Dream Patterns Research Articles

The dream world of film: A Jungian perspective on cinematic communication

This study explicates the relevance of Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and its archetypal manifestations to film criticism. The relationships between cinematic form and archetypal image patterns in dreams and myths suggest film to be an ideal medium for unconscious expression and direct attention to vital thematic elements in a film's visual and narrative structures. Similarly, the collective origins of archetypal, or “visionary,”; images and motifs permit cinematic works to be viewed as reflections of the psychic state of their surrounding community.

Effects of psychot herapy on REM latency and REM time.

This study investigated the effect of a functional psychotherapy on the sleep EEG patterns of 6 patients. Contrary to original expectations no significant group differences in REM time and REM latency were found between two nights following therapy sessions and two normal nights. However, across the 4 nights the patients exhibited an average REM latency of 71 min. which was significantly shorter than that recorded in an independent study with the same design and a similar subject population. Clausen, Sersen, and Lidsky (1974) reported an average REM latency of 107.3 min. for 10 normal subjects also recorded across four nights. This result is compared with those in several other studies and discussed in relation to possible changes in dream patterns.

Dreaming, fenfluramine, and vitamin C.

The effect of increasing doses of fenfluramine on dream patterns was studied in 20 patients receiving a reducing diet with or without a controlled dietary intake of vitamin C daily. The dream pattern was unchanged in six patients and dreams disappeared in another who normally dreamed often. In 13 patients dreams increased in frequency and intensity, and in five the dreams assumed frightening proportions. There was a significant straight-line relation between response and the size of the dose. When placebo tablets were given to four patients their dreams disappeared or assumed their pretreatment normal pattern. Absence of vitamin C from the diet did not significantly affect the dream pattern. That fenfluramine has dose-related cerebral effects should be remembered in patients with a history of mental illness.

Thiopental activation and spontaneous sleep and dream patterns of resistant schizophrenics.

Thiopental-activated EEGs, spontaneous sleep EEGs and dream patterns were studied in forty-eight chronic schizophrenic patients who were retrospectively divided into a therapy resistant and responsive group in terms of therapeutic outcome. Using an analogue frequency analyser it was found that therapy-resistant subjects exhibited more power in the slow frequency bands and less power in the fast frequency bands than did responsive subjects during both resting recordings and thiopental post-narcotic sleep. The spontaneous all-night sleep investigations yielded similar findings. Digital computer sleep prints demonstrated that resistant schizophrenics had longer periods of deep sleep and fewer awakening states than did responsive patients, whereas responsive patients exhibited more REM activity. Evaluation of the digital computer period analysis measurements during all-night sleep revealed that 0–8 cps activity appeared to a greater extent in therapy resistant schizophrenics, while over 8 cps activity was pre-dominant in the responsive group of patients. The clinical significance of these findings was discussed, with the conclusion that quantitative electroencephalography may be a valuable instrument in predicting the therapy-responsiveness of a schizophrenic population.

Effects of cigarette withdrawal on sleep and dream patterns : J. D. Kales, T. A. Preston, and T. L. Tan (Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.A.)

Effects of cigarette withdrawal on sleep and dream patterns : J. D. Kales, T. A. Preston, and T. L. Tan (Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.A.)

The Effects of Fever on Sleep and Dream Patterns

The Effects of Fever on Sleep and Dream Patterns

Sleep patterns in 2-year-old children

Sleep disturbances in children tend to be diagnosed and treated on an empiricalbasis. Methods are now available for more objective treatment of these disturbances. The sleep patterns of 16 healthy 2-year-old children were analyzed with all night electroencephalography and electrooculography. The characteristic sleep patterns of this age group and the possible use of this information in clinical medicine are discussed. The relationship between sleep and dream patterns and chronological and mental age, as well as dreaming, in this age group is reported. Sleep disturbances in children tend to be diagnosed and treated on an empiricalbasis. Methods are now available for more objective treatment of these disturbances. The sleep patterns of 16 healthy 2-year-old children were analyzed with all night electroencephalography and electrooculography. The characteristic sleep patterns of this age group and the possible use of this information in clinical medicine are discussed. The relationship between sleep and dream patterns and chronological and mental age, as well as dreaming, in this age group is reported.

Dreaming and Korsakoff's Psychosis

RECENT theoretical discussions about the function of dreaming have proposed that dreaming may be involved in the memory processes.1-3The particular disturbance of recent memory which is characteristic of patients with Korsakoff's psychosis suggested that a study of the sleep and dream patterns of such patients might provide information in relation to this hypothesis. Furthermore, studies of stage 1 sleep in cats have shown concurrent highly activated patterns in the limbic and cortical areas.4Because the lesion in the alcoholic form of Korsakoff's psychosis disrupts a major limbic-cortical Pathway,5the possibility that this lesion has an effect on the dream process should be considered. (In this paper the authors are assuming that stage 1 rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a reflection on dreaming in man. Therefore, stage 1 and dream time will be used interchangeably.) With these as theoretical reasons for the study of Korsakoff patients,

Sleep and dream patterns in twins. Markov analysis of a genetic trait.

As early as 1936, Davis and Davis [1] reported on the influence of heredity on electroencephalograms (EEGs) by the direct method of studying twins. The inheritance of monozygotic (MZ) twins would be similar while that of dizygotic (DZ) twins would have variable heredity the same as that of ordinary siblings. They found that the waking alpha rhythms from one MZ twin resembled those from the other as closely as the record of the same person on successive recordings. Raney [2] in studying lateral dominance of the EEG in MZ twins concluded that the EEGs of identical twins are more similar than those of unrelated children only when treated as a group. Lennox and Gibbs [3] studied EEGs of normal and epileptic twins and concluded that, although epilepsy per se was not hereditary, cerebral dysrhythmia was. They further suggested that the EEG could be used as evidence in decisions dealing with the zygosity of twins and in tracing the heredity of abnormal cerebral rhythms. Using the concept that characteristics which can be shown to appear regularly in MZ twins and irregularly in DZ twins as evidence of the hereditary nature of any given trait, Lennox, Gibbs, and Gibbs [4] studied the waking alpha tracings of MZ and DZ twins. The EEG records were judged identical in 85% of the cases in MZ twins and alike in only 5% of the DZ twin group. Vogel [5] analyzed various EEG traits in 208 pairs of twins and found good agreement in MZ twins. Tangheroni and Pardelli [6] reported complete identity of EEG tracings between MZ couples but rhythms of discordant frequency and morphology in DZ couples.

Reserpine: its effect on the sleep-dream cycle in man.

The effect of reserpine on the sleep and dream patterns of six normal human subjects was investigated. All-night EEG and eye-movement recordings were obtained on about fifteen nights for each subject.

Sleep and Dream Patterns of Child Schizophrenics

<h3>Introduction</h3> THE NEW electroencephalographic (EEG) and electrooculographic (EOG) studies of sleep stimulated by the pioneer work of Aserinsky, Kleitman, and Dement^1,3,4have provided an objective method by which the functions of sleeping and dreaming can be explored. In the many sleep laboratories started during the last ten years, continuous EEG and EOG recordings of sleeping subjects have been gathered. These data reliably indicate that cyclic EEG changes occurring at regular intervals throughout the night are remarkably uniform for individual subjects and manifest identifiable developmental changes.^7,9-13,17,18It has been found that rapid eye movements (REM) occur during periods characterized by a low voltage, nonspindling, relatively fast pattern identified as stage 1. A particular type of mental activity characteristic of dreaming has been strongly suggested as correlating with these periods of stage 1 sleep. Stages 2, 3, and 4 of sleep, or nonREM sleep, are characterized by spindles, K

Studies in the physiology of awareness: the incidence and content of dream patterns and their relationship to anoxia.

The study of dreams is a study of a group of epiphenomena associated with states of diminished awareness. No matter whether such dreaming occurs in natural sleep, in states of reverie interspersing normal levels of consciousness or in pathologically or pharmacologically induced aberrations of consciousness, it would appear that the principle that dreams do not occur other than at levels of lessened awareness is generally accepted. From the point of view of neurophysiology, it also seems reasonably clear that the formation of the visual and auditory hallucinations, illusions and delusions forming the manifest formal content of dreams is dependent upon fairly precise cerebral localization, the temporal lobe and Brodman's area 19 being especially important in these respects (Penfield and Erickson, 1941). Psycho-physiologically a number of attempts have been made to assess the nature and quality of stimuli normally inciting dreams. From Maury (1861) onward the effects of various physical stimuli (Klein, 1930), of auto-suggestion (Arnold-Forster, 1921), of post-hypnotic suggestion (Prince, 1939) and of projection phantasies (Malamud and Linder, 1931) have been noted. Psychologically the dynamics underlying the mechanisms of the dream instinct have been investigated especially by Freud and his followers. Freud's opinion that the dream represents an attempted wish fulfilment has been modified by Jung, who emphasizes its compensatory function, by Adler, who conceived of the dream as a method for testing possible future situations in phantasy, and by Stekel (1943), for whom the dream was a symbolic manifestation of the “internal conflicts” of the individual. Finally, the observations of Monge (1929) concerning the increased incidence of disturbing dreams when dwellers at high altitudes suffer from chronic mountain sickness, and of McFarland (1937) on the changing dream habits of a party of mountaineers in the Chilean Andes as they ascended steadily to ever-increasing altitudes (and hence to progressively greater degrees of anoxic anoxia), are of immediate interest. They are in direct line with the findings of anoxaemia in sleep (Lovett Doust and Schneider, 1951), and suggest a positive relationship between the manifest content of dream patterns, emotional tension, reduced awareness and anoxaemia.