Dreaming: What

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Dreaming What Why?

• Multiple perspectives!

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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)

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Dream behavior description

• Within sleep
• Amount
• Brainwave activity bodily quietude
• the paradox
• REM

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Dreams REM sleep

• REM amount periodicity
• Brainstem cholinergic adrenergic promoting
  inhibiting areas
• A regular activity rooted in the brain

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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)

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Theories of Dreaming

• Dreams as meaningful events
• Freud
• Are dreams meaningful???--the big question

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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

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Freud Neuroimaging (Allen Braun)

• Limbic system (emotion active during REM)
• Prefrontal cortex (working mem. Attn, 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.

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Variations on Psychoanalytic Explanation
Challenges

• Dement Kleitman REM implications
• Hall and Cartwright Dream Series
• Challenging Views
• Dreams as random activity (Hobson )
• Synthesis (perhaps)

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Other Neuroscience Views

• Crick Purge extraneous connections
• Evans Sorting function on days events
• Winson Sorting for survival
• Hobson random activity activation-synthesis
  hypothesis

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Hobson Dream Transformations

• From inanimate animate character
• To
• inanimate 21 0 0
• Animate 2 0 7
• Character 0 0 14

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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)

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Conclusions

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

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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.

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Outline

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

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Basic Methodology

• Experimentation
• Independent vs. Dependent variables
• Observational vs. Experimental studies
• Causation vs. Correlation
• Experimental control

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The Control Condition
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Measurement

• The Description of Data
• Central tendency
• Mean, median, mode
• Variability
• Variance
• Standard deviation
• Correlation significance level

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Measurement
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T tails H heads
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More Measurement