Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep
J. Allan Hobson
Language: English
Pages: 174
ISBN: B01K0SY4QW
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
People have always been intrigued by the contents of dreams, seeking to interpret their meaning as either divine messages or the coded communiques of repressed desires, a la Freud, but what about the formal features of dreams, asks Harvard psychiatry professor and sleep expert Hobson. Dreams have specific perceptual, cognitive, and emotional qualities that set them apart from waking consciousness--loss of awareness of self, loss of orientation, loss of directed thought, reduction in logical reasoning, and poor memory--that correspond, as it turns out, to specific modes of brain activity. As Hobson meticulously matches dream features to brain chemistry, he cajoles readers into replacing mystical interpretations with an understanding of the evidence indicating that our precious dreams are the results of the brain's routine processing of an overwhelming amount of memory. Initially this perspective may seem reductively mechanical, but Hobson, who quotes extensively from his own 116-volume dream journal, doesn't deny that dreams offer clues to the psyche, and the complex workings of the brain are every bit as entrancing as the most dazzling of dreams. - Donna Seaman
century, while sleep and dream science w e r e being prepared at the m o r e global level of the e l e c t r o e n c e p h a l o g r a p h ( E E G ) , neurobiologists w e r e learning m o r e about neurons than had even b e e n imagined in anyone's speculative p h i l o s o p h y — and that anyone includes Sigmund Freud, Charles S h e r r i n g t o n , and Ivan Pavlov. Among other things, by 1 9 5 0 it had b e c o m e clear that, as each neuron was bounded by a s e m i p e r m e a b l e m e m b
consciousness, and they could be experienced whether or not an animal had verbal language as we do. W h e n the animal's brain is activated during sleep, why not assume that the animal has some sort of perceptual, emotional, and memory experience? In terms of the important scientific use to which we could put animal sleep in the study of human dreaming, it makes little difference what the answer to the question about animal dreams might be. All we need know, in order to learn from our animal
Headache, Dream no. 34 Having suffered from 'cluster' headache syndrome since January 19, 1 9 8 4 — I began to notice improvement in May and June with a decrease in frequency and intensity of the attacks. Last night, I dreamt that I was examining my own head (as at a post mortem but this was not suggested in the dream). I pulled back the scalp and skull with intense curiosity, thinking 'at last, I will find out what bad been causing this thing!' And, lo and behold, there was a cause—a large
other dream characters. This is usually enough to make people quite proud and pleased to have achieved lucid dreaming. level, i n the capacity o f c o l o n i e s o f n e u r o n s t o g e n e r a t e m o v e m e n t patterns. Although this does n o t entirely explain h o w the sense of s e l f arises, it g o e s a long way to solving a p r o b l e m that is o t h e r w i s e difficult to m a n a g e : if 'I' am n o t the agent of m o v e m e n t , w h o , or what, is? T h e e n v i r o n m e n
T h e third and perhaps m o s t significant conclusion is that the brain n o t only self-activates and isolates itself from the world, but it changes its chemical climate very radically. In particular, t w o of the c h e m i c a l systems necessary to waking consciousness are c o m p l e t e l y shut off when the brain self-activates in sleep. W i t h o u t noradrenaline and serotonin, the dreaming brain cann o t do certain things such as direct its thoughts, engage in analytical problem-solving,