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Old 05-17-2017, 07:23 AM   #26
Bruno
 
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#42): Doesn't Sleep, Less Sleep

That's really very similar to the way "actors" in your dream will be very different from the "role" your mind assigns them. E.G. dreaming about the lunch lady from school except she's your mom. Not "dreaming your mom works at the school cafeteria instead of at the post office" or "dreaming that your dad married the lunch lady instead of your mom" but seeing one and identifying them as the other.

The vision process in your brain has about 40 different steps, IIRC, and it's a separate, late-stage step that assigns meaning to the things you see, and another separate step that assigns emotional importance to what you see. The step that recognizes a face is different to the step that pulls up the correct emotions and associations for the person who is attached to that face. Reading is similar because it leverages the same general "stations" in the brain - recognizing the shapes of letters, recognizing that the letters are in the right order for given words, assembling sentences, attaching emotional meaning to everything.

Your brain, while dreaming, is free to do any random thing for any step in that chain. You can get a picture of one text, the meaning of another. The picture of one person, the meaning of another. "This is my house" when your dreaming about a tent. "This is my dog" when you're dreaming about a pig.
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