Scientists curious about humanity have long thought waking experiences flow through to sleeping dreams. Researchers under guidance of Sanja Šćepanović wondered whether the pandemic left its mark in epidemic dreaming too. They report this is indeed the case. Their paper appeared in Royal Society Open Science on January 26, 2022, and we link to it below.
How the Project Rolled Out and What They Found
Sanja Šćepanović and her team first built a deep-learning algorithm to extract mentions of health conditions from medical texts. They then compared this data to 2,888 dream reports, and 57 million tweets of waking life experiences.
Sure enough, the overlap comprised typical COVID-19 symptoms including cough, fever and anxiety. They believe this confirms waking experiences flow through to epidemic dreaming too. But there was an intriguing difference.
That’s because the medical data explained the symptoms realistically, using a ‘linear and logical thought process’. Whereas epidemic dreaming focused more on ‘visual and emotional spheres’ of metaphorical conditions such as teeth falling out.
More On Medical Reports Versus Epidemic Dreaming
The symptoms described in medical reports under waking conditions were realistic, for example ‘influenza, SARS, H1N1, bird flu, allergy, flu-like symptoms’. Whereas those recalled from dream state were more bizarre. The researchers mention ‘maggots, deformities, red virus, and snake bites’, or surreal ones ‘teeth suddenly falling out, body crumbling into sand and rodents moving around in my periphery’ for example.
They conclude our ‘waking and dreaming minds are equally focused on the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic’. But the different experiences in the two states confirm one is rational and verbal. While the other is visual, emotional and metaphoric.
Moreover, at a deeper level we now have more evidence of the potential power of dreams to alert doctors to hidden worries, emotions and psychological symptoms. However, not every dream harks back to waking, and we should seek medical advice from doctors.
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