From: laura@nospam.me   
      
   "Graham Jones"  wrote in message   
   news:nO2APcAy6JkBFwLh@visiv.co.uk...   
   > In article <419017b6$0$30332$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>, Nick Argall   
   >  writes   
   > >   
   >   
   > >> That isn't time compression. It's a dream that covers a week of events.   
   > >You   
   > >> remember a week, but do you recall what you had for breakfast on the   
   third   
   > >> day of that dream? In other words, there is a vast difference between   
   the   
   > >> memory of a week, and the week itself. Therefore, it is in no way   
   > >> supernatural to have a dream that seems to span a significant amount of   
   > >> time. Such a dream doesn't even take 8 hours to have; 30 minutes is   
   > >> sufficient.   
   > >   
   > >That conflicts with the studies done by Susan Blackmore that show   
   perceived   
   > >dream-time normally has a 1:1 relationship with perceived awake-time.   
   > >   
   >   
   > I don't there is a real conflict here. I've never had a dream which   
   > seemed to last a week, but I do remember a vivid, lucid dream in which I   
   > climbed a familiar mountain, deliberately choosing to walk not fly. This   
   > would have taken three hours in reality, and which seemed to take   
   > roughly that long in the dream. But what I could actually remember when   
   > awake was not three hours of experience, but more like edited highlights   
   > of climbing a mountain. More like three minutes. Within the edited   
   > highlights, I think time was very likely about 1:1, but there were big   
   > gaps. Concertina'd time?   
      
   That's very much the point I was trying to make, and it holds true for all   
   experiences we have - not just dreams. Any memory is a set of edited   
   highlights. The reason it may seem as more is the memory of the emotional   
   contexts. Say, for example, you may remember that you were very bored. That   
   will make you think that the situation in question lasted a long time, which   
   it probably did, but you don't remember the entire situation - just a   
   general "image" of it, and the fact that you were bored.   
   Maybe dreams are just a series of highlights, much like our memories, but   
   generated AS highlights to begin with, rather than highlights being   
   extracted from real experience. Along with these generated highlights would   
   come "filler", as in the example of the memory of being bored, which may   
   trick us into thinking that the dream was much longer than it really was.   
   On a strictly scientific note, REM sleep periods start at about 10 minutes   
   in length (the first one after falling asleep), and gradually grow to a   
   length of up to one hour later on in the sleep.   
   If this is true, and it is also true that perceived dream-time has a 1:1   
   relationship with perceived awake-time, only up to one hour of actual   
   experience may be had in a dream. If that consists of highlights and filler,   
   it isn't hard to see how dreams can seem to last much longer.   
   Try running over the events of the past week in your mind. Do it in a   
   matter-of-fact way, without getting distracted by pondering specifics. How   
   long does that take? Hardly one hour, I'd say :-)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)