Chapter 33 - From Salvador Dali to dreams—topographic reorganization model of dreams

Abstract

Dreams are one of the most bizarre and least understood states of consciousness. They display strange often distorted mental contents and a paradoxical level/state of consciousness as hybrid between awake consciousness and complete unconsciousness. While several neuronal markers have been identified, their exact link to the experience or phenomenology of dreams remains yet unclear. Bridging that gap is the main goal of this and the next chapter. This chapter reviews topographic changes during dreams. Topographically, dreams are characterized by a shift toward increased activity and connectivity in the default-mode network, while they are reduced in the central executive network, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (except in lucid dreaming). These topographic changes in the brain also affect the topography of self as realized in the brain. Together, the topographic changes of brain and self are key in yielding the temporo-spatially often bizarre and highly self- or ego-centric mental contents as well as the hallucinatory-like states typically observed during dreams. In sum, this amounts to what we introduce as topographic-dynamic reorganization model of dreams (TRoD). The TRoD proposes that the topographic reorganization of the brain's neural activity during dreams is manifest in more or less corresponding spatial-topographic reorganization of our experience, that is, consciousness—topography provides the “common currency” of brain and experience in dreams.