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Bizarreness in dreams and waking fantasy
... In addition, Reinsel et al. show that bizarreness has many dimensions that can differentiate the quality of bizarre mentation across sleep and waking conditions. Thus, the types of bizarreness depend on the variations of the two parameters above: waking mentation bizarreness (i.e., discontinuity) is due to external stimuli disrupting ongoing mentation (in Reinsel et al.' s study (39) relaxed waking was interrupted at varying intervals); while bizarreness in REM dreams is associated with the more genuinely "strange" nature of the images (i.e., improbable or impossible identities). Improbable combinations (bizarre elements regardless of context) increase and are equally prevailing in relaxed waking (without stimuli) and in dreams. ...
... The differences found between REM and NREM Stage 2 dreams depend much on the measurement used for bizarreness. For example, by applying "global" (ordinal) bizarreness scales the REM dreams observed are more bizarre than NREM dreams, while "general" (qualitative) scales applied to the same dream reports do not lead to the same results (39,92). ...
... The wellknown correlation between the length of dream reports and their bizarreness (36,54,57,93) may make the differences between REM and NREM dreams bizarreness scores less clear (REM dreams are frequently longer). Thus, the difference between REM and NREM stage 2 dream reports vary according to whether dream length is controlled or not (39). ...
INTRODUCTION D reams frequently show impossible and/or improbable aspects compared with common life experiences, which have been referred to as " dream bizarreness ". Although the issue of dream bizarreness has already been discussed by the psychoanalytic dream theory, the first systematic investigations on this aspect of dreaming only began in the Sixties, when a few authors started attempting to measure dream bizarreness by objective indicators (1-3). The " activation-synthesis " model (4) later proposed a first systematic attempt to explain the causes of dream bizarreness after Freud' s initial hypothesis. This model was based on the neurobiological events of REM sleep and opened a new perspective to investigation. However, it automatically invalidated the psychoanalytic approach and therefore excluded any sort of analysis of psychological or motivational determinants. At the same time the cognitive-psychological approach to dreaming processes (5,6) was limited to analysing dream bizarreness generation mechanisms (i.e., " how ") rather than its possible reasons and causes (i.e., " why? "). Therefore, investigations on the causes of dream bizarreness were restricted to the neurobiological level alone. Still according to the more recently revised versions of the " activation-synthesis " hypothesis, dream bizarreness can be fully explained by the particular neurobiological conditions that are found only in REM sleep (7-14). In addition, this approach emphasizes the role of PGO (ponto-geniculo-occipital) activity in determining dream bizarreness, on which two other neurobiological models, the " reverse learning " theory (15) and Seligman and Yellen' s model (16) are also grounded. This paper will review the literature on dream bizarreness in order to demonstrate that the current neurobiological approach to dreaming, represented primarily by the " activation-synthesis " hypothesis, is reductive and not consistent with various research data. The paper, after an attempt to define the term " dream bizarreness " , is structured as follows: Theoretical Models (Part I), Measuring Dream Bizarreness (Part II), Empirical Data and Implications (Part III), and Conclusions. DEFINING DREAM BIZARRENESS According to the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, there are two features that define the word " bizarreness " : 1.Improbability (strikingly out of the ordinary) and 2.Unusualness, oddness, extravagance. Several terms have been used in literature to describe bizarreness, for example, " distortion from reality " , " metamorphosis " , " implausibility " , but many authors agree that the concept of bizarreness includes both: a) Impossibility, and b) Improbability and/or oddness compared to " common daily experiences ". The first dimension includes those situations that are impossible from a physical and/or logical point of view; the second dimension implies statistical improbability.
... previous studies. Many studies have mainly focused on such quantitative questions as how large a proportion of dream reports include at least some bizarre features (Snyder 1970;McCarley & Hoffman 1981), or whether REM dreams are bizarre more frequently than NREM dreams or waking fantasies (Antrobus, 1983;Williams, Merritt, Rittenhouse & Hobson, 1992;Reinsel, Antrobus & Wollman, 1992). Probably due to differences in the rating scales used, the estimations as to the frequency of bizarreness in different studies vary to a considerable degree. ...
... Consequently, the bizarreness of dreams can now be approached both as a psychological and cognitive phenomenon. For example, Reinsel, Antrobus and Wollman (1992) and Fookson and Antrobus (1992) suggest that bizarreness may be understood with the help of concepts borrowed from cognitive psychology, such as spreading activation in semantic memory and parallel distributed processing. From this novel cognitive point of view, the most interesting questions concern the qualitative aspects of bizarreness: How often and in which ways are different kinds of dream contents distorted? ...
... uncertainty). The scale used by Reinsel, Antrobus and Wollman (1992) also distinguishes between three types of bizarreness, but not between different dream contents. ...
Investigated the extent to which different kinds of dream elements are affected by different types of dream bizarreness (BZ). All expressions describing 1 of 14 contents (self, place, time, persons, animals, body parts, plants, objects, events, actions, language, cognition, emotions, sensory experiences) in 32 female college students' home-based dream diaries were scored. Each element was categorized as non-bizarre or bizarre (incongruous, vague, discontinuous). Results show that BZ is not randomly distributed across different dream contents and that distinct types of BZ show a dissimilar pattern of distribution. Language and cognition are the most and self is the least incongruous content. Place is high on both discontinuity and vagueness. It is suggested that an adequate baseline for what is bizarre in dreams is the S's personal waking reality, and for the proportion of bizarreness, the amount of comparable non-bizarre dream elements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... In dream consciousness, the ability to correctly orient in space and time and to people is also often flawed with bizarre mixtures of people, places, and objects commonplace e.g., Refs 107,177,200,213,216,263. For example, the dreamer speaking with the person long since deceased shows an inability to orient in time, while the crash-landing in the woods indicates a spatial disorientation which is accepted due to a relaxation of spatial ''laws''. ...
... The formal feature of dream mentation which has been most intensively studied using operationally defined, quantitative indices is ''bizarreness''. 107,120,127,157,175,177,200,213,216,263 Our laboratory has developed a bizarreness scale which divides this formal feature into quantifiable categories of discontinuity, incongruity, uncertainty and ad hoc explanation. 107,120,179,259 We have used quantitative indices derived from this scale to demonstrate a correlation of bizarreness with major shifts in emotion, 179,248 a predominance of bizarreness in dreams versus waking fantasy, 259 and the presence of bizarreness in the dreams of children as well as adults. ...
... 10,11,66,106,194,200,210 In contrast, NREM reports more often contained thought-like mentation and representations of current concerns than did REM sleep reports. 66,210 In addition, judges were able to distinguish unaltered REM from NREM mentation reports, 106,182,213 some dreamers could distinguish preceding REM from NREM upon awakening, 7 and subjects signalled that they were dreaming more often from within REM than from within NREM. 9 Other studies found that: (i) dream recall dropped off rapidly as awakenings were delayed beyond the end of a REM period, 44,92,93,262 (ii) there was a positive relationship of both report word count and subjectively estimated dream duration with the length of preceding REM sleep, 44 and (iii) there was a positive relationship between the length of time dream events would occupy in real time and the duration of the preceding REM period. 45 Psychophysiological studies also showed substantial recall of mentation from NREM sleep [66][67][68]74,[92][93][94]106,142,171,181,198,210,246,265 including slow wave sleep. ...
State-dependent aspects of consciousness are explored with particular attention to waking and dreaming. First, those phenomenological differences between waking and dreaming that have been established through subjective reports are reviewed. These differences are robustly expressed in most aspects of consciousness including perception, attention, memory, emotion, orientation, and thought. Next, the roles of high frequency neuronal oscillation and neuromodulation are explored in waking and rapid eye movement sleep, the stage of sleep with which the most intense dreaming is associated. The high frequency neuronal oscillations serve similar functions in the wake and rapid eye movement states sleep but neuromodulation is very different in the two states. The collective high frequency oscillatory activity gives coherence to spatially separate neurons but, because of the different neuromodulation, the binding of sensory input in the wake state is very different from the binding of internally perceived input during rapid eye movement sleep. An explanatory model is presented which states that neuromodulation, as well as input source and brain activation level differentiate states of the brain, while the self-organized collective neuronal oscillations unify consciousness via long range correlations.
... Participants perceived their dreams as most similar to the phenomenological characteristics of task-unrelated thoughts. Our results join a body of work reporting associations between day and night cognition [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] . Here we aimed to extend beyond this existing literature by comparing perceived dream characteristics to dimensions of waking thought studied extensively in the literature on mind-wanderingtask-unrelatedness and stimulus-independence-as well as by examining dispositional and concern-related predictors of perceived dream characteristics across individuals. ...
... As a whole, these results extend prior work comparing the phenomenology waking thought and participants' typical dreams [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] by considering different forms of the former and by providing a more granular picture of the phenomenology of the latter. While our findings of similarities between dreams and task-unrelated thoughts are in line with theories that emphasize the role of mind-wandering in dreams 4,5,11 , it was surprising to us that for many characteristics, stimulus-independent task-unrelated thoughts (as compared to stimulus-dependent taskunrelated thoughts) did not demonstrate a privileged status in their similarity to dreams, especially considering that the external sensory input that characterizes stimulus-dependent task-unrelated thoughts (a.k.a. ...
While recent neurocognitive theories have proposed links between dreams and waking life, it remains unclear what kinds of waking thoughts are most similar in their phenomenological characteristics to those of dreams. To investigate this question and examine relevance of dreams to significant personal concerns and dispositional mental health traits, we employed ecological momentary assessment and trait questionnaires across 719 young adults who completed the study during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time marked by considerable societal concern. Across the group and at the level of individual differences, dreams showed the highest correspondence with task-unrelated thoughts. Participants who self-reported greater COVID-19 concern rated their dreams as more negative and unconstructive, a relationship which was moderated by trait rumination. Furthermore, dreams perceived as more negative unconstructive and immersive in nature associated with increased trait rumination beyond variation in rumination explained by waking task-unrelated thoughts alone. Together, these results point to similarities between perceived characteristics of dreams and task-unrelated thoughts, and support a relationship between dreams, current concerns, and mental health.
... According to cognitively oriented dream researchers, the appearance of daily events in dreams is a relatively minor matter because dreams are dramatic simulations based on the human ability to imagine (e.g., Antrobus, 1978Antrobus, , 2000Foulkes, 1985Foulkes, , 1999Hall, 1991;Reinsel, Antrobus, & Wollman, 1992). Their claims are fully supported by the three careful studies of the issue discussed in an earlier section (Roussy, 1998;Roussy et al., 1996Roussy et al., , 2000. ...
... As such, this concept is an important part of the effort to develop a neurocognitive theory of dreams that envisions dreaming as a form of spontaneous thought, far removed from the theoretical tradition of stimulus-response psychology, a tradition that naturally leads to a focus on the incorporation of events from daily life (e.g., Antrobus, 1978;Antrobus et al., 1970;Domhoff, 1996, pp. 210 -212;2010b;Domhoff & Fox, 2015;Foulkes, 1985Foulkes, , 1999Foulkes & Domhoff, 2014;Fox et al., 2013;Reinsel et al., 1992). Therefore, the continuity hypothesis should be distinguished from the broadly defined "experiential incorporation hypothesis" created by Schredl (2003) and endorsed by many others (e.g., Malinowski & Horton, 2014;Revonsuo et al., 2015;Sándor et al., 2016;Selterman et al., 2014), which encompasses day residues, stimuli-induced incorporations within the laboratory setting, incorporations of the laboratory setting into dream reports collected in a sleep laboratory, and the appearance of everyday experiences from recent daily life. ...
This article explains the origins and development of the continuity hypothesis in work by cognitively oriented dream researchers. Using blind quantitative analyses of lengthy dream series from several individuals, in conjunction with inferences presented to the individual dreamers to corroborate or reject, these researchers discovered that the same conceptions and personal concerns that animate waking thought are very often enacted in dreams. Other types of studies later supported this finding. The article argues that the cognitive origins and definition of the continuity hypothesis have been distorted by those dream researchers who mistakenly claim that the concept is focused on dreaming as an incorporation of everyday experiences. A review of the literature on experiential and experimental influences on dreams, which includes studies of day residues, the experimental manipulation of presleep events, the incorporation of during-sleep stimuli, laboratory references in laboratory-collected dreams, and the influence of routine daily events, reveals that none of them is very influential and most are trivial. The article concludes that those who study experiential factors should adopt a phrase such as "incorporation hypothesis" to avoid confusion in the literature and make clear that the continuity hypothesis is a central one in an emerging neurocognitive theory of dreams. The intensity of personal concerns and interests, not the events of the day, shape central aspects of dream content. In particular, the frequency of characters or activities reveals the intensity of various concerns, and these concerns can be discovered for individuals through comparisons with normative findings.
... Bizarreness of form may occur as disruption or rapid changes in the temporal sequence of dream images and themes. Bizarreness in content is represented by unusual or improbable combination of people, places and objects [15,18,29,[31][32][33][34]. While some authors have emphasized bizarreness as a distinctive feature of dreaming [29], other have not. ...
... Strauch and Meier felt that while all elements of dream experience could be subject to bizarre admixtures, this was neither general nor dominant [18]. Reinsel et al. found a greater level of bizarreness in waking fantasy than in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep [32]. ...
Advances in media and communication technology have opened up new avenues for understanding consciousness through observation of behaviour in virtual environments. A convergence of progress in cognitive neuroscience and computer science should consider the powerful role of conscious and unconscious states as an interface between self and virtual worlds. In this chapter, we review the premise of presence as a dimension of consciousness from both a phenomenological and neuroscientific perspective. Working from a model in which dreaming consciousness is considered the most archetypal form of media technology, dreams are discussed as a useful metaphor for virtual reality. We argue that presence can be equally compelling whether experienced via self-generated simulation during the process of dreaming, or through an externally generated media simulation. Attempts to use media technology in a therapeutic context need to consider clinical aspects of mechanisms involved in both normal and clinical/pathological aspects of consciousness. A speculative therapeutic approach, "dream simulation therapy", is discussed as a future possible area of study. Dreaming consciousness reminds us that the key factor in approaching an ultimate technology-mediated presence experience is the sum rather than its parts: a subjective/affective state of being.
... The seminal work of Calvin Hall, for example, was novel in presenting dream content as a relatively transparent reflection of a dreamers' waking life, rather than a mysterious psychological phenomenon specific to the sleep state (Hall, 1953). Later, the work of Antrobus (Antrobus, 1983(Antrobus, , 1991Reinsel et al., 1992) and Foulkes (1962Foulkes ( , 1967 was central in establishing that forms of complex, dreamlike mental activity occurred continuously throughout sleep onset, NREM sleep stages, and even resting wakefulness, suggesting dreaming as a point on a continuum of forms of experience, rather than a phenomenon peculiar to one sleep state. More recent theories have continued to stress how the generation of dream consciousness is related to the neurobiology and cognitive structure of the waking brain (Cicogna and Bosinelli, 2001;Nir and Tononi, 2010;Wamsley and Stickgold, 2010;Perogamvros and Schwartz, 2012). ...
... Meanwhile, dreams from sleep are not necessarily more "bizarre" than waking mentation. In fact, by one measure, waking fantasy is more "bizarre" than dreaming-the number of sudden "discontinuous" shifts in topic is actually greater in reports of waking fantasy than in dreaming (Wollman and Antrobus, 1986;Reinsel et al., 1992). Conversely, cognition during sleep can be surprisingly logical and coherent, including self-reflection, planning, and focused attention (Kahan et al., 1997;Kahan and LaBerge, 2011). ...
Even when we are ostensibly doing "nothing"-as during states of rest, sleep, and reverie-the brain continues to process information. In resting wakefulness, the mind generates thoughts, plans for the future, and imagines fictitious scenarios. In sleep, when the demands of sensory input are reduced, our experience turns to the thoughts and images we call "dreaming." Far from being a meaningless distraction, the content of these subjective experiences provides an important and unique source of information about the activities of the resting mind and brain. In both wakefulness and sleep, spontaneous experience combines recent and remote memory fragments into novel scenarios. These conscious experiences may reflect the consolidation of recent memory into long-term storage, an adaptive process that functions to extract general knowledge about the world and adaptively respond to future events. Recent examples from psychology and neuroscience demonstrate that the use of subjective report can provide clues to the function(s) of rest and sleep.
... The idea of a continuum between daydreaming and dreaming is not a new one. Research by Reinsel et al. (1992) demonstrates that daydreams can be as bizarre as dreams, and work by Singer (1993) demonstrates that daydream imagery can be as metaphoric as dream imagery. Furthermore we know that very dreamlike material sometimes occurs at sleep onset ( Vogel et al. 1966) or under conditions of sensory isolation ( for instance Reinsel et al. 1992). ...
... Research by Reinsel et al. (1992) demonstrates that daydreams can be as bizarre as dreams, and work by Singer (1993) demonstrates that daydream imagery can be as metaphoric as dream imagery. Furthermore we know that very dreamlike material sometimes occurs at sleep onset ( Vogel et al. 1966) or under conditions of sensory isolation ( for instance Reinsel et al. 1992). There is still some disagreement about whether such material should be called dreaming or something else. ...
This book presents a theory of dreaming based on many years of psychological and biological research. Critical to this theory is the concept of a Central Image; this book describes his repeated finding that dreams of being swept away by a tidal wave are common among people who have recently experienced a trauma of some kind-a fire, an attack, or a rape. Dreams with these Central Images are not dreams of the traumatic experience itself, but rather the Central Image reveals the emotional response to the experience. Dreams with a potent Central Image, like the tidal wave, vary in intensity along with the severity of the trauma; this pattern was shown quite powerfully in a systematic study of dreams occurring before and after the September 11 attacks in New York. This book's theory comprises three fundamental elements: dreaming is simply one form of mental functioning, occurring along a continuum from focused waking thought to reverie, daydreaming, and fantasy. Second, dreaming is hyperconnective, linking material more fluidly and making connections that aren't made as readily in waking thought. Finally, the connections that are made are not random, but rather are guided by the dreamer's emotions or emotional concerns-and the more powerful the emotion, the more intense the Central Image.
... In this theory, bizarreness is not due to disguise as it is with Freudians, but it is the result of an unprepared forebrain stimulated by random activation that arises every so often from the brain stem due to the onset of REM sleep (Hobson, 2002). Reinsel, Antrobus, and Wollman (1992) believed that spreading activation in the underlying semantic networks has a relationship to the virtual objects and places that we are directly aware of. They argued that the disconnected nature of dream imagery may reflect spreading activation in associative networks. ...
... Furthermore, everyday waking thought has more of the features that Freudians and activation theories see as unique to dreams. For example, in a study comparing REM reports with waking streams of thought from the same participants sitting in a darkened room, it was found that there were more abrupt scene changes in the waking sample than in the REM reports (Reinsel et al., 1992). ...
Revonsuo proposes an evolutionary theory of dreaming in which dreams allow an individual to prepare for real world threats in the safety of the virtual setting of the dream world. Based upon previous work examining the dreams of video game players, it was hypothesized that high-end gamers would experience fewer threat simulation dreams because of frequent threat resolution rehearsal during game play. Subjects were asked to report a night before dream and fill out surveys regarding their gaming history, media use, and dream experiences. Using a factor analysis, support for the main hypothesis was found. Individuals with a history of game play experienced fewer threat severity variables in their dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... Conversely, bizarreness is by no means restricted to dreams. Reinsel, Antrobus, and Wollman (1992) conducted a methodical study of persons under conditions of sensory isolation. The particpants' waking fantasies, in this situation, were scored just as bizarre as their night dreams. ...
... This work certainly fits within the continuum model. Antrobus and his coworkers have for many years compared mentation during dreaming and various waking states, finding for instance that discontinuity and rapidly shifting imagery may occur similarly in dreaming and waking states (Reinsel et al., 1992;Wollman & Antrobus, 1986). This group is definitely working within the continuum model. ...
Is a dream a meteorite—a bit of material arriving from a distant place that needs to be carefully analyzed to give us knowledge about that place (outside or inside us)? Is it a strange text which has come to us in a foreign language, that needs to be translated into our own? This “meteorite view” is held by some religious and spiritual persons, by many orthodox psychoanalysts and other therapists, and implicitly by many researchers. They all see the dream as something alien, something totally different from our ordinary mental functioning.
This paper presents a great deal of research favoring an alternate view—that the dream is an earth-stone, not an alien stone. It may be impressive and beautiful (gemstone), but it's still an earth-stone. The dream is part of our mental functioning. It is one end of a continuum, running from focused waking thought, through looser thought, fantasy, daydreaming, reverie and dreaming.
We review reasons why dreams are often considered “totally different:” they're perceptual, not conceptual; they're bizarre; they are “so real;” they're so easily forgotten; they're involuntary; they occur in REM sleep—a totally different state. We demonstrate that none of these reasons are persuasive. In each sense, there is overlap between dreams and other forms of functioning.
The continuum view leads to different kinds of research and a different style of dreamwork. It also helps answer questions the field has long struggled with including: Should we study “a dream” or “dreaming?” Are dreams meaningful or meaningless?
... In this theory, bizarreness is not due to disguise as it is with Freudians, but it is the result of an unprepared forebrain stimulated by random activation that arises every so often from the brain stem due to the onset of REM sleep (Hobson, 2002). Reinsel, Antrobus, and Wollman (1992) believed that spreading activation in the underlying semantic networks has a relationship to the virtual objects and places that we are directly aware of. They argued that the disconnected nature of dream imagery may reflect spreading activation in associative networks. ...
... Furthermore, everyday waking thought has more of the features that Freudians and activation theories see as unique to dreams. For example, in a study comparing REM reports with waking streams of thought from the same participants sitting in a darkened room, it was found that there were more abrupt scene changes in the waking sample than in the REM reports (Reinsel et al., 1992). ...
In a series of studies, J. Gackenbach has been mapping the effects of heavy video game play on consciousness, including dreaming. The reason that gamers are being investigated is that they represent a group of people who are engaging in the most immersive media experience widely available today. With its audio and visual interactive nature as well as the long hours often required to master a game, they are an opportune group to study media effects upon consciousness. In this study, the focus was on dream bizarreness. Dream bizarreness has been variously thought to be the differentiator between waking and dreaming thought, an indication of creativity, and most recently, as a model for solving the binding problem in consciousness. Using A. Revonsuo’s and C. Salmivalli’s scale for dream content analysis, it was found that high-end gamers evidenced more bizarre dreams than did low-end gamers in two of three types of bizarreness categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... Dreamlike Quality. Dreamlike Quality is a global measure for which judges are instructed to rate reports on a scale of 1-10, according to how " dreamlike " the report seems (Reinsel, Wollman, & Antrobus, 1992). Inter-rater reliability for Dreamlike Quality was .80. ...
... Bizarreness. Bizarreness is a count of bizarre elements of three types in the mentation: discontinuities, improbable combinations of elements, and indefinite identities of characters (Reinsel et al., 1992). Bizarreness scores were log-transformed to remove a positive skew. ...
It has long been known that dream recall, along with various other features of dreaming, changes as a function of time of night. Yet the processes which might account for these time-dependent variations remain obscure. Here we assess the contribution of homeostatic and circadian factors to the generation of NREM mentation across the diurnal cycle. Assuming that previously reported time-of-night mentation effects are primarily driven by a circadian activation cycle which approximates the core body temperature (CBT) rhythm, it was hypothesized that more content would be reported from daytime nap awakenings as compared to night awakenings. Afternoon Nap reports were compared to previously-collected nocturnal reports from Circadian Nadir and Late Morning time points. Contrary to our hypotheses, both amount of mentation reported and propensity to report any mentation at all were lower in Nap as compared to Late Morning reports. A purely circadian influence following the CBT cycle is inadequate to explain this pattern of mentation production.
... As these older views did not take mind wandering into account, this emphasizes the merits of our comparative approach. In particular, our finding that discontinuity is more frequent in mind wandering than in dreaming is in line with earlier findings that frequent shifts in topics and thoughts characterize mind wandering (Klinger, 2012;Reinsel et al., 1993). It is also in line with the idea that the constant movement of thoughts is integral to the definition of mind wandering in the dynamic framework, in which thought transitions occur freely and largely in the absence of automatic and deliberate constraints (Mills et al., 2018(Mills et al., , 2021. ...
... This dimension assesses whether successive thoughts and imagery are thematically only loosely associated or unfold in a coherent and thematically smooth manner. Early research suggested that sudden changes in place and topic occur frequently not only in dreaming but also in daydreaming, waking fantasies, and mind wandering (Klinger, 2012;Klinger & Cox, 1987;Reinsel, Antrobus, & Wollman, 1993). Our results support the view that different types of spontaneous thought are characterized by frequent movement from one topic to the next, and that thought transitions are often associative in nature (Mills et al., 2018a;Mills et al., 2021;Horton, 2017;Horton & Malinowski, 2015). ...
Spontaneous thoughts, such as dreaming and mind wandering, constitute a significant portion of human consciousness. Yet, the precise phenomenological and content-related similarities and differences between dreaming and waking mind wandering remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we address this gap by comparing 340 dreaming and mind wandering questionnaires that depending on the answers of participants ranged from 13 to 27 dimensions. While previous research primarily used laboratory settings and probe-caught methods, we adopted a naturalistic self-caught design to capture spontaneous experiences in daily life, which play a role in human cognition and well-being. Data was explored with a mixed-effect binary logistic regression models, which resulted in identifying dimensions that significantly predicted either dreaming or mind wandering and can therefore be considered as a dimension along which both states differ. In addition, the relative frequency distributions of all dimensions were used to illustrate similarities between dreaming and mind wandering. Finally, we compared a subgroup of dreaming and mind wandering containing visual imagery. Visual and immersive imagery and scene-organization are central features of dream phenomenology and at the centre of leading dream theories. To further investigate the immersive quality of dreaming and mind wandering, we considered features related to self-experience such as Feeling of Presence and Self-perspective. Overall results showed a complex picture of differences and similarities between dreaming and mind wandering that can inform future research about subtypes and help identify along which dimension dreaming might be considered as intensified compared to mind wandering
... Although Seligman and Yellen (1987) reported data (based on morning-after dream reports) that confirm this hypothesis, there is also some inferentially nonconfirmatory evidence. If one may take self-rated bizarreness as a proxy for discontinuity (discontinuity is usually considered a part of bizarreness; e.g., Reinsel, Antrobus, & Wollman, 1992), then it is relevant that Rechtschaffen and Buchignani (1992) found no visual differences for dreams judged high versus low in bizarreness. Currentconcerns theory supports no prediction on this issue, but the data reported here permit a further test of the hypothesis. ...
In previous research, presleep suggestions influenced nocturnal dream content. It was hypothesized that suggesting topics associated with participants’ current concerns would influence dream content more than suggesting other topics. Ten students spent 4 nights in a sleep laboratory: an adaptation night, a baseline night, and 2 nights under suggestions to dream about a concern-related or other topic. Concern-related suggestions influenced dream content—largely its central imagery—more than did other suggestions, which did not differ from nonsuggestion. Number of transformations within dreams was uncorrelated with dream vividness, contrary to extended activation-synthesis theory. Thus, the concern-related status of suggestions moderates their effectiveness and, inconsistent with extended activation-synthesis theory but consistent with current-concerns and distributed-activation theories, motivational and volitional processes actively influence dream content.
... Discontinuity accounts of bizarreness fail to address that some kinds of cognitive processing during wakefulness show comparable kinds of bizarreness. Temporal discontinuities are an obvious candidate because changes in topic or place are frequently found in waking mind wandering (Klinger, 2012;Klinger & Cox, 1987;Reinsel et al., 1993). In fact, temporal discontinuity is integral to the definition of mind wandering as a dynamic mental state in which thought transitions occur freely and unconstrained. ...
Although we are beginning to understand the neurocognitive processes that underlie the emergence of dreaming, what accounts for the bizarre phenomenology of dreams remains debated. I address this question by comparing dreaming with waking mind wandering and challenging previous accounts that utilize bizarreness to mark a sharp divide between conscious experiences in waking and sleeping. Instead, I propose that bizarreness is a common, non-deficient feature of spontaneous offline simulations occurring across the sleep-wake cycle and can be tied to the specific characteristics of spontaneous thought as being dynamic, unconstrained, (hyper)associative, and highly variable in content. Rather than misrepresenting waking reality, bizarreness can be employed to investigate the very building blocks of spontaneous cognition. The absence of bizarreness in thought processes is imposed by automatic and deliberate cognitive constraints. By contrast, thought and memory processes operating on their own without such constraints are inherently marked by different degrees and types of bizarreness.
... In the cases of extremely reduced openness considered earlier, the association or confusion of memories might lead to deformation or corruption of the memory code components ( ~) , for few or several s, resulting in "pieces", "bits", or "debris" of memories [7,21], which might be recalled in movie-like sequences, outside of their original recording context and assembled in certain emerging/new contexts. Flows of images associated to such memory debris are observed to occur in dreams [7,21,22,[24][25][26][27], in certain altered states of the brain dynamical regime such as under the effect of anesthesia [28], and in certain stages of deep meditation [29,30]; this may also occur in association with slow breathing techniques [31] or whenever the openness is indeed reduced such as in response to psychoactive substances (see the narration reported in Appendix B). Such visual experiences may also occur under the influence of external rhythmically modulated stimuli, in space (visual rhythms) or in time (musical rhythms). ...
Stress appears to be the basis of many diseases, especially myocardial infarction. Events are not objectively “stressful” but what is central is how the individual structures the experience he is facing: the thoughts he produces about an event put him under stress. This cognitive process could be revealed by language (words and structure). We followed 90 patients with ischemic heart disease and 30 healthy volunteers, after having taught them the Relaxation Response (RR) as part of a 4-day Rational–Emotional–Education intervention. We analyzed with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software the words that the subjects used across the study following the progression of blood galectin-3 (inflammation marker) and malondialdehyde (oxidative stress marker). During the follow-up, we confirmed an acute and chronic decrease in the markers of inflammation and oxidative stress already highlighted in our previous studies together with a significant change in the use of language by the subjects of the RR groups. Our results and the precise design of our study would seem to suggest the existence of an intimate relationship and regulatory action by cognitive processes (recognizable by the type of language used) on some molecular processes in the human body.
... In the cases of extremely reduced openness considered earlier, the association or confusion of memories might lead to deformation or corruption of the memory code components ( ~) , for few or several s, resulting in "pieces", "bits", or "debris" of memories [7,21], which might be recalled in movie-like sequences, outside of their original recording context and assembled in certain emerging/new contexts. Flows of images associated to such memory debris are observed to occur in dreams [7,21,22,[24][25][26][27], in certain altered states of the brain dynamical regime such as under the effect of anesthesia [28], and in certain stages of deep meditation [29,30]; this may also occur in association with slow breathing techniques [31] or whenever the openness is indeed reduced such as in response to psychoactive substances (see the narration reported in Appendix B). Such visual experiences may also occur under the influence of external rhythmically modulated stimuli, in space (visual rhythms) or in time (musical rhythms). ...
... From the perspective of the waking state, dreams often appear chaotic and difficult to comprehend because of cognitive bizarreness, i.e., incongruities, indeterminacy or discontinuities in the dream narrative [26]. Cognitive bizarreness has been closely related to the neural "signature" of REMS with random brainstem activation and secondary activation in higher-order areas (AIM model) [26, [44][45][46]. In addition, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and parietal cortex [31] are consistently deactivated during REMS. ...
Background:
A resurgence of neurobiological and clinical research is currently underway into the therapeutic potential of serotonergic or 'classical' psychedelics, such as the prototypical psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N,Ndimethyltryptamine), and ayahuasca - a betacarboline- and dimethyltryptamine (DMT)-containing Amazonian beverage. The aim of this review is to introduce readers to the similarities and dissimilarities between psychedelic states and night dreams, and to draw conclusions related to therapeutic applications of psychedelics in psychiatry.
Methods:
Research literature related to psychedelics and dreaming is reviewed, and these two states of consciousness are systematically compared. Relevant conclusions with regard to psychedelicassisted therapy will be provided.
Results:
Common features between psychedelic states and night dreams include perception, mental imagery, emotion activation, fear memory extinction, and sense of self and body. Differences between these two states are related to differential perceptual input from the environment, clarity of consciousness and meta-cognitive abilities. Therefore, psychedelic states are closest to lucid dreaming which is characterized by a mixed state of dreaming and waking consciousness.
Conclusion:
The broad overlap between dreaming and psychedelic states supports the notion that psychedelics acutely induce dreamlike subjective experiences which may have long-term beneficial effects on psychosocial functioning and well-being. Future clinical studies should examine how therapeutic outcome is related to the acute dreamlike effects of psychedelics.
... Despite the thousands of studies of sleep mentation, not one had ever studied the characteristics of the imagery and thought of waking subjects under the same conditions employed in laboratory-based sleep studies. When Reinsel, Wollman and I did so (Reinsel et al. 1992), we found, to our great surprise, that waking imagery and thought was significantly more vivid and more bizarre than in REM sleep! There were two differences. ...
The role of sleep and dreaming in maintaining emotional stability represents a very tangible and practical example of protoconsciousness as a mental state that supports the proper functioning of normal waking consciousness. Normal sleep has been shown to promote basic mammalian mechanisms of emotion regulation such as habituation, extinction and physiological homeostasis (Pace-Schott et al. 2009a, b; McEwen 2006). Sleep deprivation experiments suggest that sleep is also essential to cognitively based emotion regulatory functions such as accurate identification of facial emotion (van der Helm et al. 2010). Dreaming has been widely hypothesized to take part in this emotion regulatory process. For example, Rosalind Cartwright has suggested that negative affect is progressively ameliorated across dreams elicited from successive REM periods of a night in mildly depressed college students (Cartwright et al. 1998a). Similarly, she has linked a pattern of progression from negative early dreams to positive late dreams across the night with remission at 1 year in persons meeting Beck Depression Inventory criteria for depression (Cartwright et al. 1998b). The pattern of brain activation across sleep stages revealed by PET studies, which show global de-activation in NREM followed by selective re-activation of limbic structures that include core elements of the brain’s fear and reward processing networks, suggest that both positive and negative emotional extremes could be moderated during REM and that REM sleep dreaming may reflect a subjective experience of this process (Pace-Schott 2010). Indeed, Tore Nielsen and Ross Levin have suggested that these REM-activated limbic structures regulate emotion during REM sleep via extinction processes, and that, in PTSD, this process is disrupted resulting in both nightmares and impaired daytime emotion regulation (Levin and Nielsen 2007). Therefore, functionality in terms of emotional homeostasis has been attributed not only to the selectively activated physiology of REM itself but also to its subjective manifestation, REM sleep dreaming. Protoconsciousness theory posits “A primordial state of brain organization that is a building block for consciousness” (Hobson 2009). Hobson (2009) suggests that this primordial state of consciousness is prominent prenatally and in infancy when it supports the developing “secondary consciousness” of later childhood and adulthood. Hobson posits further that protoconsciousness then continues throughout life, especially during REM sleep dreaming, functioning in support of waking consciousness. If consciousness can be profitably described and compared between brain states in terms of its component formal domains, as suggested in Hobson’s first lecture of the current series, then certainly the emotional domain is one in which support of waking function is ongoing and essential given the lifelong nature of stressors and other challenges to proper functioning of the emotional domain. And, as most clearly seen during acute stress or in the disorders of emotion (affective and anxiety), disregulation in the emotional domain has innumerable knock-on effects on all other realms of adult waking secondary consciousness impacting higher cognitive functions such as selective attention, ability to reason and ability to plan prospectively. Therefore, the nightly support of waking consciousness, whether as a function of a protoconscious REM state or the physiological processes of sleep itself, represents an undeniable and essential function of sleep.
... Under the PRiSM model, the best receivers would be those who were good at generating a wide range of fairly random mentation, as these people would produce the largest possible pool of concepts to be matched to the target. This may also link in with the finding (e.g., Schlitz & Honorton, 1992;Dalton, 1997) that better ESP performance is found within a self-identified creative population, as creativity has been linked with the lability of brain activity (Reinsel et al, 1992). ...
A model for certain instances of dyadic extrasensory perception (ESP) is proposed wherein a "psi stimulus" is generated by a sender in response to real-time feedback of target-relevant receiver mentation. This stimulus need act only to reinforce current mentation by momentarily changing physiological arousal, reducing the need for complex information transfer, and highlighting the idea that psi may be a blanket term for a variety of information channels utilising different mechanisms rather than a unitary phenomenon. Experimental evaluation of the model involved two extensions to the standard ganzfeld design: (1) in one condition the sender received false feedback of receiver mentation; (2) receiver skin-conductance was recorded during mentation. No evidence of ESP was found based on target-rank (pi = .49) but the predicted skin-conductance response to target-relevant mentation was observed, with significantly higher arousal for relevant mentation than in baseline periods (p = .04, one-tailed). Arousal was increased in both conditions, indicating a response to the sender's perception rather than directly to target-relevant mentation. The true-feedback condition showed a surprising negative correlation with magnetic variance (p = .06 but opposite to prediction), and only the false-feedback condition showed the predicted negative correlation with magnetic field intensity (p = .002, one-tailed).
... Findings from the HVdC analysis were then used to see if they could shed any light on potentially symbolic elements in the dream reports. Although there are several other "bizarreness" scales (e.g., Bonato, Moffitt, Hoffmann, Cuddy, & Wimmer, 1991;Reinsel, Antrobus, &Wollman, 1992;Revonsuo & Salmivalli, 1995;Williams, Merritt, Rittenhouse, & Hobson, 1992), the Unrealistic Elements Scale is used in this study because it focuses on the types of bizarreness that are most likely to be expressions of figurative thinking. ...
This article presents argument and evidence in support of the hypothesis that dreaming can be understood as a form of embodied simulation. Building on many past studies of dream content employing the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) coding system, the article claims that most dreams dramatize the complex set of conceptions that are part of the dreamer's cognitive structure. Dreams embody conceptions primarily through literal enactments, making them somewhat akin to a theatrical play. The plausibility of this hypothesis is demonstrated through a quantitative analysis of emotions, social interactions, misfortunes, and good fortunes in a unique series of 143 dream reports written down over the space of 22 years by a widower because they were about his deceased wife. The inferences drawn from the analysis of the dream reports are consistent with the widower's written reflections on his marriage and his answer to a question sent to him by e-mail on a potentially embarrassing issue. The article also uses an Unrealistic Elements Scale to search for possible instances of figurative elements within the dream reports; about one third to one half of the unusual elements identified by means of this scale have some plausible connection to the conceptions expressed in the dream reports. The dream reports and information on the dreamer's life are available to everyone for further analysis on dreambank.net under the pseudonym "Ed."
... 6, 11-12). Nonetheless, the similarities among dream reports from the sleep-onset process, NREM 2 late in the sleep period, and REM, along with preliminary evidence of brain activation at sleep onset and during NREM 2, leads to the hypothesis that animates this article: the same neural network that seems to support dreaming during REM is active at other times as well (Antrobus et al., 1995;Cicogna et al., 1998;Domhoff, 2011b;Foulkes, 1985;Ioannides, Kostopoulos, Liu, & Fenwick, 2009;Reinsel, Antrobus, & Wollman, 1992;Wamsley et al., 2007). ...
... Under the PRiSM model, the best receivers would be those who were good at generating a wide range of fairly random mentation, as these people would produce the largest possible pool of concepts to be matched to the target. This may also link in with the finding (e.g., Schlitz & Honorton, 1992;Dalton, 1997) that better ESP performance is found within a self-identified creative population, as creativity has been linked with the lability of brain activity (Reinsel et al, 1992). ...
A model for certain instances of dyadic extrasensory perception (ESP) is proposed
wherein a 'psi stimulus' is generated by a sender in response to real-time feedback of target-relevant
receiver mentation. This stimulus need act only to reinforce current mentation by momentarily
changing physiological arousal, reducing the need for complex information transfer and
highlighting the idea that psi may be a blanket term for a variety of information channels utilising
different mechanisms rather than a unitary phenomenon. Experimental evaluation of the model
involved two extensions to the standard Ganzfeld design: (1) in one condition the sender received
false feedback of receiver mentation; (2) receiver skin-conductance was recorded during mentation.
No evidence of ESP was found based on target-rank (pi = 0.49) but the predicted skinconductance
response to targetrelevant
mentation was observed, with significantly higher arousal for relevant
mentation than in baseline periods (p=0.04, 1t).
Arousal was increased in both conditions,
indicating a response to the sender's perception rather than directly to targetrelevant
mentation. The
True Feedback condition showed a surprising negative correlation with magnetic variance (p=0.06
but opposite to prediction), and only the False Feedback condition showed the predicted negative
correlation with magnetic field intensity (p=0.002, 1-t).
... The dissociation between a long "duration of CE" and lower "richness" and "recall back in time" at sleep onset and to a lesser extent in wakefulness suggests that consciousness on the whole remains present for an extended period of time in these stages but that individual CE relating to a particular context are short and disconnected from each other. Indeed, it is well known that hypnagogic images at sleep onset are short and resemble a series of "snapshots" (Nir and Tononi, 2010) and that mental activity during wakefulness appears to contain more abrupt topic changes when compared to REM sleep (Reinsel et al., 1992). We did not find a main effect of stage on the duration of the "most recent conscious experience." ...
Dreaming-a particular form of consciousness that occurs during sleep-undergoes major changes in the course of the night. We aimed to outline state-dependent features of consciousness using a paradigm with multiple serial awakenings/questionings that allowed for within as well as between subject comparisons. Seven healthy participants who spent 44 experimental study nights in the laboratory were awakened by a computerized sound at 15-30 min intervals, regardless of sleep stage, and questioned for the presence or absence of sleep consciousness. Recall without content ("I was experiencing something but do not remember what") was considered separately. Subjects had to indicate the content of the most recent conscious experience prior to the alarm sound and to estimate its duration and richness. We also assessed the degree of thinking and perceiving, self- and environment-relatedness and reflective consciousness of the experiences. Of the 778 questionings, 5% were performed during wakefulness, 2% in stage N1, 42% in N2, 33% in N3, and 17% in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Recall with content was reported in 34% of non-REM and in 77% of REM sleep awakenings. Sleep fragmentation inherent to the study design appeared to only minimally affect the recall of conscious experiences. Each stage displayed a unique combination of characteristic features of sleep consciousness. In conclusion, our serial awakening paradigm allowed us to collect a large and representative sample of conscious experiences across states of being. It represents a time-efficient method for the study of sleep consciousness that may prove particularly advantageous when combined with techniques such as functional MRI and high-density EEG.
... Studies of mental content during relaxed wakefulness have shown the presence of unexpected content, bizarre elements and momentary loss of reality testing, that is, considering the products of imagination as perceptions (Foulkes & Fleisher, 1975). Moreover abrupt changes of topic seem to be more numerous in waking streams of thought than in dream reports (Reinsel, Antrobus, & Wollman, 1992). The conclusions of the Hobson and colleagues' study might have been very different if the authors had compared the coherence of dream content with that of similar products of the waking mind, for instance daydreaming or reports of an autobiographical episode. ...
Hobson and colleagues' study is based on the assumption that in the waking we constantly think in a logical, purposeful and empirically relevant way, which is not the case. There are various degrees of thought control in the waking and consequently different degrees of rationality in the mind's productions. The conclusions of the Hobson and colleagues' study might have been very different if the authors had compared dream reports with similar products of the waking mind. For instance, spontaneous remembrances and anticipations share several features with dream reports and informal oral descriptions of an autobiographical episode have a similar sequential organization. Daydreaming includes bizarre elements, abrupt changes of topic, and sometimes a loss of reality testing. Dreaming is producing world simulations, in other words imagining. Like the products of waking imagination it is not devoid of unrealistic aspects and discontinuities. In order to understand why a dreamer imagined a certain event, we must take into account that the human mind is prone to use metaphors. Dreaming has to use metaphors because it cannot literally represent abstract ideas and long and intricate plots. It has to replace them by concrete and rather simple, short, and homogeneous events. Although I disagree with Hobson and colleagues' method, I am happy to see that the gap between their conception of dreaming and the views of cognitive psychologists is narrowing, now that they admit dreaming is not totally or essentially irrational.
... samples of ongoing conscious thought of normal individuals include many of the metaphors or symbols that are also reported by them in recounting subsequent night dreams" (Singer, 1993, p. 107). Reinsel, Antrobus, and Wollman (1992) found that persons under conditions of sensory isolation reported waking fantasies that were scored just as bizarre as their night dreams. ...
A dream is always a creation — a work of imagination similar to a work of art — or at least the beginning of a work of art. And a dream is in many ways similar to a fantasy, reverie, or daydream: it lies on a continuum of mental functioning (and cerebral cortical functioning) running from focused waking thought at one end to dreaming at the other end. A dream is not a series of perceptions to which we respond logically or non-logically.
... In fact in most of the senses we have discussed one can engage in relatively "dream-like" thought even while awake. This has in fact been demonstrated by studies of daydreaming and mental activity under relaxed isolated conditions by Foulkes and Fleisher (1975), Klinger (1990), and Reinsel, et al. (1992), among others. I have artificially broken off the focused waking end of the continuum to make the distinction between waking and dreaming most clear. ...
Based on dreams after trauma and other recent research a view of the nature of dreaming is developed along the following lines. Dreaming makes connections more broadly than waking in the nets of the mind. Dreaming avoids the "central" rapid input-to-output portions of the net and the feed-forward mode of functioning; it makes connections in the further out regions (further from input/output) and in an auto-associative mode. Dreaming produces more generic and less specific imagery. Dreaming cross-connects. The connections are not made in a random fashion; they are guided by the emotion of the dreamer. Dreaming contextualizes a dominant emotion or emotional concern. This is demonstrated most clearly in dreams after trauma as the trauma resolves but can likewise be seen in dreams after stress, in pregnancy, and in other situations where the dominant emotional concern is known. The form that these connections and contextualizations take is explanatory metaphor. The dream, or the striking dream image, explains metaphorically the emotional state of the dreamer. This entire process is probably functional. The dream functions to spread out excitation or reduce "computational energy" and does this by cross-connecting and "weaving-in". This has an immediate function in "calming a storm" or reducing a disturbance, and a longer term function relating to memory—not so much consolidating memory but rather cross-connecting, weaving in something new, increasing the connections.
... Even everyday waking thought has more of the features that Hobson saw as unique to dreams than he has acknowledged. In a study comparing REM reports with waking streams of thought from the same participants when they were sitting in a darkened room, it was found that there were more abrupt scene changes in the waking sample than in the REM reports (Reinsel, Antrobus, & Wollman, 1992). In everyday thought sampling with large numbers of people by means of pagers, about one third of all thoughts were judged by participants as spontaneous, meaning that they just popped into the participants' mind (Klinger, 1999;Klinger & Cox, 1987-1988. ...
This article examines the ongoing debate between activation-synthesis theorist J. Allan Hobson and psychoanalytic theorist Mark Solms about the nature of dreaming and dream content. After discussing their neurophysiological disagreements, it argues that they are more similar than different in some important ways, especially in talking about dreams in the same breath as psychosis and in drawing conclusions about dream content on the basis of their neurophysiological assumptions, without any reference to the systematic findings on the issue. Evidence from inside and outside the sleep laboratory on the coherent nature of most dreams is presented to demonstrate that neither theorist is on solid ground in his main assertions. Dreaming is usually a far more realistic and understandable enactment of interests and concerns than the 2 researchers assume. In addition, several of Hobson's and Solms's claims concerning the neural basis of dreaming are challenged on the basis of neurophysiological evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... In fact, this experience very seldom reproduces episodes or thoughts of the dreamer's real life, literally. The bizarreness may depend on many factors: the results of a dream production characterized by masking mechanisms (Freud, 1900); a supposed purely casual and chaotic brainstem origin of the mnemonic input, which represents the first sources of dreams (randomness notion: Hobson et al., 1987, Hobson, 1988; the type of cognitive functioning in the dream that is the ability of the mind-brain to produce novel objects and sequences, which may be incongruous or bizarre from a waking viewpoint (Foulkes, 1985;Reinsel et al., 1992;Cicogna & Cavallero, 1993;Antrobus, 1998). However, the mnemonic units can be combined to form novel representations as a consequence of the joint activation of elements or characteristics that normally do not occur simultaneously. ...
Two aspects of consciousness are first considered: consciousness as awareness (phenomenological meaning) and consciousness as strategic control (functional meaning). As to awareness, three types can be distinguished: first, awareness as the phenomenal experiences of objects and events; second, awareness as meta-awareness, i.e., the awareness of mental life itself; third, awareness as self-awareness, i.e., the awareness of being oneself. While phenomenal experience and self-awareness are usually present during dreaming (even if many modifications are possible), meta-awareness is usually absent (apart from some particular experiences of self-reflectiveness) with the major exception of lucid dreaming. Consciousness as strategic control may also be present in dreams. The functioning of consciousness is then analyzed, following a cognitive model of dream production. In such a model, the dream is supposed to be the product of the interaction of three components: (a) the bottom-up activation of mnemonic elements coming from LTM systems, (b) interpretative and elaborative top-down processes, and (c) monitoring of phenomenal experience. A feedback circulation is activated among the components, where the top-down interpretative organization and the conscious monitoring of the oneiric scene elicitates other mnemonic contents, according to the requirements of the dream plot. This dream productive activity is submitted to unconscious and conscious processes.
... 14,[25][26][27] Bizarreness incongruity (imagery is strange, unusual or impossible), discontinuity (imagery and plot can change, appear or disappear rapidly), uncertainty (persons, places and events often bizarrely uncertain by waking standards). 14,19,21,25,[29][30][31][32][33] Delusion We are consistently duped into believing that we are awake (unless we cultivate lucidity). 28,[34][35][36][37][38] cortex or subcortical motor pattern generators. ...
Recent PET imaging and brain lesion studies in humans are integrated with new basic research findings at the cellular level in animals to explain how the formal cognitive features of dreaming may be the combined product of a shift in neuromodulatory balance of the brain and a related redistribution of regional blood flow. The human PET data indicate a preferential activation in REM of the pontine brain stem and of limbic and paralimbic cortical structures involved in mediating emotion and a corresponding deactivation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortical structures involved in the executive and mnemonic aspects of cognition. The pontine brainstem mechanisms controlling the neuromodulatory balance of the brain in rats and cats include noradrenergic and serotonergic influences which enhance waking and impede REM via anticholinergic mechanisms and cholinergic mechanisms which are essential to REM sleep and only come into full play when the serotonergic and noradrenergic systems are inhibited. In REM, the brain thus becomes activated but processes its internally generated data in a manner quite different from that of waking.
... In their classic work on content analysis, Hall and Van de Castle (1966) found that metamorphoses of people, mythical figures, and animals occurred in a little over 1% of dreams. Metamorphoses are rare in dreams, but important in dream science because they defy easy explanation; for explanations dealing with the complexity, see Fookson and Antrobus (1992) and Reinsel, Antrobus, and Wollman (1992). Here we consider two possible sources of regularities in metamorphoses: underlying conceptual structure and Theory of Mind. ...
Dream reports from 21 dreamers in which a metamorphosis of a person-like entity or animal occurred were coded for characters and animals and for inner states attributed to them (Theory of Mind). In myths and fairy tales, Kelly and Keil (1985) found that conscious beings (people, gods) tend to be transformed into entities nearby in the conceptual structure of Keil (1979). This also occurred in dream reports, but perceptual nearness seemed more important than conceptual nearness. In dream reports, most inanimate objects involved in metamorphoses with person-like entities were objects such as statues that ordinarily resemble people physically, and moreover represent people. A metamorphosis of a person-like entity or animal did not lead to an increase in the amount of Theory of Mind attribution. We propose that a character-line starts when a character enters a dream; properties and Theory of Mind attributions tend to be preserved along the line, regardless of whether, metamorphoses occur on it.
Dreaming is a form of imagination, based on embodied simulation. Dreams frequently involve enactments of a dreamer’s personal conceptions and concerns, both positive and negative, in relation to known persons and favorite avocations. More generally, most dreams include social interactions and activities. Dreaming is supported by an unconstrained portion of the default network, including its dorsal medial and temporal lobe functional subsystems, along with a region in the secondary visual cortex and by the caudate nucleus. The fact that this portion of the default network is unconstrained by the frontoparietal and the dorsal attentional control networks gives dreaming its unique character as imagination roaming freely. This neural substrate has cognitive insufficiencies that are consistent with what is known about dreaming and dream content from six decades of systematic research in laboratory and non-laboratory settings, such as a dearth of episodic memories and only rare indications of “symbolic” content. Nevertheless, there are lawful aspects of dreaming, such as the “small-world” nature of its character networks and consistency in dream content over many years.
Objective:
As existing findings are inconclusive, this paper aims to provide a thorough analysis of the bizarreness of everyday dreams and to explore its relations to the emotional quality of dreams and the dreamers' quality of life.
Method:
61 women's two week long dream journal (502 dreams) were analyzed using two different kinds of scales in order to capture the bizarre qualities of the reports. The emotional qualities of the dreams were also classified. At the end of the dream log participants filled in the WHOQOL-100 questionnaire to evaluate the different aspects of their quality of life. We examined the frequency and distribution of the distinct forms of distortions in every day dreams by using descriptive statistics. We carried out one-way analysis of variance to analyze the connection between the emotional tone of dreams and their bizarreness. To explore how the inter-individual differences in the qualities of dreams relate to the dreamers quality of life, Spearman correlation and Linear regression were calculated.
Results:
According to our findings, although most home reported dreams contain some bizarre elements, they are rarely extremely unrealistic, and there is also a considerable amount of totally mundane dreams. The distortions are not randomly distributed but are mostly related to those parts of the reports which are created during the process of narrative formation. Our findings implicate substantial individual differences regarding the bizarreness and emotional tone of everyday dreams, and both of them correlate with some aspects of the subject's quality of life.
Conclusions:
Those theories should be favored, which can accommodate both unrealistic and totally mundane reports, and can account for the interpersonal differences in this quality of dreams.
Contributions of specific sleep stages to cognitive processes are increasingly understood. Non-REM sleep is particularly implicated in episodic memory consolidation, whilst REM sleep preferentially consolidates and regulates emotional information, and gives rise to creativity and insight. Dream content reflects these processes: non-REM dreams are more likely to picture episodic memories, whereas REM dreams are more emotional and bizarre. However, across-the-night differences in the memory sources of dream content, as opposed to sleep stage differences, are less well understood. In the present study, 68 participants were awoken from sleep in the early and late night and recorded their dreams and waking-life activities. Early-night dreams were more clearly relatable to (or continuous with) waking life than late-night dreams. Late-night dreams were more emotional-important, more time orientation varied, and more hyperassociative, than early-night dreams. These dream content differences may underlie the mental content that accompanies sleep processes like memory consolidation, emotion-processing, and creativity.
In an article claiming that a mimetic theory of dreaming (with mimesis defined as “image-based, visual thinking”) is superior to the neurocognitive theory of dreams, 4 assertions are attributed to me that I did not make. The article states that I “admit that over half of simulated humans in dreams have bizarre features,” claim there is a considerable amount of figurative thinking in dreams, and believe that “How frequently an event occurs in waking life, according to the continuity hypothesis (CH), can predict the frequency of a similar dream event; the frequency of waking concerns and thoughts is predictive of subsequent dream content” (Mageo, 2019, pp. 371–372). Contrary to these assertions, the publications on the neurocognitive theory that are cited in the critique say distorted characters in dreams are very rare and that figurative thinking seems to be infrequent at best and therefore remains an unlikely hypothesis. Further, the continuity between dreaming and waking thought in the neurocognitive theory does not involve the frequency of waking events; instead, it is based on “personal concerns,” which are simulated during waking thought and enacted or dramatized during dreaming through the process of “embodied simulation” (Domhoff, 2003, 2007, 2017; Domhoff & Schneider, 2018). This reply stresses that theoretical differences are legitimate and to be expected, and not at issue. However, it is also legitimate to point out inaccurate characterizations of empirical conclusions and explanatory concepts, which may lead to misperceptions of the neurocognitive theory of dreams and to a blurring of distinctions among theories.
This article assesses the neurocognitive theory of dreams on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. The theory synthesizes findings from 3 strands of dream research, which focus respectively on the neural substrate that subserves dreaming, the development of dreaming in children, and quantitative findings on adult dream content, all 3 of which are necessary ingredients in any theory in cognitive neuroscience (Ochsner & Kosslyn, 2014). The article compares the current standing of the theory with that of 4 other theories with a neural dimension: the Freudian, activation-synthesis, memory-consolidation, and threat-simulation theories of dreaming. It concludes that the neurocognitive theory differs from the other 4 in that many of its key building blocks were created and have since been replicated by independent investigators in 3 different research areas. The other theories lack a developmental dimension, and their claims sometimes do not accord with established findings on dream content. On the other hand, the neurocognitive theory has been strengthened by neuroimaging findings revealing that the neural substrate that enables dreaming is a subsystem of the default network, which supports imagination in waking; it also includes key hubs in the waking self-system, which may help explain the focus on personal concerns in dreams. This subsystem of the default network, when unconstrained and activated, leads dreamers to experience themselves as being in hypothetical scenarios that include vivid sensory environments, which also usually portray interpersonal interactions. Dreaming is an intensified and enhanced form of spontaneous thought that can be characterized as an "embodied simulation."
The stream of thought can flow freely, without much guidance from attention or cognitive control. What determines what we think about from one moment to the next? Spontaneous thought shares many commonalities with memory processes. We use insights from computational models of memory to explain how the stream of thought flows through the landscape of memory. In this framework of spontaneous thought, semantic memory scaffolds episodic memory to form the content of thought, and drifting context modulated by one's current state - both internal and external - constrains the area of memory to explore. This conceptualization of spontaneous thought can help to answer outstanding questions such as: what is the function of spontaneous thought, and how does the mind select what to think about?
According to empirical observations, dream contents show highly variable qualitative and quantitative features. In a few decades, empirical research attributed variability of dream contents to neurophysiological differences between rapid-eye-movement sleep (REM sleep) and non-rapid-eye-movement sleep (NREM sleep). Afterwards, some studies tried to overtake the issue on REM/NREM dichotomy about dreams production. Among these, lesion studies, neuroimaging techniques and polysomnographic (PSG) methods allowed to partially clarify the neural correlates of dream recall. Some of these structures might be involved also in cognitive elaboration during wakefulness, according to an isomorphic view of cerebral functioning across different states of consciousness. On the other hand, further investigations point to a correlation between dream recall and higher cortical activation during sleep. Currently, one of the main purposes is the necessity to clarify whether specific pattern of oscillatory EEG activity could predict successful dream recall or whether inter-individual differences (trait-like factors) might influence memory for dreams upon awakening.
Aim of this review is illustrating how the evolution of dichotomous paradigm about generation of dreaming modified itself and which way has been took up to overcome such issue. Our work is going to consider innovative approaches to dreaming research towards an unified theory of dreaming.
Allan’s new paper, Dream Consciousness, represents the ideal function of theory, particularly in a new field such as the cognitive neuroscience of dreaming. A theory is not a belief. It is, rather, an abstract representation of what we know and might reasonably assume about the phenomena under consideration. A good theory is one that provokes enough new research for it to be revised or replaced – ideally within 5 years. This is precisely how Allan’s AIM model trumps Freud’s 1899 theory of dreaming. This new proposal that “REM sleep dreaming … provides a structural and functional building block for waking consciousness…” is based on several revisions of the original AIM model that Allan originally published in The Neuropsychology of Sleep and Dreaming (1992). Revisions of the original model were made in response to continuous new research findings both within neurophysiology and human dreaming.
The task of differentiating dreaming from other forms of imaginative cognition and of classifying different dream types and subtypes is largely incomplete. However, a growing interest in dreaming’s capacity for simulating waking reality experience offers a viable point of departure for furthering this unfinished task. Most types of dream content measures (e.g., prevalence, frequency, intensity, structural coherence) are predicated, directly or indirectly, on this assumption about dreaming’s capacity for simulating reality and provide converging support for the reality-simulation assumption. Even measures of dream bizarreness—which is quite common in dreams—may be understood as attempts to quantify failures of the simulation mechanism. Both simulated content and bizarreness measures may be viable approaches for completing the task of dream classification. However, a third level of analysis also related to reality simulation may prove key in this enterprise. This is the simulation of the subtle, perception like nature of waking experience, namely, the process of seeking out and picking up apparent information, not the appreciation of the contents of this process. This level of subjective experience is only difficultly accessed by awaking, self reflective subjects, so its study in dream experience may require greater use of targeted probe questions and less conventional methods such as selecting subjects for their communication abilities and training them in self-observation.
Design, Background and Pilot Data of Master Thesis. Please see the now available preprint:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/17/323667
En este estudio se plantea la relación conceptual entre la actividad onírica nocturna de los deportistas y diversas variables psicológicas. Se analizan en primer lugar los marcos teóricos que la justifica; las características de los diversos sistemas de recogida y análisis de los sueños; y los datos existentes en la literatura y en la práctica profesional de los autores acerca de la relación entre sueños y rendimiento o práctica deportiva. Por último, se concluye acerca de las posibles formas de aplicación del estudio y análisis de la actividad onírica del deportista en las intervenciones profesionales en el contexto psicológico deportivo.
Cognitive bizarreness has been shown to be equally elevated in the dream and waking mentation of acutely symptomatic inpatients diagnosed with affective and non-affective psychoses. Although some studies have reported on dream content in non-psychotic depression, no study has previously measured this formal aspect of cognition in patients hospitalized for Psychotic Major Depression (PMD). 65 dreams and 154 waking fantasy reports were collected from 11 PMD inpatients and 11 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. All narrative reports were scored by judges blind to diagnosis in terms of formal aspects of cognition (Bizarreness). Dream content was also scored (Hall/Van de Castle scoring system).
Unlike controls, PMD patients had similar levels of cognitive bizarreness in their dream and waking mentation. Dreams of PMD patients also differed from those of controls in terms of content variables. In particular, Happiness, Apprehension and Dynamism were found to differ between the two groups. Whereas dream content reflects a sharp discontinuity with the depressive state, cognitive bizarreness adequately measures the stability of cognition across dreams and wakefulness in PMD inpatients.
In this paper I develop the thesis that dreams are essential to an understanding of waking consciousness. In the first part I argue in opposition to the philosophers Malcolm and Dennett that empirical evidence now shows dreams to be real conscious experiences. In the second part, three questions concerning consciousness research are addressed. (1) How do we isolate the system to be explained (consciousness) from other systems? (2) How do we describe the system thus isolated? (3) How do we reveal the mechanisms on which this system is based? I suggest that empirical dream research combined with other empirical approaches can help us to sketch answers to all of these questions. I argue that the subjective form of dreams reveals the subjective, macro‐level form of consciousness in general and that both dreams and the everyday phenomenal world may be thought of as constructed “virtual realities”. A major task for empirical consciousness research is to find out the mechanisms which bind this experienced world into a coherent whole.
All five target articles are of high quality and very stimulating for the field. Several factors such as dream report length and NREM/REM differences, may be affected by the waking process (transition from sleep to wakefulness) and the recall process. It is helpful to distinguish between a model for REM sleep regulation and a physiological model for dreaming. A third model accounting for cognitive activity (thought-like dreaming) can also be of value. The postulated adaptive function of dreaming in avoidance learning does not seem very plausible because the two major basic assumptions (specificity of dream content and benefit of negative dreams) are not clearly supported by modern dream research: The critique of studies investigating memory consolidation in REM sleep is justified. Future studies integrating the knowledge of memory processes and sleep research will shed more light on the role of sleep, especially REM sleep in memory consolidation.
[Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Revonsuo; Solms; Vertes & Eastman]
Dreaming is a statistically robust cognitive correlate of REM sleep, but all of its formal features may occur in other states of sleep and even in waking, especially during fantasy. In order to test the hypothesis that the brain basis of such cognitive features as dream bizarreness is to be found in REM sleep neurophysiology, it is critical to quantify bizarreness in dreams and other mental states and to analyze the data with respect to both the magnitude and the kind of bizarreness so measured. Any differences in the cognitive dimensions are candidate correlates of REM sleep neurophysiology. Sixty pairs of home-based dream and fantasy reports were collected from 12 subjects and scored for bizarreness using a two-stage scoring system adapted from Hobson, Hoffman, Helfand, and Kostner (1987). Our results show that bizarreness was twice as prevalent in dream reports as in wake-state fantasy reports of the same subjects. Further analysis of the reports also showed differences in other features including the number of persona and remoteness of time and place.
A number of studies have concluded that dreaming is mostly caused by random signals because “dream contents are random impulses”, and argued that dream sleep is unlikely to play an important part in our intellectual capacity. On the other hand, numerous functional studies have suggested that dream sleep does play an important role in our learning and other intellectual functions. Specifically, recent studies have suggested the importance of dream sleep in memory consolidation, following the findings of neural replaying of recent waking patterns in the hippocampus. This study presents a cognitive and computational model of dream process that involves episodic learning and random activation of stored experiences. This model is simulated to perform the functions of learning and memory consolidation, which are two most popular dream functions that have been proposed. The simulations demonstrate that random signals may result in learning and memory consolidation. The characteristics of the model are discussed and found in agreement with many characteristics concluded from various empirical studies.
Building on the content, developmental, and neurological evidence that there are numerous parallels between waking cognition and dreaming, this article argues that the likely neural substrate that supports dreaming, which was discovered through converging lesion and neuroimaging studies, may be a subsystem of the waking default network, which is active during mind wandering, daydreaming, and simulation. Support for this hypothesis would strengthen the case for a more general neurocognitive theory of dreaming that starts with established findings and concepts derived from studies of waking cognition and neurocognition. If this theory is correct, then dreaming may be the quintessential cognitive simulation because it is often highly complex, often includes a vivid sensory environment, unfolds over a duration of a few minutes to a half hour, and is usually experienced as real while it is happening.
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