Mason said:
I had a bizarre dream today. I laid down on my bed to rest and watch tv because my allergies were killing me. I turned on MTV2 and ended up falling asleep. I dreamt of a music video for a hip-hop song that featured the rapper dressed up as the Green Goblin and Spiderman. After the song ended, another song began and the video kept going from where it left off. After the third song started, I woke up and realized the dream had been going along to the music videos that were playing on tv. I've never had a dream (as far as I know) where the dream interacted with my environment.
Sounds like you were having a sleep-onset dream (SOD) as opposed to a REM-based dream. To wit:
There are two types of dreams: REM dreams and SOD's. Sleep-onset dreams, which occur right after one falls asleep, are much more dependent upon episodic memory (i.e., full temporal reconstructions, as of an entire episode, of what transpired in the past); in addition, SOD's are influenced to a much greater extent by what occurred that day, and, particularly, what one was thinking of just before sleep (this is relevant to your seemingly "interactive" dream; it's likely that you were unwittingly transitioning between pre-sleep and waking several times). The dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), which controls our mind's inhibitory mechanisms, is still very active (as it is during waking), and the areas of the hippocampus responsible for working memory are also very active during SOD's, both of which help to explain their more coherent content.
During REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the dorso-lateral PFC is deactivated, resulting in a wild melange of previously suppressed memories and images. In addition, working memory is deactivated, but delocalized, random memory "traces" are often utilized to provide the framework for dreams, which explains their frequent absurdity and incongruity. These "traces" are semantic/visual in nature, not episodic, and so they lack the temporal context which provides the framework for our waking and SOD memories. In addition, the cerebellum, responsible for processing much of our emotional nature, is
hyperactive during REM sleep. The result is a confusing hodgepodge of images, emotions, and memories which can be difficult if not impossible to make sense of. The only things which can be of use in the interpretation of dreams are certain recurring explicit or implicit patterns, such as insecure or aggressive feelings/situations. Analysis of particular dream content is largely a crapshoot, and modern psychology has greatly diverged from Freud on this point. If you'll recall, Freud felt that dream analysis was the avenue into the unconscious, where he felt that all our most compelling and important memories were stored, bubbling, waiting for a chance to surface; sleep, he felt, was the only time when such volatile thoughts could safely be given figurative utterance and expression in the form of dreams.
