What is my brain doing?? Question about reading in LDs

Often when I realize I’m LD’ing, I try to read things - a newspaper, books sitting around, etc. I have used this technique frequently, for over a year now. However, I am noticing recently that when I read things, it’s almost like my brain is trying hard to make the words look “real”, instead of the usual “jumbly” bunch of random letters. For example, I had an LD last night in which I was reading the cover of a book, and the words were real words, but with maybe one letter off or an extra letter included in the word (even though the words put together as a phrase really didn’t make sense). Also, sometimes the letters sort of faded in and out, like they were really trying to make a “real” word. I hope that makes sense.

Anyone have an explanation for this? It is really strange!

Everyone is able to read in a dream. You can recognise words and even remember them. That’s not the problem. The thing were it goes wrong is with rereading the text. A text in a dream is not stable. This is because the text is made up by your brain, and your brain is not able to make a text completly the same again.

It can possibly be that you read something and you get the meaning of the text and remember some words. However when you reread the text its not the same as the first time. So it’s not strange that your words looked almost like real words when you saw them the first time. The thing for a dream is that they would be different if you look at it for the second time.

I think the problem with words (that is, many words) is that the brain can’t make up a long sensible text complete with formating in a split second. Think about normal stuff you encounter in dreams, like a building. There, it is enough if your brain gives an approximate until you pay attention, and it can then invent more detail. However, a page of text is very complex. Just an example, imagine looking at random page. I guess it works very well as long as you only try to see the “shape” of the text, but not individual letters. Now imagine looking at the middle of the page and reading a sentence. This could still work, as long as you don’t pay attention to the letters above or below the line you’re reading. Making up a random sentence is no big deal. OK, now imagine you look at the start of the sentence again, and start looking over the sentence before that from right to left. Now, to make the text up, your brain would have to invent a sentence backwards. Ever done this in real life? I guessed so. And looking at part of a page, seeing multiple lines of text at once, clearly? Sonds VERY hard to me.

Hm. That sounds like an interesting RC - reading text from right to left after reading from left to right…[/offtopic]

Or it could simply be how you read things, you just don’t notice the letters. The ‘jumble’ of letters might be perfectly readable to you in the dream, yet it looks like nonsense to you. And when you try reading the ‘real’ letters again and again, your brain starts to form actual letters in your mind model, thus the letters starting to form words.

Just getting better at visualizing what something might look like in real life, I suppose, instead of what your brain comprehends it as.