Dream Scintillations

In 1949 and in 1965 unusual subjective experiences were described as “dream scintillations.” These experiences occur during wakefulness and include rapid successions of imagery which are hard to remember. The present report adds introspective data and emphasizes that the visual images of such occurrences have a quality, rhythm, and organization different from those of hypnagogic reverie or dreams. Similar events were not frequent in dream-deprivation experiments but did occur during experimental stimulation of the brain. Psychologically such events are seen as a form of derailment of thought from verbal to pictorial cognition, and a theoretical consideration of pictorial cognition is presented. Neurophysiologically, the phenomenon bears sufficient resemblance to occurrences in persons with temporal-lobe seizures that it might be considered a minor variant or forme fruste of temporal-lobe epilepsy triggered by metabolic fatigue or local circulatory factors

Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Dream · Electroencephalography · Epilepsy · Introspection · Mental image · Psychic · Rhythm · Temporal lobe · Wakefulness · EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces · Medicine · Neuroscience · Psychology · Sleep and Wakefulness Research