all you have to do is dream

I am now officially fascinated by the discrepancies between dream recall in various people, and some random googling this morning has revealed interesting things about dreaming. Go cognitive science.

• Dreaming seems to be the result of random brainstem activity during sleep: specifically, the part of the brain stem called (bizarrely enough) the pons generates random impulses which are read in the same way as actual sensory data, hence the experience of dreaming as though it's real. Other, more rational parts of the brain then try to make sense of the activity, resulting in a sort of semi-narrative connectedness to the weird images. Some researchers believe that this means dreams have no actual cognitive purpose, and thus analysing them, at least individually, is futile. (Me, I disagree).
• People who remember dreams tend to be the ones who actively enjoy them and therefore are strongly motivated to remember them, which tendency is borne out by the comments by witterers. Apparently you can train yourself into it simply by thinking actively about dreaming before you go to sleep. Possibly, for example, wytchfynder's recent spate of dreams is at least partially because my witterings have prodded him to actually think about dreaming.
• One study suggests that on average, people remember their dreams three to four times a week, which also suggests that my snap witterer survey has skewed results, since it seemed equally divided between "almost always" and "almost never". The same study suggests that people who remember their dreams are more prone to daydreaming, fantasy and imaginativeness generally, although other studies claim this evidence is inconclusive.

I am pleased to report that, despite my fears to the contrary, yesterday's weird mix of movies, together with the codeine in the cold meds, caused me to dream the following things last night:

• Leading an expedition down a spiral underground passage in order to hack through a massive sheet of ice, and giving up just before we broke through;
• Going to the opera with the Evil Landlord, except I'd arranged to have my hair cut at exactly the same time;
• Being a vaguely princessy-figure sent to live in the court of another king, high up in the mountains somewhere, all very medievally and filled with political intrigue and, for some reason, cooking.

In other words, no Freeway- or Libertine-inspired wierdness, for which I give thanks.