During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, Night Story chapter in your notebooks. These are some questions to help you with your summary: What does Gottschall mean by “night story?” What is the significance of Jouvet’s cats? What kinds of dreams do you remember most vividly? Do you remember your dreams from last night?
Remember to type up your summary and post it to OpenLab as a comment to this blog post before our next meeting.
After reading Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal, Night Story, Gottschall says that every night of our lives as we sleep we wander off in a kind of alternative dimension. It may seem like as if you’re in reality while dreaming when actually your dreams that you have are in reality to your brain. We could be running away from something so horrific and frightening that in reality as we’re dreaming many of us are kicking, tossing and turning and murmuring screaming. What Johnathan mean by “night story”, he basically talking about dreams and how our brain is a storyteller. As we’re asleep our mind create stories of anything. It could be a funny dream, scary, a flashback, the future, anything. The significance of Jouvet’s Cats not only showed that cats dream too but it showed that they can dream about certain things as well. They could be having an action dream, themselves attacking something or even fright. The scary dream that I remember the most from when I was little is a big hamburger patty chasing me around the city saying “I’m gonna get cha”. I really didn’t understand why I had this dream but yeah it was really weird
In Jonathan Gottschall’s, “A Storytelling Animal, Night Story,” Gottschall discusses how our brain tells a story while we are sleeping. He refers to dreams as “night story.” No one knows why we dream but there are some theories. Priests and shamans believed dreams are messages from the spirit world. Some psychologists believe dreaming is a form of autotherapy, a way for the brain to manage the worries of the real world. Another theory, by a dream researcher, believes dreams are brain waste, secretions from the brain working so hard while we are sleeping, especially during REM cycle. The brain waste theory is also known as the random activation theory or RAT. This theory believes dreams are meaningless and have no relation with the real world. This chapter goes into detail of RAT and its pros and cons. RAT believers say dreams are emotional. With dreams being emotional, how do we stay still while sleeping and not act out how we feel? During REM sleep, you have atonia, which is sleep paralysis. The reason we do not act out emotion while we dream is because our motor commands are being seized by a blockade in the brain stem. RAT does confirm that dreams are not limited to humans but in other species as well. Gottscahll tells of an experiment done by dream scientist Michael Jouvet. Jouvet wanted to find out if animals actually dreamed. He rounded up stray cats and destroyed their atonia by hacking out their brain stem. During observation, cats would act out during sleep in a defensive way. In conclusion, cats did dreamed but they dreamed of trouble. Gottschall goes on to discuss dream studies performed on humans. These studies showed majority of REM sleep consisted of dreams with trouble. Threatening situations will likely occur in our dreams than in real life. These frightening dreams are probably for practice and to help us prepare for the drama in our lives. We forget most of our dreams anyway. Gottschall states although we found a use as to what dreams and story are for, we still haven’t figured out its purpose.
I did not understand how this chapter was related to all the other chapters Jonathan Gottschall wrote so far. It was a good read,but the gist of the chapter did not connect with me on how it related to storytelling. Maybe Jonathan was just explaining how our dreams tell stories or introducing R.A.T. and how it is a theory that our dreams are just leftover thoughts we have.
I made this discovery when I went to write about the chapter “Night Story”,and could not think about a introductory sentence.
According to Johnatan Gotschall’s chapter “Night story”, Night stories are more memorable than actual true stories that occur in real life. Night stories are described as the dreams that occur while sleeping. They include thoughts, visions, ideas, shows, plays and events. Dreams about love, danger, accident or death are usually remembered, while others are not. I remember many of my dreams, especially the scary or shocking ones. Those dreams were so distressing that I woke from my sleep and my heart was rapidly beating like I experienced the dream for real. This is because our brain does not know the difference between being awake or sleeping.
In Gottschall’s, “The Story Telling Animal” on the chapter four; Night Dream, Gottschall suggested that dreaming is part of an involuntary process when we sleep. He refers this as “Night Dream” because, even though we are dreaming, our brains are continuously creating stories while we may be asleep in our unconscious minds. There are multiple opinions throughout researchers that claims dreaming is an irrelevant occurrence in our daily life., for example, J. Allen Hobson regarded dream as “the dream, is the dream” , and a famous dream researcher, Owen Flanagan, who claimed, “Our dreams are not designed by nature to serve any function.”. Dreams are sort of relevant in our life because, by experiencing dream or viewing someone’s brain activity while they dream, it shows that there is a coherent activity in the brain. When dreaming, our brain goes to REM state where it triggers the emotional system in our brain, and these emotional feeling that we gathered are mostly felt on our consciousness state. Therefore when asleep, we also sleep emotionally gathering our feeling. Gottschall gave a good example of Jouvet’s Cat, led by a French scientist, Michael Jouvet, who wanted to know if animals dream. Not only did he found out that cats dream, he also came to a conclusion that there is a common relationship on how both humans and animals dream. He found out that both species tend to dream about their problem, for example, surviving, worrying to get things done, enemies and etc.
This chapter was about how the brain never stops creating and telling stories, even when we are asleep. This is where dreams come in. Dreams are the brain’s way of telling stories. In Jouvet’s cat experiment, he did a trial and error on cats to see where the nerve controlling the body’s “don’t move while you are sleep” function. Once he found this nerve, he’d cut and, and when the cats fell asleep, the cat would walk around and act as if they were awake. In this experiment, we discovered that the brain can’t tell dreams from reality. Personally, I don’t remember any of my dreams. I do know people, however, who talk in their sleep and sleep walk.
In “Night Stories”, Gotschall discusses in this chapter how our dreams create stories and can be a reality. What I found that stood out in this chapter was when Gotschall explained how Jouvet experimented on cats brains to find the “switch” that would make cats act out their night stores, or dreams, in real life. Gotschall said that Jouvet realized that cats dream about specific things and would react in a defensive way, as a cat would. He also said that cats practice on their own cat problem and humans practice on humans problems in their dreams. If cats have an on/off switch in their brains that make their bodies go in to paralysis as they are sleeping, then humans also have the switch. Gotschall also mentioned how strong waves of emotions causes us to remember certain dreams. If you dream of something that just makes you content then you will most likely not remember if when you wake up. However, if you have a nightmare or a dream that causes a fight or flight response emotionally, you will most likely remember it when you wake up. That explains why I always remember bad dreams I have the night before but have a hard time remembering certain other dreams that did not trigger any strong emotional reactions.
In this chapter of Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling animal he focuses on “night stories”. Night stories is basically another way of saying dreams. He goes into detail about what dreams actually mean and why we have dreams in the first place. Our dreams are erratic and emotional at times which makes deciphering them and their meanings all the harder. In the past people believed all dreams meant something but only people like priest could decipher them. Some psychiatrists believe dreaming is a way to deal with stress. It is also believed that dreaming is a way of forgetting certain useless memories, a waste place of some sort. He went on about how dreams can become very emotional and why we don’t react to them like we usually would. The brain actually puts us in a sleep paralysis state where we can’t react to them. To confirm this research was done to cats where they removed the part of the brain that causes us to stay in sleep paralysis and saw them sleep. The cats would go in a sort of defensive mode when they were dreaming. This showed that cats usually had troubling dreams. This chapter actually kind of strayed away from the story telling to some degree at least in my opinion but it was still a very informative chapter.
In the chapter “Night Story” Gottshall tells us about how every night your brain always has a story to tell. Gottshall meaning behind the chapter title “Night Story” is our dreams whenever we sleep at night, it tells us what we want to think about and what we think the most. The significance of “Jouvet’s cats” is the experiment that was done in cats to pinpoint the “on and off” switch of sleep. When our brain tells the body to not function when we are asleep. If this function is turned off, there’s a possibility we can get up from sleep and act out what the current dream is. That can be harmful to yourself and others around you. The dreams I remember most vividly are the good dreams, and most of the dreams I get are nightmares. I also remember the dreams about the person I care about the most. I remember my dreams most of the time but there are mornings where I cannot remember what I have dreamt about.
In Jonathan Gottschall’s, “A Storytelling Animal, Night Story,” Gottschall talks about how we have dreams and they feel so real that some time we repeat saying the stuff that we say in our dreams . He goes in more details about how dreams take place. If we look in old times people use to think dreams are the reality that we want to see or its is the prediction of the future. Our brains have the on/off switch while we are sleeping if it works properly our body do not do stuff that are actually doing in our dreams and if it do not work then we start talking or walking as we are doing in our dreams. As we all know of Michael Jouvet’s experiments on cats to find the right place of on/off switch, and after numerous failure experiments when he found the switch , he made cat do everything that cat is doing in dream. Sometimes our switch does not work properly and we do stuff while dreaming , this is because our brain does not know how to use that function but in most of the cases this just temporary.
Night is something which happens almost all people all of the time. Humans sometimes like to defy this pattern of day and night. I myself have defied the day/night cycle in times past but never during a time when I had something important to do. Night normally means a transition from one part of the day to the other; consciousness and unconsciousness. JG uses foreshadowing to describe the night. The night can be scary to some people, one cannot see with any light as human eyes see light bouncing off objects to which is defined as sight. Night is also dangerous to some people. During the day, a person with sight see the light bouncing off an object an avoids it. During the night, there is little to no light and this process of sight is hindered or stopped completely. Stereotypes do exist for the time between sun down and sun up. These stereotypes are what give would be explorers fear of venturing into the darkness. A stereotype for this is that more crimes are committed during the night. Statistically, this is untrue. The time of day shows no correlation to the amount of crimes committed. Granted the night might be cover for the perpetrator(s), but this cover is based on the perception of those around them. Humans possess this rhythm, the circadian rhythm. The way to describe this is the internal clock of a human. Everyone has a slightly different clock. This controls whether we are asleep or not. Humans dream when they sleep. When humans sleep, a part of the brain ensures we do not move. This part is only enabled when we are not awake. Some people have a disorder which may cause this part not to function. Others may awaken with this part enabled, rendering them unable to move. Humans have theorized that during sleep, the brain stops working. This is untrue, EEG shows that the brain has much activity during this time. This could be to finish up yesterday and start today in terms of thoughts.
In the story telling animal the chapter Night Story basically focuses on night stories and how when we got to sleep our brain plays the stories in our mind like a movie. He did mention that he doesn’t know why we play those stories in our mind but there have been many other theories from different cultures and people to why we do. Such as physiologist believe that the brain plays those stories in order for our brain to solve the problems or stress we have in the real world. And even I have heard that whenever we sleep we tend to dream or think about stuff that worries us or what we think about the most throughout the day. That has also happened with me, whenever I think about a specific topic throughout my whole day I think about that at night as well and those stories play in my mind. Also mentioned in the book that the dreams are meaningless and are not related to our real lives, called the brain waste theory, and I don’t agree with that. Even though they have given a lot of material to prove it but I believe that those dreams actually do have a meaning. We dream because sometimes those are the things we want the most and those dreams become our goal.
In the story “Night Story” by Jonathan Gottschall he talks about when we are asleep our brain is still up working. When we enter Dreamland we are in a paralyzed state and we are sometimes unable to wake up from a bad dream like falling or death. The kind of dreams that most people remember are sometimes not the good ones such as death, intense fear and sorrow. When you have a lot of stress or anxiety in your life, your brain sends you solutions in your dreams. However, cats in Dreamland is very different than a humans. They conducted an experiment called the Jouvet’s cats with stray cats. They would cut into their brain, locate the brain stems and screw in wires to see what do they dream about. The cats do not go into a paralyzed state like humans instead they fight and hiss in their sleep without knowing. The reading states that they cats are always having a bad dream because they are closer to kitty hell than kitty heaven.