1. Multiple perspectives!
Dreaming: What & Why?
Multiple perspectives!

3. Outline Dream behavior Theories of Dreaming Conclusions
What can we learn from our dreams?
Are they meaningful? True / predictive?
Basic Methodology (if we have time…)

4. Dream behavior & description
Within sleep
Amount
Brainwave activity & bodily quietude
the paradox
REM

8. Dreams & REM sleep REM amount & periodicity
Brainstem cholinergic & adrenergic promoting & inhibiting areas
A regular activity rooted in the brain

10. Outline Characteristics and Descriptions Theories of Dreaming
Conclusions
What can we learn from our dreams?
Are they meaningful? True / predictive?
Basic Methodology (if we have time…)

11. Theories of Dreaming Dreams as meaningful events: Freud
Are dreams meaningful???--the big question

12. Psychoanalytic Theory
Mental conflict
Unconscious motivations
Two forces: impulses & defenses
Dreams as a release
Dreamwork and its results
Latent dream
Manifest dream
Remembered dream
Dreamwork and forgetting as protective mechanisms
Poetzel Effect

13. Freud & Neuroimaging (Allen Braun)
Limbic system (emotion active during REM)
Prefrontal cortex (working mem. Att’n, logic & self-monitoring) inactive during REM
Above consistent with dream bizarreness & emotional disinhibition/wish fulfillment
Visual cortex inactive but higher visual areas active so we see w.o. visual input
Mark Solms: injured Pons vs. injured Forebrain
Pons-disrupts REM but dreaming goes on, Forebrain-lose dreaming but REM goes on.

14. Variations on Psychoanalytic Explanation + Challenges
Dement & Kleitman: REM & implications
Hall and Cartwright: Dream Series
Challenging Views
Dreams as random activity (Hobson +)
Synthesis (perhaps)

15. Other Neuroscience Views
Crick: Purge extraneous connections
Evans: Sorting function on day’s events
Winson: Sorting for survival
Hobson: random activity & activation-synthesis hypothesis

16. Hobson: Dream Transformations
From: inanimate animate character
To:
inanimate
Animate
Character

17. Outline Characteristics and Descriptions Theories of Dreaming
Conclusions
What can we learn from our dreams?
Are they meaningful? True / predictive?
Basic Methodology (if we have time…)

18. Conclusions
Can we obtain meaningful insights about ourselves through our dreams?
What can we learn from our dreams?
Are they meaningful? True / predictive?

19. Dream Characteristics
Lack of active volition
Absence of ongoing reflective judgment
Limited to phenomena of the immediate present
Diffuse cognitive slippage--dreamlike confusion - transformations of perception, thought, memory, emotion, relationships, etc.
Gaps in experience: 20%
Confusion of thought & irrational intuitions: 41%
Problems in sustained attention: 5%
Memory deficiencies within the dream: 15%
Overall, even 51% of "clearest dreams" had clouding
But not radical (scz, psychedelic) but rather more like that of waking life
Can even have hallucinations or psychedelic experiences in dreams (as in waking life!)
Ex. flying 4%, bizarre figures, 4%, changed identity 3%, LSD-like transformations of vision 13%. Mostly visual 47%. Somatic 10%, audit. 14%.

20. Outline Characteristics and Descriptions Theories of Dreaming
Conclusions
What can we learn from our dreams?
Are they meaningful? True / predictive?
Basic Methodology (we’ve got time!)

21. Basic Methodology Experimentation Independent vs. Dependent variables
Observational vs. Experimental studies
Causation vs. Correlation
Experimental “control”

22. The Control Condition

23. Measurement The Description of Data Central tendency Variability
Mean, median, mode
Variability
Variance
Standard deviation
Correlation & significance level

24. Measurement

25. T H HT TH HH TT
T = tails
H = heads

26. More Measurement