Activation Synthesis Theory
The Activation Synthesis Theory proposes that dreams are the result of random neural activity in the brain during REM sleep, which is then interpreted and synthesized by the brain into a narrative. According to this theory, dreams do not have inherent meaning or purpose, but are rather a byproduct of the brain's physiological processes during sleep.
7 Key excerpts on "Activation Synthesis Theory"
eBook - ePubAwareness
Biorhythms, Sleep and Dreaming
- Evie Bentley(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 Theories of dreaming Introduction Neurobiological theories Psychodynamic theory Cognitive theory Lucid dreaming Conclusion Summary Introduction Dreams are fascinating. For many thousands of years humans have been intrigued by the bizarre world which we enter through sleep, and all sorts of explanations have been and are suggested for this biorhythmic behaviour. We dream mostly, but not exclusively, in REM sleep, and we know that in this state the brain is buzzing with activity but the body is effectively paralysed. Dreams and dreaming are a fascinating area of psychology which is full of contradictory hypotheses and interesting questions: what are dreams? Are they purposeful neurophysiological processes or random firings of brain activity? Do dreams and/or REM sleep serve a special purpose, such as consolidation of memory or processing of the day's information? Does the content of dreams have special meaning? One point to be clear about in the following theories is whether they are referring to dreams or REM sleep, or both. Neurobiological theories Hobson and McCarley's (1977) activation-synthesis theory Rose's (1976) neural theory suggested that dreams are just the result of the brain's random firing of neurones. These firings then trigger memories and the brain makes a sequence or narrative out of this mixture. This idea was expressed in more detail by Hobson and McCarley (1977) in their two-part activation-synthesis theory. Hobson and McCarley suggested that during REM sleep the neurones in the brain are spontaneously active (as always) - a sort of "neural noise'. This is the activation part of their theory. However, in the absence of associated external stimuli, the brain then tries to make sense of this neural activity and the result of this making sense is what we call dreams. This is the synthesis...
eBook - ePubChildren's Dreams
From Freud's Observations to Modern Dream Research
- Claudio Colace(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These tests, conducted especially in France and in Italy, in the span of a few years, led to another discovery that gave a new blow to the Freudian model. In particular, the data from the study on the sleep of cats showed that REM sleep and dream was activated by brainstem structures and that forebrain activity (i.e., ideational, cognitive centre) is not necessary to activate such a phase of sleep and therefore dreaming; this was in contrast with the Freudian hypothesis about dream being a valid psychological phenomena with an ideational-motivational meaning. These data gave rise to the development of various neuro-biological theories on dream, and the Freudian dream model became a more and more burdensome heritage. This trend ultimately led to the formulation, in 1977, of a new theoretical dream model: the “activation-synthesis” hypothesis, which suggested that dreams are the result of random neural sub-cortical activation during REM sleep state synthesized by the forebrain (Hobson & McCarley, 1977). The “acti vationsy nthesis” model, as Foulkes noticed (1996) was publicized and promoted very effectively, thus becoming popular. Although accompanied by various criticisms, it dominated the scene until the early 1990s. In The Dreaming Brain (Hobson, 1988), the leading author of the model provided a complete version of his theory, together with an extensive criticism and refusal of every aspect of Freud’s dream theory Hobson’s underlying assumption was that the Freudian theoretical model of dream would be unproductive from a heuristic and scientific standpoint, as long as its hypotheses could not be empirically tested (Hobson, 1988, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006)...
eBook - ePubPsychodynamic Neurology
Dreams, Consciousness, and Virtual Reality
- Allan Hobson(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...chapter fifteen Brain-mind dream interpretation A new project for scientific psychology Not surprisingly, the initial reaction from psychoanalysis to the activation-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming was vehemently negative. The two lead articles published in the November and December 1977 issues of the American Journal of Psychiatry elicited more letters to the editor than any other publication in the history of the journal. We had this encouraging bit of news from our colleague, the late John Nemiah, a psychoanalyst who was then editor of the journal. Needless to say, most of those letters were critical of the new theory and most of those critical letters were written by psychoanalysts. Their protest continues to this day. The initial wave of indignation was focused mainly on the assertion of activation-synthesis dream theory that dreaming was a mental experience whose bizarreness was physiologically determined by random neuronal activity. I will update this assertion in this chapter and hope to assure readers that I did not then, and do not now, mean to imply that dreams were meaningless and therefore of no interest to psychology or psychiatry. From the outset, I have claimed that dreams were very meaningful but that their meaning was not so much concealed as revealed by dream bizarreness. This means that dreaming is certainly of interest to psychiatry but raises serious questions about the scientific integrity of psychoanalytic dream interpretation as advocated by Sigmund Freud. There was surprisingly little attempt to rebut what I consider to be the more serious critique that Freud’s theory was based not on empirical evidence but upon the outmoded neurobiology of 1895. That neurobiology was so inadequate that Freud wisely abandoned his Project for a Scientific Psychology...
eBook - ePubThe Feeling Brain
Selected Papers on Neuropsychoanalysis
- Mark Solms(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The mechanism of dreaming cannot be reduced to simple brain activation. The activation merely triggers a process that has a complex internal organization of its own. Recent research (Braun et al, 1997; Maquet et al., 1996; Nofzinger, Mintun, Wiseman, Kupfer, & Moore, 1997; Solms, 1997b) has revealed that dreams require the concerted activation of a tight network of brain mechanisms responsible for instinctual behaviours, emotion, long-term memory, and visual perception, with simultaneous deactivation of mechanisms responsible for reality monitoring and goal-directed motor activity. It appears that the instinctual and emotional mechanisms near the centre of the brain initiate the process, and that the “manifest” dream is the culmination of a process of backward projection (cf. Freud’s regression) onto the perceptual structures at the back of the brain (Solms, 1997b). These new findings are compatible with Freudian dream theory, in most respects. This is true even of Freud’s central claim that dreams give expression to peremptory wishes. Dreaming is obliterated completely by damage to only two brain structures. The first of these structures forms part of a network responsible for visuospatial perception and cognition. (These are the structures that the manifest dream is “projected” onto.) It is not surprising that they should be centrally involved in dreaming. The second structure is more interesting; this is the “SEEKING” system of Panksepp (1998a), which connects the midbrain to the limbic system and frontal lobes. No single brain system comes closer in its functional properties than this one to the “libido” of Freudian dream theory. It is therefore of no small interest that among the instinctual and emotional command systems implicated in dream generation, this one seems to be pivotal (Solms, 2000)...
eBook - ePubDevelopmental Science and Psychoanalysis
Integration and Innovation
- Peter Fonagy, Linda Mayes, Mary Target, Peter Fonagy, Linda Mayes, Mary Target(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These authoritative models proposed that REM sleep and dreaming were literally “switched on” by a small group of cells situated deep within the pons, which excrete a chemical called “acetylcholine”. This chemical activates the higher parts of the brain, which are thereby prompted to generate (intrinsically meaningless) conscious images. These meaningless images are nothing more than the higher brain making “the best of a bad job… from the noisy signals sent up from the brainstem” (Hobson & McCarley, 1977, p. 1347). After a few minutes of REM activity, the cholinergic activation arising from the brainstem is counteracted by another group of cells, also situated in the pons, which excrete two other chemicals: noradrenaline and serotonin. These chemicals “switch off” the cholinergic activation (and thereby, according to the theory, the conscious experience of dreaming). Thus all the complex mental processes that Freud elucidated in his dream book were swept aside and replaced by a simple oscillatory mechanism by means of which consciousness is automatically switched on and off at approximately 90-minute intervals throughout sleep by reciprocally interacting chemicals that are excreted in an elementary part of the brain that has nothing to do with complex mental functions. Thus, even the most basic claims of Freud’s theory no longer seemed tenable: The primary motivating force of dreaming is not psychological but physiological since the time of occurrence and duration of dreaming sleep are quite constant suggesting a pre-programmed, neurally determined genesis. In fact, the neural mechanisms involved can now be precisely specified. If we assume that the physiological substrate of consciousness is in the forebrain, these facts [i.e., that REM is automatically generated by brainstem mechanisms] completely eliminate any possible contribution of ideas (or their neural substrate) to the primary driving force of the dream process. [Hobson & McCarley, 1977, pp...
eBook - ePub- Samy Teicher, Michael Gunter, Samy Teicher, Michael Gunter(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...540). It takes place in the particular circumstance of a cortical deactivation through the state of sleep. The most frequent source of the forebrain activation is REM sleep activity. In contrast to Hobson’s view, Solms’ understanding is that REM activation, that is the mesopontine, is certainly not the sole source of forebrain activation to cause dreaming. On the contrary, even an intrinsic forebrain activity can be the trigger. The paradoxical conjunction of sleep and activation is a necessary, but not sufficient, precondition for dreaming to happen. Specific front brain lesions result in the cessation of dreaming, although REM activity may still occur. Solms assumes that there is an additional specific variable that causes dreaming, and suggests the activation of certain limbic forebrain structures. Even if the way these are connected is not quite clear, it seems that networks with motivational drive and the surfacing of emotion are crucially involved. There is a reversal here of the process of conscious perception. “The activation of the posterior cortical structures with perceptual (especially visual) imagery and memory” (Solms, 2011, p. 540) is the result and not the starting point of the activation process. According to Solms, dreaming is “1) a state of consciousness characterised by 2) reduced constraints and controls on 3) memory and perceptual imagery with 4) motivational incentive and emotional salience”. These neurobiological findings, however, still leave the significance of dreaming in psychological development unclear. Clearly the underlying brain–physiological processes must be important preconditions for healthy development. Specifically, however, dreams that can be recounted by the dreamer can only appear after the neurobiological and developmental function systems of symbolisation and narrative ability have matured. We know little about the significance of dreaming in children of pre-school and primary school age...
eBook - ePubEmotion and the Psychodynamics of the Cerebellum
A Neuro-Psychoanalytic Analysis and Synthesis
- Fred M. Levin(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The second stage (dreaming itself) occurs only if and when the initial activation stage engages the dopaminergic circuits of the ventromesial forebrain.” 27. Revonsuo (2004) sees dreams as having adaptive evolutionary value, but believes that the simulation of the current concerns of modern humans probably has lie if any biological value. Our view differs in that we see dreams as generative of action plans, testing our working assumptions, putting the ucs through a reality loop (i.e. experimenting to allow better reality testing), and working through our fears, all of which have obvious psychobiological adaptive value as the self-organization grows. Chapter Two Sleep and dreaming, Part 2: The importance of the SEEKING system for dream-related learning and the complex contributions to dreaming of memory mechanisms, transcription factors, sleep activation events, reentrant architecture, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), periaqueductal gray (PAG), and the centromedian nucleus of the thalamus (CNT) Fred M. Levin, Colwyn Trevarthen, Tiziano Colibazzi, Juhani lhanus, Vesa Talvitie, Jean K. Carney, and Jaak Panksepp 1 “I like the talky talky happy talk/Talk about things you like to do/ You got to have a dream/ If you don’t have a dream/ How you gonna have a dream come true?” Rogers and Hammerstein (South Pacific) Précis: In Chapter One we make use of the new model of dreaming as active, psychologically meaningful, and adaptive: a unique blend of mentation that integrates affective wishes and fears with cognitive concerns, while at the same time creating what we call “deferred action plans”...
