Sci Am 1990;263:86-8,90-2,94-6. De Sanctis, in 1899, in his book I Sogni, Studi Clinici ed Psicologici di un Alienista (Dreams, Clinical and Psychological Studies of a Psychiatrist), cites no less than 323 articles and books dealing with dreams, which proves that the objective study of dreams did not start during the middle of the 20th century, as is usually taken for granted (4). As pointed 77. The gamma-alpha loop has been shown to play no role in producing the movements that characterize dreaming. 32. government site. WebThis theory also implies that dreams are not independently functional but rather a coproduct of the sleeping brain, reflecting the dreamers physiological and psychological The postynaptic inhibitory control of lumbar motoneurons during the atonia of active sleep: effect of strychnine on motoneuron properties. Sakai K, Sastre JP, Kanamori N, Jouvet M. State-specific neurons in the ponto-medullary reticular formation with special reference to the postural atonia during paradoxical sleep in the cat. Reticulospinal and reticulobulbar tracts are involved in conveying to the motoneurons the impulses that cause oniric movements. Mirmiran M. The function of fetal neonatal rapid eye movement sleep. Physiol Rev 1967;47:117-77. Front Neurol. Esoteric power, useless, useful: considerations about dreams in cognitive-behavioural therapy. WebPsychoanalytic theory of dream: Advanced by Freud, the psychoanalytic theory of dream stands as the most valid and fundamental among all the theories of dream. Head jerky movements may reflect vestibular dreams. Schmidt MH, Sakai K, Valatrix JL, Jouvet M. The effects of spinal mesencephalic transections on sleep-related erections and ex-copula penile reflexes in the rat. Changes in neuronal activity in association cortex of the cat in relation to sleep and wakefulness. During a visual dream the eyes move (Figure 3) whereas during an auditory dream the middle ear ossicles (stapedius and tensor tympani) are activated (Figure 4). They found that during the desynchronized phase there occur eye movements, the reason why such phase has been given the name of REM-sleep (14). Pompeiano O. (eds.) In non-human animals the report regarding dreams is obviously impossible but, fortunately, a dream can be detected in both humans and other species by analyzing its motor, vegetative and electrophysiological manifestations, as will be described below. Intermediate state of sleep in the cat. 4 According to Freud, Vertes & Eastman (2000), for instance, believe that the stressful conditions in experiments intended to demonstrate a role of desynchronized sleep and dreaming in consolidation of memory spoil the results (88). Modifications of recurrent discharge of the alpha motoneurons during sleep. During REM sleep, several physiological changes also take place. Analysis of psychological theories concerning functions of dreams. The earliest theory to emerge, Freuds psychoanalytic theory, takes an observational approach to identifying the function that dreams serve. Freud theorized that dreams are the result of unfulfilled wishes or desires in the subjects life. Fratelli Bocca Editori, Torino 1899. 71. J Sleep Res 1993;2:188-92. FOIA 122. While the how and why of dreaming may be explored using physiological and biological methods, dreaming is also a subjective experience involving a form of mentation that can offer representations of an individual's internal world. 26. This is for sure the most enigmatic issue about dreaming. 109. In cats, Guazzi, Baccelli & Zanchetti (1966) demonstrated that due to such a cardiovascular hypoactivity the sensory afferents from glomus carotideus and glomus aorticus, that carry information from chemoreceptors sensitive to a decrease in oxygen blood concentration, attain an overwhelming relevance, inasmuch as following the transection of such afferents blood pressure goes continuously down during desynchronized sleep, leading to death (63). Electrophysiologically, it has been shown that the same type of hippocampal cells that are activated during training in a radial maze are also endogenously reactivated during sleep, which accounts for memory consolidation and for a close correlation between dreams and events preceding sleep (87). Soja PJ, Lopez-Rodriguez F, Morales FR, Chase MH. Salivary, gastric, enteric, pancreatic and billiary secretion and contraction of the smooth muscle of the gastrointestinal viscera are specific vegetative components of feeding behavior, as well as secretion of luteotropic hormone, increase in cavernous blood pressure and vaginal blood flow and several other endocrine adjustments are part and characteristic of sexual behavior. Science 1987;238:797-9. During this bright period of the Middle Ages some physicians also reasoned about dreams. Spectrum, New york 1976:411-449. Where do dreams come from? 39. However, psychoanalysts take into account only a few dreams that are occasionally recalled, despite the fact that we dream four or five episodes every night, what means that the fraction of dreams we can recall is a small portion of what we in fact do experience as dreams. For example, it could refer to a goal that you want to reach within your lifetime or zoning out and daydreaming during the day. The vegetative components, that are phasic increases of heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, pupillary diameter, and most probably metabolic adjustments as well, are expressed more consistently during a dream, as they are during attentive wakefulness. Inasmuch as all this relevant knowledge is entirely ignored, we hope the present review may help in rescuing it (4). What is the Some of his statements, hereby reproduced in a simplified form from his book on sleep and dreams, briefly illustrate his contribution to the study of this subject: "All creatures that have four limbs and are sanguine (mammals) display signs that they dream while asleep. Brainstem control of the events of REM sleep. Nat Rev Neurosci. Baldissera F, Cesa-Bianchi MG, Mancia M. Spinal reflexes in normal and unrestrained cats during sleep and wakefulness. 1996 Sep 12;383(6596):163-6. doi: 10.1038/383163a0. Therefore, it seems that there are two major descending pathways from the rostral pons to the medulla that mediate muscle atonia during desynchronized sleep, one involved in the tonic and the other in the phasic muscle inhibition. These interneurons inhibit motoneurons by means of glycinergic synapses (glycine is a powerful inhibitory neurotransmitter), as shown by Soja et al. Brain Res 1996;770:192-201. Spreng LF, Johnson LC, Lubin A. Autonomic correlates of eye movement bursts during state REM sleep. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Christy B, Nathans D. DNA binding site of the growth factor-inducible protein Zif268. Fortunately, thanks to this peculiar incomplete motoneuron inhibition we are able to record movements occurring in both humans and non-human animals and thus infer the presence of dreams. When any part of the brain programs a behavior it sends the program to the cerebellum. Therefore, the wider is the eye rotation, the higher is the recorded potential, which occurs when the eyes are scanning the environment. Gardner Jr R, Grossman WI, Roffwarg HP, Weiner H. The relationship of small limb movements during REM sleep to dreamed limb action. Fortunately, this author did not suggest that dreaming, with all its movements, is intended to produce heat from the fake muscular contractions that occur as an expression of dreams. In people with arterial aneurisms such a high pressure may provoke their rupture. Another fancy hypothesis is the one that proposes that we dream to forget, in order to delete "unwanted" information by reverse learning or unlearning (118). Europ J Neurosci 1994;6:1298-1306. NeuroReport 1997;8:3-7. In rats we found similar potentials in the amygdala as related to olfactory dreams, expressed as rostrum movements (32). In cats, tympanic muscles sometimes contract during desynchronized sleep (38), as shown in Figure 4. Roffwarg HP, Herman J, Lamstein S. The middle ear muscles: predictability of their phasic action in REM sleep from dream recall. Table 1 shows the results of some of such studies, including our data concerning nearly 2,000 dreaming episodes recorded from rats. 116. Web5 Theories on dreaming . Such activation of zif-268, which is likely to be correlated with the effect of learning on desynchronized sleep, was larger in the frontal and hippocampal cortices, where memorization is well known to occur. Magoun HW, Rhines R. An inhibitory mechanism in the bulbar reticular formation. Apparently, the main cause of such a reduction of blood pressure and heart rate is the active inhibition of the baroreceptor reflexes during this phase of sleep. News Physiol Sci 1998;13:91-7. Petersohn D, Schoch S, Brinkmann DR, Thiel G. The human synapsin II gene promoter. It is thus not surprising that during dreaming activity in rats both rostrum and vibrissae move preponderantly, probably because most of their dreams contain olfactory and snout tactile components. 107. WebEssentially, during sleep the mind integrates new information acquired during the previous day into memory and processes it by making necessary connections. Stern W, Forbes WN, Morgane PJ. Neurosci Conscious. On the other hand, cells that were silent during the behavioral task did not show the increase in frequency. Progr Neurobiol 1984;22:241-88. Vogel GW, Foulkes D, Trosman H. Ego functions and dreaming during sleep onset. 128. Electroencephal Clin Neurophysiol 1987;66:383-90. Proposed by Harvard psychiatrists J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley in 1977, the theory posits that dreams are your brains attempts to make sense of random patterns of firing neurons while you slumber. This hyperpolarization is due to an increased motoneuronal membrane permeability to chloride ions, which suggests that glycine or -GABA are released on the motoneuronal membrane during desynchronized sleep (44). Valle AC, Timo-Iaria C, Sameshima K, yamashita R. Theta waves and behavioral manifestations of alertness and dreaming activity in the rat. We suppose, instead, inasmuch as dreams are forgotten if we are not aroused while dreaming or within ten to fifteen minutes immediately after the dream has ceased, that it may well be that dreams are forgotten because the reticular activating system is highly deactivated during desynchronized sleep and thus the memory of the dreams cannot be consolidated (110). Fenn WO, Hursh JB. In humans, both reflex activities are also deeply inhibited during desynchronized sleep. Problems with Physiological function Theory This does In: M. C. Hepp-Reymond & G. Marini (eds.) 23. New findings on the neurological organization of dreaming: implications for psychoanalysis. eCollection 2021 Aug 12. Roldan E, Weiss TT. Gottesmann C. Theta rhythm: the brain stem involvement. In 1936, Klaue (12) described periods of sleep in cats characterized by high frequency electrocorticograms that he considered as a sign of deep sleep and in 1950 Passouant described a phase of desynchronization (a term coined by Adrian to label an increase in frequency with a decrease in voltage) of the EEG potentials in humans. Our data with rats are quite consistent as to the variation of blood pressure and heart rate during oniric activity. We found that, in the average, during attentive wakefulness heart rate is nearly 320 bpm; in synchronized sleep it decreases to 244 bpm and during phasic movements that unveil oniric activity it increases again. Exploring the neural correlates of dream phenomenology and altered states of consciousness during sleep. Chase MH, Morales FR. Xerxes, in fact, had discovered an important aspect of dreams but his oracle discarded such an explanation, in favor of the mystic one. 121. This is specially true as to bees, that at night do interrupt their hum, "even if they are exposed to the light of a lantern". We spend a lot of time sleeping. The physiological-functioning theory suggests that dreaming works the same way. WebThe language of dreaming shows that certain parts of the brain are active during dreams while others are inactive. These findings point to a decreased activation of executive and association cortex during desynchronized sleep, what is suggestive that the processes involved in building up wakeful thought and dreaming may be distinct. The Neuropsychology of Sleep and Dreaming. Baust W. Die Phnomenologie des Schlafes. 73. Contemporary neuroscientific theories often view dreams as epiphenomena, and many of the proposals for their biological function are contradicted by the phenomenology of dreams themselves. According to this impossible hypothesis, during desynchronized sleep, in which the brain is rather isolated from its normal input/output, a non-specific endogenous activation in the brain stem is probably responsible for the reverse learning. Important dream theories are Freud's interpretation of dreams, Physiol., Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1972:166-307. Metabolism during desynchronized sleep tends, in fact, to be equal to or even larger than that of waking (131,132). This author reported that dream production in human subjects from 3 to 5 years of age was minimal and that the content of the dream reports generally consisted of "static imagery" in the absence of narrative context. As a matter of fact, manifestations of dreaming have been identified in many species, including chickens, chimpanzees, cats, rats and in some birds. If the animal is trying to identify the source of an odor that is located at a large distance, snout movements are expected to span wide angles at low frequencies, whereas when the source is near such movements are expected to span narrow angles, at high frequencies, just as during wakefulness. In humans, equivalent potentials can be recorded from the occipital cortex. By lesioning the alphacoeruleus nuclei such an inhibitory effect is prevented and during oniric activity the movements generated by the dream itself can be expressed, as was clearly demonstrated in Jouvet's Laboratory (50,51) in cats; the animal suddenly gets up, walks, miews and strikes with the paws, as if the animal were awake. Experimental study. Plato, despite his logical view of dreams, antecipated by 24 centuries one of the dogmas of psychoanalysis, stating that the dreams with a sexual background, mainly those with an incestuous content, and those in which the dreamer attacked or even killed someone, did, in fact, represent occult wishes that only could be fulfilled without punishment as an oniric experience. Stimulus response theory of dream: The stimulus response theory which existed prior to Freud is based upon the associationistic stimulus response view. This theory stresses the relationship between brain changes during sleep and changes in perceptual efficiency. Some disturbing stimuli force activity into one portion of the cerebral cortex. Doneshka P, Kehaiyov A. 9. 92. J Neurophysiol 1954;17:532-57. Cien Cult 1995;47:221-34. This site needs JavaScript to work properly. Brain Res 1990;517:224-8. An analysis of the supraspinal influences acting on motoneurons during sleep in the unrestrained cat. Does early night REM dream content reliably reflect presleep state of mind? According to Mancia (1995), the brain "produces dreams" as "a symbolic process of elaborating, interpreting and reorganizing in narrative sequences all the material accumulated in the memory during waking hours". Hobson JA. It is not known why and how the potent inhibition of motoneurons is bypassed by the descending impulses that cause such movements but this is, possibly, a key phenomenon for the understanding of the mechanisms and the function of dreams. In nocturnal macrosmatic animals, olfaction is the predominant sensory channel and their vibrissae are usually very long, to detect the presence of objects at relatively large distances. Descending projections from the dorsolateral pontine tegmentum to the paramedian reticular nucleus of the caudal medulla in the cat. Essential manifestations of dreaming are the conscious experience, the electrophysiological, the motor and the vegetative expression of oniric behaviors in humans as well as in other animals. Vertes RP. 132. The correlation between dream content and the oniric movements was first studied by Aristotle, who identified lip, eye and limb movements and correctly related them to what was being dreamed of. Roffwarg et al. 63. Short periods of desynchronization breaking through theta waves may, therefore, be taken as a manifestation of a very high degree of attention, during attentive wakefulness or during dreaming. A comparison of presleep and REM sleep thematic content. 40. Physiol., Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New york 1972:1-165. 123. Grimm R, Tischmeyer W. Complex patterns of immediate gene induction in rat brain following brightness discrimination training and pseudotraining. Neurosc Biobehav Rev 1992;16:372-97. Arch Ital Biol 1965;103:25-44. Arch Gen Psychiat 1966;14:238-48. Am J Physiol 1937;118:8-14. Finally, in 1953 Aserinsky & Kleitman started the present phase of the study of sleep in humans. Therefore, alpha-coeruleus nucleus is mobilized by the mechanisms that generate desynchronized sleep and exerts its inhibitory action through the reticulospinal pathways, as well as through pathways that go to the brain stem motor nuclei. They may well be activated during the behaviors caused by dreams (and which are not the dreams but their consequences), that are expressed as eye, head, lips, tongue, fingers, legs and other movements, that is, the motor components of the oniric behaviors. Bookshelf World Fed Sleep Res Soc Newsletter 1997;5:20-1. Erlbaum, 1992. Psychoanalysis also considers dreams as the expression of repressed wishes; this is undoubtly true as to only a few dreams, whereas several studies reveal, instead, that most dreams are closely related to the events of the previous day, as Aristotle had already demonstrated. Interestingly enough, if body temperature in cats subjected to pontomesencephalic transection is lowered, the amount of desynchronized sleep increases. 86. Xu Q, Xie H, Zheng D, Wu X, Zhang Y, Li T, Yan T. J Pers Med. Attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past. Oswald I. Before 8600 Rockville Pike Exptl Neurol 1963;8:93-111. 13. (1996) and Braun et al. 7. Sakai K, Sastre JP, Salvert D, Touret M, Toyama M, Jouvet M. Tegmentoreticular projections with special reference to the muscular distonia during paradoxical sleep in the cat. In rats we found similar potentials in the unrestrained cat the brain stem involvement Freud 's interpretation dreams! Hope the present phase of the brain are active during dreams while others are.. Involved in conveying to the variation of blood pressure and heart rate during oniric activity does night! 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