywhere else in our current day genteel, sterilized, homogenized, bubble wrapped existences.

Lined up, one on one, mano y mano.

My will against your will.

May the least battered brain cells win.

In between the white lines.

Its where ligaments and tendons are torn, where muscles are pulled, where bones break and shatter, where brains and minds are concussed to jelly, where neurons tear, where brain cells die, where white brain matter is lost, where seasons are ended, where careers are ended, where blood and sweat and tears flow, where screams are bellowed, where war cries are yelled, where players go down on a knee, where players collapse to the turf motionlessly face down, where players lie immobile, where players are carted off, stretchered off & driven off by ambulance, where cerebrospinal fluid leaks, where traumatic brain injuries occur, where brains bleed & swell, where helmets clash & collide, where facemasks crash into one another, where cleats dig into soft bruised skin, where players bodies are bent backwards, snapped upwards, crunched in between multiple defenders, hit high and hit low, where human beings are obliterated, crashed, smashed, destroyed, pulverized, crushed. . . 

Anything goes until the whistle blows.

The darkest violence, the most unhinged impulses, the most feral & ferocious attacks.

The whistle is what the players are trained, conditioned and endlessly brainwashed as children in countless training camps, hitting drills, 1 on 1s, 7 on 7s, 11 on 11s, end zone drills, scrimmages and gametime scenarios to listen to, slavishly obey, and follow like salivating Pavlovian dogs.

Whistle, salivate. Whistle, stop being an inhuman battering ram, back to being a human being. 

Until the ball is snapped again, ofcourse.

Listen for the whistle at all times as it will tell you whether to dive on top of a pile of fellow human beings where anything goes because even in 2025 the cameras cannot see what goes on under a pile of 22 writhing behemoth men killing each other for a bouncing ball.

The whistle will tell you whether to hit, smash, run full tilt into another human being also running full tilt into you, whether to launch yourself like a missile, to leap over the end zone straight into a 350+ pound defender, whether to torpedo yourself in open space at a really shitty angle against an offensive player in a tackle attempt that has the potential to seriously hurt you with the added bonus of probably not even knocking the ball loose, kamikaze'ing yourself on kick off since a fair catch wasn’t signaled whether it puts you on injured reserve for the rest of the season or not he is going to pay for not fair catching that ball . . .

The whistle is all-powerful.

The whistle tells you when to pop, when to jam, when to fill the hole, when to hit high, when to hit low, when to launch yourself like a weapon, when to lower your shoulder and obliterate your opponent, when to compress your spine, when to fracture your vertebrae, when to willingly enter yourself into the concussion protocol, when to willingly check yourself into your local hospitals neurology ward, when to transfer yourself to an assisted living facility, when to shave years off your life, when to shrink your own brains white matter, when to physically & mentally incapacitate yourself, when to make yourself see stars, when to make yourself taste blood, when to pop off an opponent's helmet, when to risk a crazy angle that may take you and the other guy out, when to break a stiff arm, when to pulverize a guy that is heading out of bounds, when to demolish a QB who started sliding just a little late, when to punish, hurt, maim, injure, destroy, destruct, damage, pulverize, pulpify, put in a blender . . .

Give it everything you've got!

You’ve gotta go hit the person in front of you!

Run through them like they're not even there!

I want to see violence! Aggression!

Make him pay!

Make him see stars!

Make him swallow his mouthguard!

Who's a man? Who's afraid to hit?

Who's afraid to be hit?

We're going to see what's what once those pads come on.

Militaristic brainwashing tactics employed in bootcamp with adult recruits are utilized in hitting drills in Pee Wee football with 5 to 8 year old children.

Football is brainwashing.

Brainwashing Children

“It’s chaotic. It takes years and years of brainwashing to go along with a lot of the shit. Lol. It starts at Pee Wee [youth football]. We were groomed from a young age to care a little less about humans. Training camp is brainwashing camp. I used to always laugh watching guys who came in one way and left another after the daily brainwashing. Like, damn they got another one. Psychologically it’s some really dangerous shit. Athletes experience a lot of physical and mental abuse. It’s a traumatic experience. The PTSD.”  – Martellus Bennett, former NFL defensive end & Super Bowl winner & author of "Things That Make White People Uncomfortable"

“The brainwashing & dividing of culture for a small piece of jewelry No Longer Exist...Being around too much Ego to even understand that someone has the same skin as you No Longer Exist ... People using me for Entertainment and not understanding that i Am a Black Man in America No Longer Exist." — Rishard Matthews, a former wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints wrote on his social media. 

NBCNews.com:

"Former college football linebacker Michael Keck had played tackle football since he was age 6 and had sustained more than 10 concussions by the time he was a junior in college. 

Keck knew something was going wrong with his brain. He was only in his 20s and his memory was failing. He was having trouble concentrating and he’d become uncharacteristically emotional and short-fused.

By the time Keck was 25, he had lost the ability to work and had become completely dependent on his wife.

Keck died from a congenital heart defect at the age of 25 in 2013.

In the researchers' report, published in JAMA Neurology, doctors found clumps of abnormal tau protein scattered throughout his brain in a pattern researchers say is one of the hallmarks of CTE.

"It was the worst CTE I’ve seen in an individual this young," said study co-author Dr. Ann McKee. “It was quite widespread," said McKee, chief of neuropathology at the Bedford Veterans Administration and a professor of neurology and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine.

Researchers discovered that Keck not only had CTE, but also that it was as severe as what had been found in the brain of 43-year-old Seau.

"He started playing when he was quite young,” Dr. Ann McKee from Boston University's CTE research center said. “So he had 16 years of football behind him. That’s a lengthy exposure."

Even as a youngster, Michael had been taught to play through pain, even if it was associated with a brain injury, his wife said.

“He told me that when he was 8 he would be sitting on the bench holding his head and the coach would be rubbing it because it hurt so bad,” Cassandra, Michael's wife, said.

Whether Keck was playing youth, or high school or college football, the message was “if you’re hurt, you just get out there and play — don’t be a wuss,” Cassandra said.

Regardless of how dope Kendrick Lamar's halftime show is, or whether the former team I supported for 15 years before I stopped watching football actually beat the Chiefs & win their second Super Bowl in less than a decade, or how hilarious the ads are (Seal as a...seal?) or how breathless the reporting is on Taylor Swift's outfit is, if her & Travis Kelce wore matching outfits & the over/under for how many times the broadcast will switch to Taylor reacting in VIP during Kendrick's performance...

I will be sitting at home not cheering the Eagles on, not watching the Super Bowl, the ads, the halftime show & all the rest of the spectacle, glamour, glitz that encompasses what has essentially become a national holiday — the Super Bowl.

Lest you think it's just because of children being conditioned in creepy Pavlovian violent militaristic brainwashing drills, there is also the issue of Brett Favre at 55 already being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease by five different neurologists & struggling to hold a screw driver in his hands.

Was football worth Brett Favre's mind?

Brett Favre: A Warning From The Future — 90 Seconds:

East Bay Times — 2016:

“HE WOULD take off running, screaming, waving his arms and raising his fists, until he reached the object of his “man love.” 

He didn’t think twice about vaulting into the arms of a lineman or climbing the back of a receiver. 

He would hug and kiss coaches, teammates and opponents.

Everyone was his friend, and he spent 16 seasons hauling us around for one of the wildest, craziest, greatest rides in sports history.

Then he had to go and add good-ole-boy charm to his package. Favre was a regular guy, one of the boys. He showed up in Green Bay and immediately began pushing out burps that could be heard all over Wisconsin. He was the overgrown country boy with the twinkle in his eye, embracing every moment, squeezing it to the last drop.

Favre no doubt fantasized about dumping a bucket of water on Paul Tagliabue, the stuffy patrician mannequin-with-a-brain who served as No Fun League commissioner for most of Favre’s 17-year career.

If Favre was not smooching a teammate, he might be seen wrapping a friendly arm around a “hated” opponent such as Warren Sapp or taking a dive to nudge Michael Strahan into the record book.

While most football players tend to be programmed and many are utterly humorless — especially on the field — Favre was the opposite. His imagination never took leave, his love the game never went absent. He was a such highly unique football player, we have to turn to three retired NBA stars to capture his essence. 

We submit that Favre was a blend of Larry Bird’s cool, aw-shucks swagger and Magic Johnson’s exuberance and creativity, with a generous sprinkle of Charles Barkley’s innate insouciance.

That aside, Favre was a tremendous thrower, with unmatched toughness, outstanding arm strength and a machismo that spread to his teammates. Though Montana and Elway were great leaders, neither was any better than Favre, who shared with them the ability to make magic, thus inspiring faith among teammates and fans. 

Another shrewd discovery of the superb scout Ron Wolf, Favre joined the Packers in 1992 as a backup and in less than a season established himself as the man to engineer their turnaround.

Favre started 253 consecutive games, which given the pounding a quarterback takes is as impressive as Cal Ripken’s feat of playing in 2,632 consecutive baseball games.

Favre won most of those games and, moreover, appeared to enjoy the action as much as we enjoyed watching. If he were to say he’d have played for nothing, I think I’d believe him.”

Sports Illustrated

"You would never come out of the game for a concussion because nobody thought concussions were that bad," Favre said. "It was a matter of toughness. You didn't come out of a game because you were dinged, you saw stars, or fireworks are flashing — which are all results of a concussion, as we know now. Ear ringing, kind of like the dinner bell dining — 'time to come eat' — that should be a wake-up call: You just suffered a severe brain injury."

Boston University Medical Campus:

A study of 211 deceased football players found that those who started playing tackle football before age 12 developed symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) 13 years earlier than those who started later. The study also found that each year a player played before age 12 predicted an earlier onset of cognitive problems by 2.4 years. 

U.S. News & World Report

Favre was known for his durability during his Hall of Fame career. He had an NFL-record streak of 297 consecutive starts, a figure that goes up to 321 if playoff games are included.

He won three straight MVP awards with the Green Bay Packers from 1995-97. Favre led the 1996 Packers to their first Super Bowl title in nearly three decades and brought them back to the Super Bowl the following year.

Fox11Online

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who was Favre’s teammate for three seasons in Green Bay, said Wednesday it is “unfortunately” part of the game.

“You know, the older you get, and some of you know this, like the mortality gets kind of thrown in our face a little bit more,” Rodgers said. “It’s actually unfortunately more normal to hear about a death or a cancer diagnosis or a diagnosis like this. And it doesn’t desensitize it for me. I mean, I feel bad for him and (his wife) Deanna, but it’s unfortunately part of our game. That’s part of the risk of playing.”

Favre said five Parkinson's specialists told him they believed head trauma played a role in his developing the disease.

“Well, hell, I wrote the book on head trauma,” said Favre, who once estimated he had “thousands” of concussions.

Packers.com

Number 5: "The worst hit I remember in college was a game at Auburn," Brett says. "The defensive back, I never saw him, and he hit me right here," he says, pointing to his chin. "It was Carlo Cheatum. I'll never forget his name. You live and learn."

Number 4: Greg Lloyd, Aug. 13, 1995, at Pittsburgh (preseason). "Yah, I keep forgetting that one," Brett says. Wonder why. Lloyd hit Favre and knocked him silly. "That would definitely be in the top 5," he says.

Number 3: vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, Dec. 24, 1995. Remember that streak of blood trickling down Favre's chin as he led a scoring drive to win the division title? So does Brett. "I tried running into the end zone, got smushed by two guys. I ended up coughing up blood."

"They laugh in the huddle," Brett says. "Frankie (Winters) always tells me, 'You're the craziest son-of-a- --- I've ever seen.'"

"I look at this game as being brutal, and you've got to get up if you can. Other players don't look at it that way. But jumping up, and pumping up our players and fans, it may give us an advantage. I'll use anything I can, including my body."

Was it truly worth it?

Losing your mind over a game?

Your memories? Your personality?

Your ability to work?

Becoming mentally incapacitated?

Forgetting who your wife is?

Forgetting who your children are?

Forgetting your coach Mike Holmgren?

Forgetting making history & being MVP three years in a row?

Forgetting winning the Super Bowl for Green Bay’s first Lombardi in three decades?

Forgetting bringing the Packers to the Super Bowl back to back two years in a row?

Forgetting your consecutive streak of starting nearly 300 games in a row — over 320 games if post season playoff games are included — and subsequently being known as an ironman with unmatched toughness?

Was it worth not knowing who you are?

Was it worth debilitating & demoralizing Parkinsonism symptoms?

Was it worth dying with the shakes, tremors, trembling, physically fragile & feeble, losing most of your weight, struggling to walk, move, stand, sit, talk, swallow & breathe?

Was it worth a slow, agonizing, debilitating, demoralizing, soul crushing death that robs you of your personality, memories & dignity?

Was it worth it being superman if it made you lose yourself?



[punsarethebest]

guys how do I gaslight myself into understanding chemistry cuz I need it to become a doctor 💔💔

[spaceintruderdetector]

During dreaming, the neural substrates that support waking sensory input, task-oriented thinking, and movement are relatively deactivated. Domhoff presents the conditions that have to be fulfilled before dreaming can occur spontaneously. He describes the specific cognitive processes supported by the neural substrate of dreaming and then looks at dream reports of research participants. The “why” of dreaming, he says, may be the most counterintuitive outcome of empirical dream research. Though the question is usually framed in terms of adaptation, there is no positive evidence for an adaptive theory of dreaming. Research by anthropologists, historians, and comparative religion scholars, however, suggests that dreaming has psychological and cultural uses, with the most important of these found in religious ceremonies and healing practices. Finally, he offers suggestions for how future dream studies might take advantage of new technologies, including smart phones.

The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming: The Where, How, When, What, and Why of Dreams : Domhoff, G. William : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[stellerssong]

5 and 29 please?

5—what’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

having given the matter a great deal of thought, i’ve come to the conclusion that i have no interest in writing a corinthian/lucienne femdom hatesex on the beach fic, on the grounds that i’m personally not compelled by the fantasy it presents. apologies to everyone who read the middle section of that sentence and immediately went AWOOGA AWOOGA BARK BARK BARK BARK AWOOOOO like a cartoon character. i know you are out there and i heard you do it.

the real bummer of this whole affair, though, is the fact that “beg me to spare thee the back of my hand” would have been a kickass title. free to a good home, friends!

29—share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic.

i don’t work in drafts, so everything that’s been cut from existing fics has been sent to hell already. but what i CAN offer you is this (probably obnoxiously long) snippet from a portion of wereverse that i will probably never actually post about, lovingly nicknamed, “the bath time fic”:

The tub isn’t quite wide enough for them to sit side-by-side, and he moves toward the tap a little so Lucienne can lower herself into the water, angles himself so his cheek is to her, rather than his back. A dark glitter as his gaze flicks over her body. She knows it’s ridiculous to have an attack of modesty right now, but she brings her arms up to cover her breasts. “There,” she says, too cheerful even for her own ears. “Does that help?” Dream makes a small noise in his throat. Maybe assent. Hard to tell. But he does reach out with one hand and rest his knuckles gently against Lucienne’s knee. You can tell he’s getting keyed when he starts grabbing and clinging and clawing at you. Light touches are a good sign. They mean he’s present enough to be careful. (Well. They mean something’s present enough, says a voice in her head that sounds a lot like Cori. She ignores that, as best she can.) “Is the water warm enough?” A nod. Better and better. “Do you need me to soap you, or…?” Silence for a moment. Dream’s throat works, like there’s a reply stuck in there trying to get out, but in the end he just unfolds one slim arm and picks up the bar of soap himself. “All right. Well…” Lucienne settles herself a little uncomfortably against the back of the tub. “Just—let me know. If you need anything.” His white lashes go up like a pair of dove’s wings. Luminous dark underneath, whites visible only at the corners. A creature’s eyes, an animal’s eyes, for all that he’s being so good about holding onto his human shape. That’s going to be…difficult to explain to people not in the know about his condition, at some point, but Lucienne’s not thinking about that yet, she’s just thinking about immediate concerns, practicalities— He shifts position slightly so the tips of his toes are resting against hers. A faint line works its way in between his brows. He still doesn’t speak, but that expression is plain as black ink on white paper: is this okay? Lucienne has to smile at that. Her face aches, like she’s lost the muscle memory sometime in the past however-many weeks. Footsie. Aren’t the two of them fucking adorable.

[nexttothelamp]

...

[classicintp]

I know this was posted months ago but it is a subject important to me and I try to never miss a chance to talk about it. For anyone wondering about this, when you sleep your brain consolidates all of your day's experiences into its different facets of long term memory. It's how you actively get better at tasks after you spend time practicing them, whether physical tasks or studying information, and it's why it is recommended to take a nap after an extended period of studying instead of cramming all night (and why cramming all night generally is detrimental rather than helpful). Now, going off on a relevant tangent:

Your dreams are the byproduct electrical activity of your brain having to access your different pools of memory during a state it otherwise wouldn't be accessing them. Have you ever wondered why even some of the most impactful or emotionally intense dreams you have tend to slip away half an hour or so after you wake up? Your brain doesn't want to confuse the experiences you have while conscious to the runoff stimuli it inadvertantly creates during its memory consolidation process. When you're unconscious, your brain isn't responding to stimuli in a way that you normally do in order to write those experiences into memory, and the result is not remembering your dreams, or forgetting them shortly after waking. Waking up feeling rested but not remembering your dreams or forgetting them pretty soon after waking is generally considered a sign of healthy sleeping.

Of course just like with anything else there are going to be outliers and exceptions; if you wake up feeling good and rested and remember every moment of your dreams it isn't particularly bad but it's not the common experience. You can train yourself to remember your dreams or hold on to them longer without it impacting your health, and there are certain drugs and anesthesias that suppress dreaming and the result isn't positive (not remembering your dreams is different from not having them at all even if the experience feels the same). In general though, intense vivid dreams that you do not forget is a sign you are not sleeping well, and that can be detrimental in very many ways. It can be caused by persistent stress, insomnia, physical illness, or even just sleeping in a bright or noisy room. My problem was sleep apnea, where you stop breathing while asleep due to obstruction in your airway whether from your tongue, inflammed tonsils, or just the relaxing of your throat muscles.

Something I have found as a very common experience from people who are not sleeping well and dreaming vividly because of it is the prophetic dream claim, where an extra intense bout of recognition like an extreme version of deja vu hits and they genuinely feel like they are moment-for-moment re-experiencing a dream they had the night before or sometime in the past. Now let me be clear, that is not me giving you my opinion or beliefs of whether people can or cannot have prophetic dreams. What I am saying though is if you know someone who has claimed to have prophetic dreams but they only seem to happen randomly in short bursts, they can never really harness their ability to predict anything other than maybe a high odds guess (50/50 coin flip, which of the three cups a ball is in)? They're not lying to you, they are genuinely experiencing something they can't explain and are just as frustrated they can't use it to their benefit, they also likely haven't gotten good rest in so long they have forgotten what that feels like, and will chock their incredibly sleepy mornings and sluggish days up to just getting old. Being able to fall asleep without struggle and waking up not having remembered tossing and turning does not mean you're sleeping well.

Deja vu is the sudden feeling you've experienced the current situation you're in. It's a glitch of recognition whereas stimulation of one of your senses matches or is similar to stimulation you've experienced before, so your brain sends the appropriate signals of successful memory recall while failing to actually locate the memory. Every feeling and sensation you have is the result of hormones and neurotransmitters being released, binding to specific receptors, being neutralized, or having been taken back up, including the different feelings of recognition. When a physical stimulus matches to stimulus you've experienced in the past and you recall the memory, your brain releases the neurotransmitters responsible for your feeling of successfully remembering. When you recognize something or someone but fail to recall the memory, you're left with the tip-of-your-tongue frustration and you don't get the neurotransmitter signals responsible for that feeling of remembering. Deja vu happens when the neurotransmitters are released as if a memory was successfully recalled, and yet no memory was recalled at all, you're left with the feeling that you recognize the situation you're currently experiencing as a past experience.

Anyone can experience deja vu but most people notice they will experience it more frequently after several days or weeks of little or rough sleep; your brain starts to more heavily rely on its ability to autopilot recurring tasks to save energy and that includes involuntary processes you generally don't actively drive, like the processes required in remembering similar sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and feelings. Instead of waiting for successful recall, your brain will pre-empt the signal having full confidence the memory is going to be recalled because why wouldn't it? But then no memory is recalled at all, and you're left with the feeling that you have successfully remembered a past memory of everything currently happening in front of you.

so last night i was struggling with a difficult section in a game, and when i woke up this morning i got it on my first try. this reminded me of a documentary i saw as a kid about how mice have maze-exploration brain activity in their dreams after a maze task, and have better performance after, so dreaming is maybe "practice" of daily activities.

anyway, i mention this because i noticed myself conceiving of this sleep-skill-benefit as a "mouse ability", and feeling gratitude towards Mouse (the abstract spirit of mice) for granting me this boon. this is the gator's aid all over again

[magical-hermaphrodite]

Dream Journal 23:

A few nights ago brought a strange, visceral vision. Geometry, a grid of thin blue lines against an of white background, there was a distortion, and a shock. The shock radiated from the back of my neck, like a spinal kind of thing. It hurt and I jolted awake.

{EDIT: If I were living in the 24th century I would be able to just go right to a doctor about this but that’s not the society we live in

[jimintomystery]

Image sources:

Airy, Hubert (1870). "On a distinct form of Transient Hemiopsia." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 160:247-264. Plate XXV. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1870.0013

Babinski, Joseph (1890). "De la migraine ophthalmique hystérique." Archives de Neurologie. 20(60):305-335. Plate I. http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/medica/cote?91155x1890x305_335

Person with migraine aura today: Ow ow ow my head hurts and all I can see is TV static :(

Nineteenth century doctors describing migraine aura with the manic horror of a lovecraftian horror protagonist:

At first it looked just like the spot which you see after having looked at the sun or some bright object; I thought it might be an eyelash in the way, or something of that sort, but I was soon undeceived when it began to increase…

When it was in its height it seemed like a fortified town with bastions all round it, these bastions being coloured most gorgeously... All the interior of the fortification, so to speak, was boiling and rolling about in a most wonderful manner as if it was some thick liquid all alive. (Hubert Airy, 1856)

[captorcorp]

fighting for my life trying not to ramble about my special interest on posts it would detract from the message of

[m4xd4hlia]

[lokh]

back to kicking and thrashing in my sleep