Dream on
For people with narcolepsy, the lucid dreaming for which Jessica Hamzelou strives can be an undesirable and sometimes frightening intrusion into normal daily life (12 June, p 36).
The hallucinations often experienced at the onset of narcolepsy can take the dream-within-a-dream form Hamzelou describes. For a narcoleptic, these dreams are frequently nightmares in which the dreamer awakes with great relief at the end of the dream only to discover that he or she is still asleep. This nesting of dreams within dreams can be several layers deep, and is frightening.
During a daytime sleep attack, a narcoleptic may begin to dream while fully engaged in conversation. This can be confusing for both the narcoleptic and the other party, as the narcoleptic shifts from the topic in hand to incorporating elements of the dream into the conversation. There are documented cases of people with narcolepsy being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, due in large part to their appearing to hear voices while in a lucid dream state.
Let’s hope that the search for techniques to initiate lucid dreaming may also lead to associated techniques for those of us who desire the opposite 鈥� making it stop.
From Richard Horton
I spontaneously started experiencing lucid dreams in the 1990s. I thought the phenomenon was entirely subjective until I read Hamzelou’s references to the use of PET scans and EEG to demonstrate measurable effects during this state of consciousness.
A particularly interesting aspect of lucid dreaming is the ability to create and manipulate 3D images of previously unencountered objects 鈥� certainly not something I can do when awake. On several occasions I have come across a piece of complex electronic apparatus in a lucid dream. On inspection of the equipment, the dials and switches are consistent when I walk all the way around the object.
When awake I cannot create a 3D image in this way, so how do I have this ability while dreaming? In contrast, if I read printed text in a lucid dream and then look away, when I look at the text again it is always different.
Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK
From John Wellbelove
I recently discovered that my dream states are completely different from the “normal” dreams described in your article.
My dreams are never vivid, let alone lucid 鈥� they are more akin to daydreams or visualised memories: fuzzy and indistinct, like watching a bad TV picture. Yet I am fully aware of the fact that I am dreaming, and can usually direct and restage parts of my dream when I don’t like the way the story is going.
Having discovered the unusual nature of my dreams, and the experiences one could have with lucid dreaming, I find myself disappointed at what I have missed out on all these years.
Southampton, UK
Public science
Tom Wakeford and Jackie Haq discuss the dangers of keeping private the debate into the consequences of artificial life research (26 June, p 26).
Their article is well-intended but a little naive. Over the course of my scientific career I have encountered both big-business funded activism and pressure groups who could hold their meetings in a telephone booth, and I know from bitter experience that both are equally capable of stifling rational debate. Any meaningful discussion has to go beyond this, but Wakeford and Haq offer no solution.
Taking a sample of the population using well-developed market research techniques is an idea, but the real problem lies in informing the wider population. Scientific research should be much more widely available to the general public. In these times, when science has so much hold over our lives, it is a real failure of our education system that students can leave school without a sound grasp of scientific method.
Autism activism
In reference to Brian Barry’s letter, I am quite surprised to discover that the spectrum of autism does not just include savants, but also X-Men and the next stage in human evolution (29 May, p 28).
I donate annually to the local autism society: one of the reasons I do so is that I might have an autistic child myself some day. Also, autistic charities are not often prioritised above causes that are more likely to affect the general populace on a personal level. In some countries, there may be no recourse available to parents of autistic children, except facilities provided by volunteers and charities.
As Joanna Baron mentions on the same page, hype about the prodigies can threaten the provision of assistance for those who are less able to cope. Hype would not deter me from donating, but it seems that even high-functioning autistic individuals could benefit from a greater understanding of social dynamics, and balancing the benefits of their activism against the risk that help will be denied others who are not as self-sufficient as they are.
Medical empiricism
When discussing the measures to which some people will resort in searching for a cure for autism, Jim Giles inadvertently highlights a widespread problem in wealthy, developed nations (26 June, p 42): we believe that everything can be cured by medical intervention.
Good health depends on clean water, a balanced diet, hygienic sewage disposal, good housing, exercise and health education. Medicine’s major contribution lies in antibiotics and immunisation. The main burden of ill health in nations with advanced healthcare systems comes from chronic, incurable and often poorly understood diseases, for which medicine can offer palliative treatment at best.
I was interested to see that oxygen chambers figure in the list of treatments for autism, because hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been recommended to my wife, who has multiple sclerosis. Michael Bennett and Robert Heard carried out a review of nine randomised, controlled trials of HBOT for MS and found no evidence of beneficial effect ().
Perhaps health education programmes in our schools should include information about chronic diseases, and how to spot a quack remedy. Perhaps too, our medical professionals should come clean in public about what they cannot do, instead of quietly allowing us to think they can cure anything.
Mitochondrial link
While reading Andy Coghlan’s article on how reawakened mitochondria can help fight cancer (15 May, p 6), it occurred to me that mitochondria might be a key factor behind the link tying exercise and obesity to the disease.
A number of studies have linked obesity to an increased risk of cancer. Exercise has been shown to reduce the risk of cancer, and it is also known that vigorous exercise increases the number of mitochondria in our cells. Could it be, therefore, that a fit person’s increased number of mitochondria are more resistant to being shut down? Or that exercise turns on a chemical pathway to produce more mitochondria, and this pathway in turn helps block cancer?
If so, an optimal treatment for cancer might include both a drug to boost mitochondrial activity and a regime of physical exercise.
Dark matters
Kate McAlpine clearly explained the issues surrounding the standard model of particle physics (22 May, p 40).
However, in view of the considerable successes it has already achieved, it is more likely that the model needs to be extended rather than demolished. Also, it is likely that such an extension would unify and explain all the major unresolved questions in cosmology and quantum mechanics: gravity, mass, dark matter and dark energy.
The proposed Higgs boson seems to have little credibility as an explanation for mass, given that most of the energy range where it is supposed to reside has already been tested.
Only the existence of a substantial amount of antimatter, locked in an alternate quantum phase (as dark matter) can possibly satisfy all these unresolved questions.
Practical art
In your special report on collaborations between art and science, David S. Berman writes that “a successful art-science work… should impact on people in a direct way, with a sensory component that moves them” (8 May, p 43).
Towards what should it move these people? To a greater understanding of a scientific concept? To marvel at the skill of the artist? No, the true value of art-science collaborations is that they bring about innovation which will result in new products and services.
In the field of healthcare, this has already been happening: Healthcare and Bioscience iNet runs an annual “Where Art Meets Science” competition across the UK’s East Midlands, and the entries have sparked discussions between academics, innovators and charity representatives. Crucially, the real collaborations begin when the exhibits have been taken down.
Plastic fantastic
James Mitchell Crow’s article on decaying plastics seemed to only stress the downside of this phenomenon (19 June, p 42).
Has no one thought of the positive side? Plastic rots! It is like finding out that living next to a nuclear power plant boosts fertility, or that whales enjoy the cut and thrust of being chased by whalers.
I hope I can now take a plastic bag from the supermarket without getting sneered at, secure in the knowledge that in 100 years the bag will crumble to dust.
Quantum geography
By implying a truly macroscopic “superposition” of the Austrian Erwin Schr枚dinger with the German Werner Heisenberg, Michael Brooks’s “Rise of the quantum machines” (26 June, p 34) seems to promise success far beyond his article’s own foresight.
This reader’s “measurement” resulted in the New 杏吧原创 wave function collapsing to yield “Austrian, Heisenberg” (p 37). This confusion, by a process of elimination, must be an entangled state, given that the pure state is W眉rzburg, Heisenberg. W眉rzburg, Heisenberg’s birthplace, is, of course, in Germany.