Function Of Dreams Research Articles

Book Review: The Dimensions of Dreams: The Nature, Function and Interpretation of Dreams

Book Review: The Dimensions of Dreams: The Nature, Function and Interpretation of Dreams

Evolutionary function of dreams: A test of the threat simulation theory in recurrent dreams

Revonsuo (2000a) proposed an intriguing and detailed evolutionary theory of dreams which stipulates that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat avoidance behaviors. The goal of the present study was to test this theory using a sample of 212 recurrent dreams that was scored using a slightly expanded version of the DreamThreat rating scale. Six of the eight hypotheses tested were supported. Among the positive findings, 66% of the recurrent dream reports contained one or more threats, the threats tended to be dangerous and aimed at the dreamer, and when facing a threat, the dreamer tended to take defensive or evasive actions that were possible and reasonable. However, less than 15% of the recurrent dreams depicted realistic and probable situations critical for one’s physical survival or reproductive success and the dreamer rarely succeeded in fleeing the threat despite important and appropriate efforts. The findings thus provide mixed support for the threat simulation theory.

Immediate and delayed incorporations of events into dreams: further replication and implications for dream function

The incorporation of memories into dreams is characterized by two types of temporal effects: the day-residue effect, involving immediate incorporations of events from the preceding day, and the dream-lag effect, involving incorporations delayed by about a week. This study was designed to replicate these two effects while controlling several prior methodological problems and to provide preliminary information about potential functions of delayed event incorporations. Introductory Psychology students were asked to recall dreams at home for 1 week. Subsequently, they were instructed to select a single dream and to retrieve past events related to it that arose from one of seven randomly determined days prior to the dream (days 1-7). They then rated both their confidence in recall of events and the extent of correspondence between events and dreams. Judges evaluated qualities of the reported events using scales derived from theories about the function of delayed incorporations. Average ratings of correspondences between dreams and events were high for predream days 1 and 2, low for days 3 and 4 and high again for days 5-7, but only for participants who rated their confidence in recall of events as high and only for females. Delayed incorporations were more likely than immediate incorporations to refer to events characterized by interpersonal interactions, spatial locations, resolved problems and positive emotions. The findings are consistent with the possibility that processes with circaseptan (about 7 days) morphology underlie dream incorporation and that these processes subserve the functions of socio-emotional adaptation and memory consolidation.

In MemoriamFrancis H.C. Crick

In MemoriamFrancis H.C. Crick

Dissociative processes, multiple personality, and dream functions.

From ancient times on, our dream processes were thought to be the uncovering of unknown connections. It may be that there is some basis to this belief and that dreams truly represent a mirror of our unconscious and not only random processes moving along according to some brain "computation." These ideas are supported by some findings that involve connections among dissociative processes, hypnosis, and multiple personality disorder (MPD). From this point of view, MPD represents a very interesting theoretical problem, which may be understood as an extreme example of the dissociative nature of the human psyche. This in turn leads to an understanding of the complex structure of the human psyche and corresponds perfectly to our experience, which says that the pathological often sheds new light on the normal and physiological.

M. Steriade: Neuronal Substrates of Sleep and Epilepsy E. F. Pace‐Schott, M. Solms, M. Blagrove and S. Harnad (eds): Sleep and Dreaming: Scientific Advances and Reconsiderations

M. Steriade: Neuronal Substrates of Sleep and Epilepsy E. F. Pace‐Schott, M. Solms, M. Blagrove and S. Harnad (eds): Sleep and Dreaming: Scientific Advances and Reconsiderations

Incidence of Threat in Dreams: A Response to Revonsuo's Threat Simulation Theory.

A. Revonsuo (2000b) proposed an evolutionary theory of dreaming, stating it is a threat simulation mechanism that allowed early humans to rehearse threat perception and avoidance without biological cost. The present study aimed to establish the proportion of dreams containing physical threats to the dreamer, whether these represent realistic life-threatening events, and whether the dreamer successfully and realistically escapes. It also examined incidence of threatening events in real life. A sample of most recent dreams was collected (N = 401). Only 8.48% of dreamers reported realistic life-threatening events in dreams and a realistic escape subsequently occurred in only one third of these reports. Actual severe life-threatening events were experienced by 44.58% of the sample. These findings contradict key aspect so f Revonsuo’s theory. The authoritative journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences recently published a special edition containing new theories and extensive peer commentary on the nature and function of sleep and dreaming. Among the theories advanced was Revonsuo’s (2000b) threat simulation theory (TST). This theory postulates that dreaming serves the biological function of enhancing perception and avoidance of real-life threats, thus bestowing an adaptive advantage. TST is expressed in six propositions. Proposition 1 states that dream content is not random or disorganized but is a simulation of the perceptual world. Proposition 2 states that dream consciousness is specialized for simulating threatening events. From this, Revonsuo (2000b) made three predictions: First, if we define a category containing all threats, these threats will be overrepresented in dreams; second, severe or mortally dangerous threatening events will be included in dreams more frequently than in waking life; and third, if triggered by real events, the threat simulation mechanism should generate rehearsals of ancestral threats (e.g., animal attacks, direct physical aggression) more easily than modern threats (e.g., traffic accidents, explosives). Proposition 3 states that exposure to real threatening events activates the threat simulation mechanism. Proposition 4 states that the threat simulations produced by the fully

Making Sense of Dreaming

Dreaming An Introduction to the Science of Sleep. J. Allan Hobson. Oxford University Press, New York, 2002. 180 pp. $22, £11.99. ISBN 0-19-280304-2. Building on findings from basic brain research, lab studies of sleep, clinical studies of sleep and dreams, and his records of his own dreams, Hobson explores the mechanisms and functions of dreams and sleep.

The threat simulation theory of the evolutionary function of dreaming: Evidence from dreams of traumatized children

The threat simulation theory of dreaming (TST) ( Revonsuo, 2000) states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defence mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events. Threat simulation during dreaming rehearses the cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and threat avoidance, leading to increased probability of reproductive success during human evolution. One hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the system, a threat simulation response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. Consequently, children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly threatened should have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly activated system. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the content of dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children. Our results give support for most of the predictions drawn from TST. The severely traumatized children reported a significantly greater number of dreams and their dreams included a higher number of threatening dream events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less traumatized or non-traumatized children.

An essay on dreaming, psychical working out and working through

In this paper the author attempts to expand the idea put forward by Freud who considered dreams as a special form of unconscious thinking. It is the author's contention that the psychical working‐out function performed by dreams is a form of unconscious thinking, which transforms affects into memories and mental structures. He also attempts to clarify the way in which meaning is built and transformed in mental life. In that respect the unconscious internal world is seen as a form of unconscious thinking, a private theatre where meaning is generated and transformed. He focuses on what happens to feelings in dreams in connection with the meanings as a result of and an expression of the several stages of working through. The dream world is described as the setting where the mind gives expressive pictorial representation to the emotions involved in a conflict: a first step towards thinkability. The dreamwork also constitutes a process through which meaning is apprehended, built on and transformed at an expressive non‐discursive level, based on representation through figurative/pictorial images. The author draws on Meltzer's formulation to conjecture that the working‐through function of dreams, mainly in response to interpretations, is performed by a process of progression in formal qualities of the representations made available by dreaming in the form he has called affective pictograms. It is through progression in formal qualities of the representation that the thinking capabilities of the affective life develop and become part of the process of what is called metaphorically the metabolisation of emotional life. This process takes place through migration of meaning across various levels of mental process. In this perspective the analyst'sinterpretations of dreams effect what linguists call transmutation of the symbolic basis, a process that is necessary to help the mind to improve its capacity to think. Something expressed on the evocative plane and condensed into a pictographic image is then transformed into verbal language that expresses meaning. These conceptions are illustrated by a detailed clinical case.

The sanctification of dreams: Prevalence and implications.

Many scientists and practitioners have debated about the function of dreams. Though some researchers have described dreams as purposeless random neuronal firings, others have suggested that dreams serve an adaptive function with certain dream characteristics having positive implications. Drawing on other studies of sanctification, this study examines whether imbuing a dream with qualities of the sacred relates to beneficial outcomes. Examining a college student sample of 168, it was found that the more sacred the dream was perceived, the more beneficial the outcome reported from a stressful life event which related to the dream. These outcomes include less negative affect and more positive affect, psychological and spiritual growth. Sanctification of dreams predicted these outcome variables over and above other religious measures as well as dream measures. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The Metal-binding Properties of DREAM: EVIDENCE FOR CALCIUM-MEDIATED CHANGES IN DREAM STRUCTURE

DREAM, an EF-hand protein, associates with and modulates the activity of presenilins and Kv4 potassium channels in neural and cardiac tissues and represses prodynorphin and c-fos gene expression by binding to DNA response elements in these genes. Information concerning the metal-binding properties of DREAM and the consequences of metal binding on protein structure are important in understanding how this protein functions in cells. We now show that DREAM binds 1 mol of calcium/mol of protein with relatively high affinity and another 3 mol of calcium with lower affinity. DREAM binds 1 mol of magnesium/mol of protein. DREAM, pre-loaded with 1 mol of calcium, binds 1 mol of magnesium, thus demonstrating that the magnesium-binding site is distinct from the high affinity calcium-binding site. Analysis of metal binding to mutant DREAM protein constructs localizes the high affinity calcium-binding site and the magnesium-binding site to EF-hands 3 or 4. Binding of calcium but not magnesium changes the conformation, stability, and alpha-helical content of DREAM. Calcium, but not magnesium, reduces the affinity of apo-DREAM for specific DNA response elements in the prodynorphin and c-fos genes. We conclude that DREAM binds calcium and magnesium and that calcium, but not magnesium, modulates DREAM structure and function.

Toward a cognitive neuroscience of sleep.

sleep is the only one whose basic biological function all of these questions, “how” can refer to the nature was not clear two thousand years ago. Yet, as we of the changes, the brain mechanisms underlying enter the 21st century, researchers are still arguing the changes, or the evolutionary pressures that led over the functions of both sleep and dreams. There to the changes. This is a tall order, and most work appear to be two reasons for this continued unto date has focused on the first of these, the certainty. First, the sleep research community has description of the changes themselves. been slow to accept that sleep serves many basically Three of the articles in this issue attempt to unrelated systems, including, for example, endissect the actual cognitive dysfunctions caused by docrine, immunologic, and thermoregulatory, as disturbed sleep, both in children [4] and in adults well as cognitive, functions [1–3]. But the second [5, 6]. Given that the cognitive impairment resulting reason is the complexity of the relationships befrom sleep deprivation plays such a major role in tween sleep and cognition. While it is obvious to both highway fatalities and industrial accidents [7], anyone who has skipped a night of sleep that cogit is not surprising that so much research has nitive functioning deteriorates with sleep depgone into understanding this very real public health rivation, characterizing the precise deficits has been problem. The extent of the problem is impressive. remarkably difficult. Largely this is a consequence Blunden et al., for example, cite studies [8, 9] of our basic ignorance of cognitive functioning in indicating that the community prevalence rate for general. So it has only been with the development of excessive daytime sleepiness in children is in the the cognitive neurosciences that sleep researchers range of 36–42%. have been given the tools they need to even define The consequences are equally impressive. Blunthis exciting and important question. The articles den et al. [4] report in this issue that sleep related in this issue of Sleep Medicine Reviews provide a obstructive breathing disorders in children are assuperb review of much of the work currently being sociated with significant attentional and memory done in this field. deficits, as well as a more general impairment in There are several ways to study the links between school performance and an increase in problematic sleep and cognition. We can ask how cognition is behaviors. In a second article, Fulda and Schulz [6] altered during sleep or as a consequence of sleep. report on cognitive performance in adults with We can ask how cognition is altered by changes in various sleep disorders. Overall, they found poorer

Sleep, learning, and dreams: off-line memory reprocessing.

Converging evidence and new research methodologies from across the neurosciences permit the neuroscientific study of the role of sleep in off-line memory reprocessing, as well as the nature and function of dreaming. Evidence supports a role for sleep in the consolidation of an array of learning and memory tasks. In addition, new methodologies allow the experimental manipulation of dream content at sleep onset, permitting an objective and scientific study of this dream formation and a renewed search for the possible functions of dreaming and the biological processes subserving it.

The Emergent Ego: Complexity and Coevolution in the Psychoanalytic Process

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book Forum: PsychoanalysisFull AccessThe Emergent Ego: Complexity and Coevolution in the Psychoanalytic ProcessHAROLD I. EIST, M.D., HAROLD I. EISTSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., Bethesda, Md.Published Online:1 Mar 2001https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.158.3.505AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail In 1978, Stanley Palombo wrote Dreaming and Memory(1), a seminal volume that expanded understanding of dream function. He relied on empirical research in the sleep laboratory plus innovative integration of new neurobiological and computer science findings with current psychoanalytic ideas.Palombo’s new book skillfully continues these processes of integration and inclusion. He brings a new and lively version of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory into the millennium as he combines modern evolutionary theory, computer models of evolution and information, complexity theory, neuroscience, and clinical psychoanalytic wisdom. This integration convincingly documents that psychoanalysis is quintessentially a biopsychosocial discipline that is alive, changing, growing, and relevant.Palombo challenges long-held, incorrect views that psychoanalysis is not science; that psychoanalysis deals with only outside influences on development (the one-way shaping of the individual through the pressures of learning and society on the drives or instincts, which create a dynamic, Möbius-strip effect) rather than the inner influences (the genetic or molecular bases of behavior); and that there is no way of measuring change in psychoanalysis. He does not get stuck at the level of molecular biology, however; rather, he recognizes the importance of the whole organism and the fact that change is reflected as an aspect of the organism. Palombo’s work is responsive to the important ideas of the sociobiologist Edmund O. Wilson, whom Jonathan Weiner (2) quoted as saying, “If everything else in biology is the product of evolution then surely we have to constantly examine and reexamine the human mind and human social behavior as products of evolution” (p. 220).Palombo argues compellingly that psychoanalysis induces changes within patients that are evolutionary in nature in that they alter adaptations from less effective to more effective. He also argues that these often small, nonlinear changes can lead to transformations with major enduring impact as new engrams. His views are in agreement with those of Eric Kandel, suggesting that the brain remains plastic throughout most of the life cycle and that new learning brought about by psychoanalysis can structurally alter the brain and the potential of the individual, which, like the brain, is changeable.Palombo points out that it is not essential for the reader to go through all of the chapters on computer models of self-sustaining and self-modifying systems to get the gist of his ideas and use them clinically. The concepts presented in these chapters are complex and require frequent rereadings and cogitation. However, reading these chapters is important not only as a strenuous mental exercise, which is good for the brain, but because they describe recent developments in post-Darwinian, modern evolutionary thinking. Evolution is often a glacial process, but it need not be, as documented in Jonathan Weiner’s exquisite volume, The Beak of the Finch(3), which Palombo refers to in this book and integrates into his ideas.Detailed clinical vignettes support the hypothesis that evolution is occurring in patients undergoing psychoanalytic treatment. Palombo’s writing also documents that he is a brilliant, creative thinker and one of the leading modern theory builders in psychoanalysis.For those interested in the advancement of psychoanalytic theory and understanding, for those desiring to break the intellectually stifling bonds of orthodoxy that have hurt psychoanalysis, for those feeling the need of a strong, intellectual, up-to-date perspective on psychoanalysis as an important science and an increasingly refined and clinically important art, this book is a major contribution. It richly deserves to be read.By Stanley R. Palombo, M.D. Madison, Conn., International Universities Press, 1999, 395 pp., $65.00.

The function of dreaming.

Theories on the function of REM sleep and dreaming, with which it has a contingent relationship, remain diverse. They include facilitation of memory storage, reverse learning, anatomical and functional brain maturation, catecholamine restoration, psychoanalytical (wish fulfilment or otherwise). It is possible that one function is grafted onto another as the personality develops. Given a close relationship between REM sleep and dreaming, and given that the neonate spends 18 hours asleep per day, of which 12 hours are spent in REM sleep, it is logical to look in the neonate for a primary function of dreaming. The two constants in the dreaming process are: 1) the dreamer is always present as first person observer; 2) there is always a topographical setting. Based on the foregoing, it is proposed that a major function of REM sleep is the development and maintenance of a sense of personal identity, through creating a 'being there' environment at regular intervals during prolonged periods of absence from a waking state in topographical surrounds. The infant cannot forget who he/she is. Thus, he/she develops a clear sense of his/her own identity, or the 'I'ness of me', and a sense of his/her separateness from the topographical world. At the same time, by largely forgetting the dreams, he/she is not burdened by the need for an elaborate method of storage of the vicarious and bizarre experiences.

Dreams: The Royal Road to Metaphor

States, Bert O. Dreams: The Royal Road to Metaphor Metaphor, as treated here, is not a rhetorical device or strategy but the primary means by which dream and artistic images arise and give rise in turn to further narrative developments. The paper is chiefly concerned with dreams and the possibility that dream coherence-i.e., meaning, making sense-as we recognize it in the waking state may be a largely irrelevant to the organization and function of dreams that obviously have no artistic mission to be shared by others (readers, auditors) as forms of communication. I examine an experiment in dream-splicing conducted by Allan Hobson and his Harvard colleagues with a view to illustrating that bizarreness and discontinuity in dreams are not necessarily, as Hobson claims, signs of incoherence but may be the natural consequence of dreams exercising the power of association while the body is off-line. If dream images arise from a virtually infinite experience in world-association, it is possible that dreams couldn't perform their function-whatever it may be-by offering coherent narratives of the sort that interest waking readers. In other words, the content of dreams-coherent or otherwise from the waking standpoint-may be less important than the act of dreaming itself. Additionally, I briefly discuss two leading theories of dream function-the recorrelation of memory and the vigilance theories and suggest, briefly, how they might apply not only to dreams but to artistic works as well.

Dreaming Souls: Sleep, Dreams, and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind

What, if anything do dreams tell us about ourselves? What is the relationship between types of sleep and types of dreams? Does dreaming serve any purpose? Or are dreams simply meaningless mental noise-'unmusical fingers wandering over the piano keys'? With expertise in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Owen Flanagan is uniquely qualified to answer those questions. And in Dreaming Souls he provides both an accessible survey of the latest research on sleep and dreams and a compelling new theory about the nature and function of dreaming. Flanagan argues that while sleep has a clear biological function and adaptive value, dreams are merely side effects, 'free-riders', irrelevant from an evolutionary point of view. But dreams are hardly unimportant. Indeed, Flanagan argues that dreams are self-expressive, the result of our need to find or create meaning, even when we are sleeping. Rejecting Freud's theory of manifest and latent content-of repressed wishes appearing in disguised form-Flanagan shows how brainstem activity during sleep generates a jumbled profusion of memories, images, thoughts, emotions, and desires, which the cerebral cortex then attempts to shape into a more or less coherent story. Such dream narratives range from the relatively mundane worries of non-REM sleep tot he fantastic confabulations of deep REM that resemble pyschotic episodes in their strangeness. But, however bizarre these narratives may be, they can shed light on our mental life, our well being, and our sense of self. Written with clarity, lively wit, and remarkable insight, Dreaming Souls offers a fascinating new way of apprehending one of the oldest mysteries of mental life.

Did ancestral humans dream for their lives?

The most challenging objections to the Threat Simulation Theory (TST) of the function of dreaming include such issues as whether the competing Random Activation Theory can explain dreaming, whether TST can accommodate the apparently dysfunctional nature of post-traumatic nightmares, whether dreams are too bizarre and disorganized to constitute proper simulations, and whether dream recall is too biased to reveal the true nature of dreams. I show how these and many other objections can be accommodated by TST, and how several lines of new supporting evidence are provided by the commentators. Accordingly TST offers a promising new approach to the function of dreaming, covering a wide range of evidence and theoretically integrating psychological and biological levels of explanation.

The reinterpretation of dreams: an evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming.

Several theories claim that dreaming is a random by-product of REM sleep physiology and that it does not serve any natural function. Phenomenal dream content, however, is not as disorganized as such views imply. The form and content of dreams is not random but organized and selective: during dreaming, the brain constructs a complex model of the world in which certain types of elements, when compared to waking life, are underrepresented whereas others are over represented. Furthermore, dream content is consistently and powerfully modulated by certain types of waking experiences. On the basis of this evidence, I put forward the hypothesis that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events, and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance. To evaluate this hypothesis, we need to consider the original evolutionary context of dreaming and the possible traces it has left in the dream content of the present human population. In the ancestral environment human life was short and full of threats. Any behavioral advantage in dealing with highly dangerous events would have increased the probability of reproductive success. A dream-production mechanism that tends to select threatening waking events and simulate them over and over again in various combinations would have been valuable for the development and maintenance of threat-avoidance skills. Empirical evidence from normative dream content, children's dreams, recurrent dreams, nightmares, post traumatic dreams, and the dreams of hunter-gatherers indicates that our dream-production mechanisms are in fact specialized in the simulation of threatening events, and thus provides support to the threat simulation hypothesis of the function of dreaming.