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Lecture II: Physiology

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Dream Consciousness

Part of the book series: Vienna Circle Institute Library ((VCIL,volume 3))

Abstract

Lecture II – PHYSIOLOGY demonstrates the power of clinical and basic sleep laboratory science to account for the formal features of dreams. The correlation of dreaming with REM in human sleep lab studies is used as a springboard for the cellular and molecular study of REM in animals. The formal features of dreams are ascribed to differential brain activation, input output gating and chemical neuromodulation compared to waking. Dream consciousness, as formally defined in Lecture I, is shown to be related to internally generated pseudosensory stimuli which activate the visual system (accounting for the visual hallucinosis), and the limbic forebrain (accounting for the emotional intensification). The impairment of insight, thought illogicality and recent memory-confabulation in dreaming are ascribed to the loss of aminergic chemical modulation in REM (compared to waking).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    J. Allan Hobson

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  1. J. Allan Hobson
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Correspondence to J. Allan Hobson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Medical School, Salem, New Hampshire, USA

    Nicholas Tranquillo

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Hobson, J.A. (2014). Lecture II: Physiology. In: Tranquillo, N. (eds) Dream Consciousness. Vienna Circle Institute Library, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07296-8_3

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