P3D Re: Saturday Night Special

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 15:45:24 -0600
>From: Bruce Springsteen <bsspringsteen@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Saturday Night Special

>Here's a question I've been saving, to give the kiddies a nightmare or
>two.

>Do any of you believe that you experience stereopsis in you dreams? 
>Or are dreams just flat movies?

>I think this is untestable, so beginners have just as good a chance as
>the "experts" on this one.

Interesting question!

I think it's testable to some degree, but not easily.

I certainly don't remember all my dreams, but I clearly remember some,
including specific images or video sequences.

In some of those dreams, the perception of depth and the spatial relation
of the objects seen were integral to the main "story line" of the dream,
so I think it would certainly be fair to say that in those instances, I
was dreaming in 3D. In other dreams, thinking back, 3D spatial relationships
were not critical to the dream, and didn't leave a specific impression of
3D, so I couldn't say with certainty that those dreams were in 3D.

(Similarly with color - in a dream I'm not generally paying much attention
to color, but I remember specific dreams which involved specific colors.)

To narrow down the focus of the question somewhat:
When I'm awake and looking around, my eyes pick up separate images, which
are combined in the brain as part of the production of a 3D mental model of
the world around me. I believe I have read a report that if you imagine a
visual object, pretty much the same parts of the brain are active as when you
actually look at the object.

So - since when you dream, you're essentially looking at a mental image in
your brain, if you dream in 3D, are you dreaming that you look through your
eyes at the objects in the dream and (in the dream) mentally combine them
to produce a 3D image, or is your dream just directly accessing the internally
constructed 3D mental image directly?

(Related question: when you dream, is your field of vision restricted to what
you would be able to see when awake, or if your physical body is included in
the dream, can you "see" things that are going on behind you, etc.?)

John R


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