SynTalk

Do you have difficulty sleeping? Can one dream while sleep walking? What/when/how do we express to ourselves via our dreams? Can painting be dream-like? Do we understand the mechanisms underlying imagination, dreams, and fantasy? Are (conscious) signals below a threshold deactivated when one is asleep, so that the (un/sub-conscious) ‘noise’ becomes signal? Are dreams always replays of thought processes? How graded is sleep? Do cats or platypus or hunting dogs dream? Do we dream every time we sleep? Are memories ever lost? Do dreams have a duration, & can we narrate them sequentially? Are dreams solely pictorial and necessarily haphazard, with no sound or word presentation? Why don't we snap from the wakeful state into sleep? Are all the different states of consciousness fluid? Does non-REM sleep always precede REM sleep, & can we sleep directly into a dream? Would we dream if didn't have any desires or memories? Can the dreamy state be induced? Can dreams be fiddled with? Do we always dream in (timeless) fragments? Is dreaming itself an emotional (affective) process? Is it possible to feel super alive? Is it possible to die mid-way while dreaming (when asleep)? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts and experiences from psychoanalysis (Sarala Kapoor, Kolkata), neurobiology (Prof. Birendra Nath Mallick, JNU, New Delhi), & art (Tara Sabharwal, New York). Listen in...