Dreams: Warm-up or Build-up?

Here’s some comments on the article A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain by Benedict Carey [can read or scan quickly at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/health/10mind.html?_r=2&ref=science]. This article points out a new theory of dream interpretation which slightly discards psychological interpretations and replaces them with physiological ones. The article refers to dreaming as being more a brain warm-up before facing the day instead of the build-up and release of the previous day's processing.

There are a few points in the article that I was skeptical about. First of all, this article’s arguments were slightly too reductionistic as some of the researchers, such as Dr. Hobson, stated that the primary purpose of dreaming might be physiological. I find that this article tries to slowly set aside the psychological portion of dreaming since physiological answers are considered more credible.

I still find that the theory of REM sleep being a “warm-up before waking” sounds very plausible. However, I think we face a long debate of what came first, the chicken or the egg? The chicken being the psychological processing of events during the past day and the egg, the physiological warming-up for the day to come.

I find it disappointing that dreams do have a biased and non-scientific past, but reducing them to spontaneous physiological activities doesn’t seem to have more scientific basis than assigning them to psychological symbols.

Also, I am wondering about the 80% of dream contents that the dreamer hasn’t encountered while awake. Reports of lucid dreamers on their recollection of people and places in their dreams only support weakly the idea that only 20% of dreams are “made” of concrete memories since even awake, we sometimes don’t perceive a person or place as familiar even if we encountered it before. Hence, dreams can very well use past stimuli that we weren’t consciously aware of but that was still registered into our memory.

Finally, I found the findings of the study of Goethe and Hobson fascinating. The fact that frontal areas would be involved in lucid dreaming and waking but not normal dreaming is good evidence of the sense of logic and self-awareness one has in lucid dreaming and waking but not in normal non-lucid-sleep that is characterized by delusions and psychotic-like state. Furthermore, wasn’t psychosis associated with deficiencies in frontal areas… Thus, could it be that lucid dreaming research will help us find a prognosis for psychotic patients? This will be in another post. In the meantime…

To finish this comment, it is amazing that lucid dreaming seems to be in between waking and dreaming even in terms of brain activity as EEG data suggests activation of both visual areas and frontal areas (to a lesser extent than waking).

Here’s a recent interesting review on the physiology of lucid dreaming:

The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up

https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ojs/index.php/IJoDR/article/view/403/pdf_1

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Other links:

Design art made by ROBO Design and found on http://www.robodesign.ro/files/gallery/original/lucid-dreaming.jpg

Dreams by Day and None at Night!

The video below shows the trailer of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 Episode 17 called "Night Terrors". I highly recommend this entire season to any psychology and/or science fiction fans out there. This 4th season is a little different from the others as it is full of mind games, psychopathology and insanity, and touches on subjects such as the crossing of mental boundaries between "alien species". Even though the quality of this trailer is prehistoric and gives you a different impression, it still shows you a preview of the episode and helps me introduce the topic of psychosis.

This star trek episode starts with the ship Enterprise finding another ship that is in perfect shape where the whole crew of 34 people was murdered. As they investigate the problem, the crew on the Enterprise start to experience auditory and visual hallucinations (such as snakes, seeing people that aren’t there, seeing dead people getting up), paranoia and delusions. Also, including many instances of forgetfulness and confusion. Doctor Crusher and counselor Troi soon realize that the whole crew is moving towards the realms of psychosis. This episode, even though sometimes following obvious Hollywoodian styles, is still a good suspense and keeps you intrigued especially if you want to verify if the claims made in the episode are still relevant today.

Thus, the episode is called "Night Terrors" even though it does not explicitly show the phenomenon of night terrors. To clarify, night terrors often occur in children between 4 and 12 years old, (but can easily be experienced by anyone) and consist of sudden awakenings from sleep due to intense fear and panic even though nothing is remembered from the dream itself. Night terrors are different from nightmares since they occur specifically during Stage 4 or REM sleep, whereas nightmares are independent from the sleep cycle. I would suggest watching it before reading the next part in green.

Thus, the symptoms the crew exhibit are consistent with the progression of psychosis such as in schizophrenics, involving  forgetfulness, delusions leading to full blown paranoia and hallucinations. However, these symptoms can be temporary and not due to a specific disorder, but to the environment. A possible trigger for these symptoms when people use hallucinogens, they will then experience both visual and auditory hallucinations, but will also sometimes be subject to delusions, intense panic episodes and forgetfulness.

Also, in a study by Cohen et al. (2005) it has been observed that people with the Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) were also experiencing vivid dreams, illusions (e.g. mistaking objects), hallucinations and delusions. GBS patients also have sleep disturbances. We do not know if the syndrome itself is causing the symptoms or the sleep disturbances do. In any case, it was found that patients with GBS experiencing hallucinations would have significantly shorter periods of REM sleep in their sleep cycles than GBS experiencing no hallucinations and people without the syndrome. In this case, towards the end of the episode, the crew finally realizes that they are REM sleep deprived which causes these psychotic symptoms. Remember, the episode was based on theories already developed involving dreams and psychosis. However, I was still wondering if it was relevant today.  Thus, this previous recent finding still supports the idea that REM sleep deprivation is correlated with increased hallucinations confirming the claims of the episode of 1991. Thus, other examples of peered reviewed articles, one in 1962 by Ralph J. Berger and one in 2008 by Scarone et al., are both associating REM sleep (where dreams occurs) and psychosis. Thus, this shows how across time, even though we do not fully understand the processes involving dreams and psychosis, these two states of mind  are still closely related even decades later. This subject will be further discussed in future posts.

Finally, this episode first reminded me of the movie Solaris (2002) starring George Clooney based on the book with the same name by Stanislaw Lem (1961) and which I won't discuss here either, but highly recommend to anyone!!

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Guillain-Barré Syndrome. (n.d.). Encyclopedia of Medicine. Retrieved September 20, 2009, from Answers.com           Web site:http://www.answers.com/topic/guillain-barr-syndrome.

Night terror. (n.d.). Encyclopedia of Medicine. Retrieved September 20, 2009, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/night-terror.

Berger, Ralph J. (1962). Effects of sleep deprivation on behaviour, subsequent sleep, and dreaming. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 108, 457-465.

Cochen et al, (2005) Vivid dreams, hallucinations, psychosis and REM sleep in Guillain–Barré syndrome. Brain, 128, 2535–2545.

Scarone et al, (2008). The dream as a model for psychosis: an experimental approach using bizarreness as a cognitive marker. Schizophr Bull, 34(3), 515–522.

Euphoric Nightmare!

A few months ago I experienced something very unusual. You probably all experienced having nightmares at least when you were kids since children do have more nightmares than adults. The intense feeling of fear makes us wake up suddenly and out of breath as our heart rate is flying. Also, there are other instances when we wake up suddenly from our dreams as when our alarm clock gives us a reality check ;). The rest of the time, dreams end and we don't even remember most of them as they are part of the normal sleep cycle. It is mostly when we wake up in the middle of a dream that we truly remember it vividly. In that matter, some months ago I had a dream that I would not explain in details here since the events are irrelevant. I was passively going around in my dream when I arrived somewhere I didn’t expect and it made me surprisingly and suddenly very happy. The feeling was so strong and sudden that I immediately woke up in a very agitated state. Just for the record, it wasn't a dirty dream as you might be thinking right now! After some light swearing @#$%^&!, I got perplexed by what happened and it made me wonder...

Most of us know that the brainwaves generated during sleep are different than when we are awake. However, when we dream, we enter a specific stage (among other stages) called the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep where the waves resemble most those when awake than any other waves produced during the rest of the sleep cycle (1 cycle = about 90 minutes). My theory is that since REM sleep is the closest to being awake, any strong emotions could disturb sleep and wake you up since the body reaction is strong and the brain is not able to compensates for factors that might wake us up (such as loud noises) at that stage (compared to earlier stages such as deep sleep when practically no loud noise disturbs our sleep). I would explain in more details each stage and theories on the sleeping brain later.

New Disorder on the Horizon of Problems

You probably heard of people suffering from somnambulism that drove a car, killed people or just hurt themselves in their sleep walking. Now, there is a new harmful thing you can do while asleep. As some people make awkward calls when drunk, others just sleep email. This can be very disturbing as you are not aware of what you sent and to whom.

[http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40970/113/]

Tip for a Good Night Sleep

I know this is hard for you chocolate lovers out there but you know it disturbs sleep. Thus, AVOID chocolate before going to bed! However, if you absolutely have to have that special desert after supper, you might as well take white chocolate as it contains little caffeine and no theobromine which increases heart rate. :P
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/13real.html?ref=science]