Lucida drömmar (LD) innebär att drömmaren inser, under drömmens gång, att omgivningen och händelserna runtomkring är en dröm och inger förmågan att kunna påverka och reflektera över händelserna i drömmen. I lucid dreaming treatment (LDT) får drömmaren lära sig att förändra mardrömmars händelseförlopp. Dock blir inte alla lucida och många tror att det är själva känslan av kontroll som ger en effekt. Studien kommer utforska om kontroll utgör en nyckelkomponent i LDT genom att undersöka sambandet mellan LD och locus of control (LoC), depression och subjektivt välbefinnande där LD verkar som en medierande variabel mellan å ena sidan LoC och å andra sidan depression samt subjektivt välbefinnande. Deltagarna (n = 54) i undersökningen har fyllt i formulär gällande frekvens av drömmar och LD samt formulären Rotter’s 29 item internal-external scale, Center for epidemiologic studies depression scale, International positive and negative affect schedule short form, Satisfaction with life scale och Pittsburgh sleep quality index. Undersökningen gav inte stöd för ställda hypoteserna att LD har en medierande effekt i sambandet mellan LoC och depression eller mellan LoC och subjektivt välbefinnande. Dock har den visat på en liten signifikant korrelation mellan högre frekvens av LD och högre grad av negativ affekt. Resultatet antyder att LD korrelerar med känslor, vilket bör undersökas vidare då affekt skulle kunna vara en komponent inom LDT via möjligheten att förändra känslor från negativa till positiva.

Research on the neural correlates of lucid dreaming has recently gained more underlying data. By exploring seven studies that investigated the neural basis of lucid dreaming, this essay sought to examine which neural correlates are associated with lucid dreaming and how proposed neural correlates relate to phenomenological aspects. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was judged as the region most associated with lucid dreaming, in support of a DLPFC hypothesis. Support for reactivation of DLPFC in lucid dreaming consisted of data from electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and transcranial direct current stimulation. Phenomenological aspects associated with this region involved meta-awareness, working-memory, decision-making, and conscious perception. Other regions of interest were parietal areas, frontal areas, and precuneus. Data was not always compatible, implying need for further research. The possibility of further research was judged as promising, based on a recent study inducing lucid dreaming in a significant percent of its test subjects.

Until relatively recently, the overarching agreement in the clinical literature was that total cessation of dreaming is related to posterior parietal lesions. Two recent case reports (Bischof and Bassetti, 2004; Poza and Martí-Massó, 2006), in which patients with medial occipital lesions demonstrated total cessation of dreaming, cast doubt on this clinic-anatomical correlation, and the neuropsychological theory of dreaming associated with it (Solms, 1997). In the current study, seven patients with medial occipital lesions (with posterior cerebral artery ischemic lesions) were recruited. Three patients had total dream cessation and four had intact dreaming (confirmed on REM awakening). Acute phase clinical neuroimaging was reviewed and the extent of the lesions in both groups was meticulously analysed by a neuroanatomist, who was blind to the dreaming status of each patient. The three patients with total cessation of dreaming all demonstrated posterior thalamic infarctions involving the pulvinar nucleus. All four of the patients with intact dreaming demonstrated medial temporo-occipital lesions, and none had thalamic lesions. Upon review of the source images of one of the two case studies with medial occipital damage and total dream cessation (Bischof and Bassetti, 2004), it was noted that the patient also demonstrated infarction of the pulvinar of the thalamus. The pulvinar of the thalamus has discrete thalamo-cortical connections to the parietal lobe, which it innervates. Disruption in the pulvinar of the thalamus can, therefore, reasonably be expected to result in parietal dysfunction. This study represents the largest case-report comparison in patients with REM-confirmed dream cessation with suitably circumscribed pathology. These findings cast doubt on claims of medial occipital mechanisms of dream cessation and suggest that posterior parietal circuitry remains involved.

This work deals with novel heroines and their waking dreaming in the novels of th 20th centrury form central Europe. Methodology is inspired by Gaston Bachelard's water and dreams. This methodology analyzes categories of waking dreams which occur the most often in selected novels. Considering Bachelard's texts about places there appear other places for dreaming, which bind to content topics of the dream. The work is enhancement by phenomenology of perecption, which proves in the end as the most important criterion of the attitude to waking dreams.

The aim of this research thesis was to investigate whether there are any cognitive factors that might influence reported dream colour. This question was prompted by the existence of a period of time in the early 20th century when the majority of people reported having greyscale dreams, and coloured dreaming was treated as an anomaly. On the level of individual differences, age, visual imagery abilities and memory for colour were singled out as the potential contributors to reports of greyscale television and the changes in the methodology of research were preliminarily identified as the possible causes of the historical trends in the colour of dreams, and the first empirical studies in this thesis address these issues. Subsequent studies explored the role of visual imagery ability, and individual differences in cognitive representation and memory in determining the reporting of colour in dreams. Overall a total of seven studies are reported The range of methods employed in these studies was diverse and required the development of new measures of colour memory and visual imagery. Some studies employed diaries to gather dream data and allowed cross-sectional (e.g. age) or cross-cultural comparisons. Others were more laboratory-based and explored data concerning visual memory and imagery performance with diverse dependent measures (e.g. response time data). In addition these studies involved the development of a novel coding scheme for visual dream content. While it was impossible to decisively support or disprove the idea that greyscale dream reports reflect genuine dream experiences, the research carried out for this thesis provided many fascinating insights into the factors that determine how we dream and how we report our dreams, highlighting the role of our cognitive abilities and preferences. Moreover, the studies have uncovered novel ways in which visual imagery preferences shape how we remember and report our experiences. The implications of these findings are important not just for the methodology of dream research, but for the whole field of cognitive and applied psychology

A compendium of horizontality through the means of theory, facts, fictions, questions and other ruminations on the Caribbean and the diasporic experience.

Ancestral knowledge exerts itself in the daily lives of the Nagas in Northeast India, whether through passed down clan genealogical knowledge, or through dreams and waketime omens. The Angamis, one of the Naga tribes, articulate a close relationship between the ancestral spirits they meet in their dreams, and ruopfü, one’s always-perceiving soul or life-being, complicating the boundary that would separate dreaming and waking states. In mediating these two states, the Angami ruopfü therefore has a powerful ability to inhabit these two spaces simultaneously, thus allowing for their reversibility. These processes of inhabiting the ‘real’ in waking and dreaming, occur in the midst of significant political turmoil, and this thesis examines the ways in which dreams index terrains of clan and state power in relation to a broader cosmic struggle. Moreover, as a guiding principle of personhood, dreaming, and reversibility elucidate the ways in which Angamis explore, understand, and generate alternative futures. I begin the discussion in the domain of the kitchen hearth. Within this gendered space characterised by a continuous rhythm of quotidian practices and attentiveness to dreams and omens, a significant political counter-narrative to the enduring pattern of clan patriarchy emerges. This tense symbiosis is characterised by a relationship of nurturance, but at the same time resistance to patriarchal meddling in domestic affairs. I then describe how this tension mirrors a power dynamic perceived by many in their dreams in which the clan collectively confronts morally ambivalent spiritual forces that inhabit spaces outside of delimited clan domains. This recalls earlier times when public life centred on the propitiation of powerful spirits in order to preserve harvests, and protect clan settlements in times of war. With the advent of Christianity, public discourse is transformed not solely via the iconoclastic demands of the American missionaries, but through a spatiotemporal reorientation of public life towards regularised church membership, and the development of missional institutions. Traditional public rituals, and ritual objects gradually faded, but informal inspirational practices such as divinational healing and dreaming, rooted as they were in the domestic sphere, remained integral to community life. In contemporary Nagaland, Christian charismatic groups have reconsidered the efficacy of traditional practices, and the inspirational potential of dreams, and opened spaces for supervised spirit mediation. These practices, however, have the potential to disrupt the church, and the community, and community elders are alert to their potential dangers, often seeking to defuse spirit mediated charisma as it emerges. The elder generation frequently cites the role of divination in spurring upheaval, and within living memory a young Naga prophetess, inspired by powerful dreams, succeeded in mounting a tribal uprising against British rule in the region. The power of visions and dreams to inspire political movements has not been lost on more recent Naga political groups, and in the final chapter I draw parallels between the nature of charisma to inspire political agency, and the function of the oneiric in normative patriliny, especially in public events, and ultimately in the construction of nationalist ideology. Finally, though the material and social circumstances separating public and domestic spheres in Angami life-worlds continually produce divergent political imaginaries, reversibility reveals how these formations emerge, how they coexist and continuously shape daily life, and how they produce the potentialities for unified political resistance.

Parmi les thèmes qui traversent l’œuvre de Huysmans celui du rêve a fait l’objet d’une attention soutenue mais restreinte à quelques œuvres, principalement À Rebours et En Rade. Pourtant, dès ses premiers romans, Huysmans met en scène des rêveurs, taraudés par le désir d’être autres ou d’être ailleurs. Dans ses croquis, ses comptes rendus de Salons, il s’intéresse aux virtualités, aux hypothèses et délaisse la chose vue pour explorer des potentialités. La conversion ne met pas fin à cet attrait, exacerbant au contraire le rejet du monde et la tentation de l’au-delà. Ainsi, l’onirique n’est pas qu’une parenthèse dans des vies médiocres, c’est aussi une modalité de l’écriture. L’attention de Huysmans se porte sur le surgissement : les rêves au cœur du sommeil mais aussi le fantastique du quotidien, le retour du souvenir, les mystères de ce que l’on appelle déjà l’inconscient. Notre ambition est, dans une perspective synchronique, de relever la présence du rêve dans son œuvre et d’envisager les formes qu’il peut prendre. Il s’agit de se demander comment le rêve s’inscrit dans la narration et d’évaluer ce qu’il apporte à des textes dont on sait que le romanesque n’est pas la préoccupation principale. Cependant, il faut se garder de donner de Huysmans l’image d’un idéaliste : son œuvre est fortement marquée par un naturalisme revendiqué et l’auteur exprime constamment son rejet d’un style tiède ou vaporeux. Au désir de « substituer le rêve de la réalité à la réalité même » (À Rebours) s’oppose en permanence une volonté de détruire ces simulacres, de dénier au personnage toute échappatoire. L’ambition formulée d’un naturalisme spiritualiste, dont le modèle lui est fourni par la peinture des Primitifs flamands, permet à l’auteur de concilier ces deux exigences et l’engage sur la voie du roman moderne. / Dreaming is one of the well-known themes of Huysmans’ work. It has been well studied as far as Against nature or En Rade are concerned. However, since his earliest writings, Huysmans has presented dreamers who attempt to be somebody else or try to be somewhere else. When writing sketches and art criticism, he takes an interest in different possibilities or assumptions and abandons what he sees to explore virtuality. His conversion does not put an end to this interest, but emphasizes the rejection of the world and the temptation of the beyond. Thus the dream is not a parenthesis in narrow lives, it is also a way of writing. Huysmans’ attention is focused on what springs up: dreams in the heart of sleep but also the fantastic side of everyday life, memories coming back, and the mysterious aspects of what is already called the unconscious. The purpose of this study is to detect, in a synchronic perspective, the presence of dreams in his work and to consider what form they can take. It also wants to show how dreaming is included in the narrative and to evaluate what it brings to novels which reject the romanesque. However, we will be careful not to show Huysmans as an idealist: his work is strongly influenced by naturalism and constantly claims his rejection of a colourless or sentimental style of writing. The desire to “substitute the vision of a reality for the reality itself” (Against nature) is faced with a permanent will to destroy simulacra, to prevent the characters from escaping the real world. Huysmans’ doctrine of spiritual naturalism allows him to reconcile these two requirements and set him as a forerunner of the modern novel.

While dreaming, one lacks the understanding that what is experienced is self-generated hallucinatory contents of consciousness. However, during dreaming there is a rare state called lucid dreaming. The minimal requirement for a dream to be considered lucid is that one is self-aware that one is currently sleeping. If self-awareness is the minimal criterion for lucid dreaming, that would entail the activation of those brain areas and networks typically related to self-referential processing. Further, lucid dreaming often entails the ability to exert volition over dream content. This thesis is a systematic review of the neural correlates of lucid dreaming and investigates the potential overlap of the neural correlates of lucid dreaming and volition. Only peer-reviewed original empirical articles that used healthy adults as participants were included. Thus, five studies were found. Two of the studies used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), two used electroencephalography (EEG), and one used both EEG and fMRI. This thesis found that the precuneus and left parietal lobe, which are brain areas related to self-referential processing, have increased activity during lucid dreaming compared to non-lucid dreaming. Also, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has increased functional connectivity in people who are more likely to experience lucid dreaming. DLPFC has been associated with metacognitive functions, which includes volition.There also seems to be an overlap in brain regions activated in volition compared to lucid dreaming; these areas include the parietal cortex, supplementary motor area, and anteriorprefrontal cortex.

Modern parallel computing techniques are subject to poor scalability. Their performance tends to suffer diminishing returns and even losses with increasing parallelism. Some methods of intelligent computing, such as neural networks and genetic algorithms, lend themselves well to massively parallel systems but come with other drawbacks that can limit their usefulness such as the requirement of a training phase and/or sensitivity to randomness. This thesis investigates the feasibility of a novel method of intelligent parallel computing by implementing a true multiple instruction stream, single data stream (MISD) computing system that is theoretically nearly perfectly scalable. Computational dreaming (CD) is inspired by the structure and dreaming process of the human brain. It examines previously observed input data during a 'dream phase' and is able to develop and select a simplified model to use during the day phase of computation. Using mazes as an example problem space, a CD simulator is developed and successfully used to demonstrate the viability and robustness of CD. Experiments that focused on CD viability resulted in the CD system solving 15% of mazes (ranging from small and simple to large and complex) compared with 2.2% solved by random model selection. Results also showed that approximately 50% of successful solutions generated match up with those that would be generated by algorithms such as depth first search and Dijkstra's algorithm. Experiments focusing on robustness performed repeated trials with identical parameters. Results demonstrated that CD is capable of achieving this result consistently, solving over 32% of mazes across 10 trials compared to only 3.6% solved by random model selection. A significant finding is that CD does not get stuck on local minima, always converging on a solution model. Thus, CD has the potential to enable significant contributions to computing by potentially finding elegant solutions to, for example, NP-hard or previously intractable problems. / Master of Science