(no subject)

[arethinn]

If the brain and body are not supposed to be able to remember enough to recreate actual pain sensations just by thinking about it, then how can I actually feel the pain when I dream about cutting my thumb? (It was an odd way to wake up - I was dozing after the alarm went off, and was dreaming about wiping something off a utility knife blade with my thumb; I pressed it too far over the edge, sliced it, and was awakened by the "pain".)

Comments

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

We're not supposed to be able to do that? .... something strikes me as odd about that.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

Supposedly. Dunno where I read it. You know how thinking about an emotional event can cause you to actually re-experience the involved emotions? Apparently such is not the case for physical pain. You can remember that something hurt (else what would be the point) but apparently it is not possible to invoke the pain itself, somehow. Checking to see if I can find any references.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

OK, here's a few things:

Memory and pain (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=141777)
Emotional Synthetic Forces (http://www.hqda.army.mil/ari/wordfiles/TR%201149.doc) (word document - I looked at it with the Google "view as HTML" thing - long, so try searching the text for the phrase "recall the sensation of pain" to find a relevant paragraph)
PainOnline (http://www.painonline.org/bad.htm) says only that pain is "notoriously hard" to remember, as opposed to actually impossible

[bluegodjanus.livejournal.com]

One time I had a dream where an airplane or other form of skyship crashed nearby, and the 'force' of it hitting the ground startled me awake. Maybe that's not really the same thing. Maybe I'm also just a weird dreamer, because I am completely confident that I've read things in my dreams before, yet I've heard from multiple people that you're not supposed to be able to do that.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

Reading things in dreams is supposed to be one of the triggers into lucidity, because in a "normal" dream the writing is supposed to change every time you try to read it, whereas if it is the same, or you can somehow make it be the same, you can pop into a lucid state.

[bluegodjanus.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

Closest I ever came to lucid was the "try to fly" test (obviously, if you succeed, you know you are dreaming). I remember having the thought that I should try to fly, but lost control, and then the dream continued on its merry way without lucidity from that point.

[sunshaker.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that your thumb was hurting before the dream and the dream was a way for your mind to rationalize the pain? I've had dreams like that before.

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. I hadn't done it any injury that day, and at this point in the morning when I was having this dream, I was lying on my back with my hands to the side or on top of me or something, so it wasn't a "pins and needles" thing from somehow lying on my hand. Unless I managed to bite it or something while I was just-asleep-enough-to-dream for those five minutes, I don't think there was an actual physical cause.

[sunshaker.livejournal.com]

Well it was a thought. I once woke-up believing that a dog had attacked me and was biting my abdomen, turns out it was a really bad case of gas, the things the mind will come up with.