1. I am with my sisters at home. We're going to a birthday party later on in the day, and we're trying to think of a suitable present for the kid. The kid whose birthday we're celebrating is in L&E's class, a real pain whom we can't stand in real life. For some unknown reason, the most befitting gift we can think of is a nose ring piercing. He doesn't yet have his nose pierced, so we're going to get a gift certificate for the cost of piercing and buy him a nice ring to go along with it. Most of this dream was spent with me trying to get everyone involved in the van to go to Wal-Mart and buy the piercing. Once there, we agonized over jewelery choices for some time, finally deciding on a black ring.

2. I am a detective on an inner city beat, and my team and I are investigating a series of similar murders. In each case, the victim's skull has been cut away and specific brain areas have been removed. We're on the scene of another murder which appears to be associated with the same serial murderer. This victim, a young, pretty blonde woman, has had her amygdala removed, with other brain regions virtually intact. (Due to my BS in neuroscience, I've been a real boon to the team as of late.) Near the woman's body, we find a man's skull. This skull has been picked clean to the bone -- whether by time or actual cleaning, we don't know yet. The skull's got a characteristic circle cut away over the posterior portion; we know that this man is yet another victim of this bizarre brain-coveting killer. We go through the backlogs of unsolved murders, and we match the skull to the body of a victim recovered in the mid-nineties. Apparently, this killer has been at work for over a decade and has just now chosen to be more forthright with his methods. We ponder his motives as we begin to pore over the crime scene.

I studied neuroscience all day yesterday. Consequently, most of my dreams revolved around the brain.

I dreamt that there was some sort of evil scientist out there doing research. I was observing him somehow. He would force his subjects to administer an electric shock to themselves. The shock looked painful, although it wasn't enough to knock anyone over when they pressed the button to receive it (All subjects were standing, all of the time). To motivate subjects to cooperate, the scientist threatened them with a much more powerful electric shock, which he could apply to them at any time. If a subject didn't administer a shock to themselves when they were ordered to, the scientist would give them a jolt capable of sending most subjects into violent seizures. Since all subjects were held in the same room, uncooperative ones were basically examples for the rest. Compliance was high with the scientist's requests, for the most part.

I also dreamt about neglect, which results from a lesion to the posterior parietal cortex. I was treating a patient with contralateral neglect; he hadn't dressed the left half of his body and described things monocularly. It was interesting.

The last dream I can recall involved some sort of high school project. For the project, each student was given a sample of marijuana. I don't know what the project entailed, but my dream picked up on the conclusion of the project, at which time each student was required to turn their pot sample back in to the teacher. Pretty much every student was coming up with ingenious ways to smuggle most of their pot sample out of the school. This was incredibly amusing. I guess it's always funny to outwit teachers when you're in high school.