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QUESTION: Hello. I have a question that is somewhat difficult to categorize, but I had thought if anyone could give me a clue to an answer, someone in your field perhaps could, or come close. I was wondering if you could give me an idea about a possible explanation of something I used to experience years ago.

In case it may help, I was born three and a half months premature.  I was, (as many babies born like me) incubated for quite some time. I’m twenty-five now, with some autistic-related symptoms and  an learning disability – particularly with information processing (tasks, directions, math, etc). When I was a young child (it’s difficult to recall the age, five or six perhaps), I frequently would lie awake in bed (as I often would, being an insomniac) early in the morning or before sleep with particular “visions”, often holograms of three-dimensional, geometric designs. These designs would appear as geometric shapes often very similar to a computer chip, (or something similar with the same type of intricate lines or basic shape). The image would start off at a relatively normal “distance”, and then “zoom” closer, like a video camera zooming in on an object from above. At other times the image was like flying through space. Regarding the “computer chip” example, if you have ever seen the original “Tron” 1980s film, when  one of the characters is being transported to the computer world – and the geometric designs that ensue – That is nearly exactly what I experienced. (For the record, I’d never heard of Tron until about three years ago, which I now love, of course).

As I grew older, the images I would see stopped being literal holograms and resorted to visions I would see in my mind’s eye sometimes when I would close my eyes. I still experience this. There is no particular pattern, and it can happen at any moment I choose to shut my eyes. Sometimes I can will it to happen through focus.

Interestingly, my fiancé experienced the same thing when he was about the same age. (He wouldn’t lie about this and his parents confirmed it). He has always been high functioning autistic, but when he was two and a half he had an accident involving suffocation that has affected the emotional parts of his brain. The only difference between his experiences and mine were that his were not literal holograms, and (separate from the geometric shapes) he would also hallucinate tiny green worms (this stopped for him years ago

Based on your knowledge, what do you think this could have been (in my experience and in my fiancé’s) and why?

Thank you for reading my question (I apologize for any lengthiness). I appreciate your answer to a strange question. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

ANSWER: Dear Kara,

Thank you for your interesting question and wonderful, poetic description of your experience!

I can see two, maybe different, maybe not so different parts in your question. One is about lucid dreams, the other is about autistic-related symptoms.

It seems that from the neuroscience standpoint, brain areas involved in these two parts overlap. Thus, during lucid dreams, brain cortex activity changes bidirectionally: activity in the prefrontal area (dealing among other things with decision-making and willful actions) is decreased while parietal cortex (e.g., busy with visual processing) is activated (1) – and both are involved in the autistic-related symptoms (2).

Also, the overlapping area involved in the both in autism-related symptoms and dreaming is the brain stem responsible for transmission of information from sensory inputs to the higher levels of brain, where the information is processed finally generating true or imaginative picture of the world. During lucid dreams, since the willful control is loosened, it may form basic patterns like abstract shapes and their movements. The fact that your fiancé experienced the same thing might support this suggestion meaning that it indeed might relate to properties of the brain during sleep when the brain have structural and functional peculiarities, in your case also similar with your fiancé. Just my 2 cents.

Please don’t hesitate asking me further questions if I my answer is not completely satisfactory.

Tanya Zilberter

Sources

1. Hobson, J.A. 2009. “REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness”. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, 10, 1–11.

2. Neurobiology of autism-related conditions: http://agelessbrain.com/2011/06/neurobiology-of-autism-related-conditions/

QUESTION-2:

 

Thank you so much for your fascinating, detailed answer. Though I do want to make sure I understand you correctly, if that is OK with you.

I am assuming that you recall I stated that I was fully awake when I had these experiences? I know that sometimes dreaming can seem like reality, but I know I was certainly awake – I had not even begun to fall asleep yet (and my for my fiancé it was the same). Were you saying that I was perhaps asleep and didn’t realize it?

Assuming that I was indeed awake, what could this have been? Or did I miss something? I hope my clarification-question hasn’t been of any inconvenience. Thanks.

ANSWER- 2

I cannot be completely sure whether your description means that you were having lucid dreams but I cannot exclude it. The matter is, lucid dream is a dream, in which one is aware about dreaming but is capable of influencing the “plot” of the dream. Because of that, it has been assumed that the dreamer is in fact awake. However, later quite a few researchers recorded eye movements and showed that lucid dreaming is the rapid eye movement phase of real sleep.

From my personal experience, before I really fell asleep, I often find myself watching how my thoughts take their own direction while my role narrows to mere watching, mostly with some pleasure though I cannot explain why it’s pleasant. Do I sleep during this period of time? I don’t know. What I do know is that, for example, Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869 saw his periodical table of elements, whole and complete, in a similar dream. The greatest hit “Yesterday” came to Paul McCartney in a dream, as happened to the idea of chemical transmission of the nervous impulse, for which Dr Loewi won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936.  I must say, I do not consider myself belonging to this brilliant company <sigh> but I can imagine that these brilliant thoughts came in these great people’s minds through a similar mechanism.

One more thing. With sleep as well as with dieting, there’s the tendency to misreport while being completely sincere. Only impartial lab recording can tell for sure and such recording show that people with sleep problems often sleep more than they think, same way as dieters underreport their calorie intake and overreport their exercise intensity and duration.

Thank you very much for this interesting discussion!

Tanya Zilberter