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Field of Dreams

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12 views3 pages

Field of Dreams

Uploaded by

dominika.sidor02
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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FIELD OF DREAMS

The interpretation of dreams has a patchy history. They formed a fundamental part
of Sigmund Freud’s work, and of the development of psychoanalysis at the turn of
the 19th century. He argued that dreams were a form of wish fulfilment during
sleep, arising from our sexual urges. But Freud’s argument was entirely subjective.
By attempting to work out associations between the dreamer and the various
elements of the dreams, he tried to uncover the latent thoughts he hypothesised
must be causing them. Freud said these latent thoughts were always wishful.

In 1953, two American researchers discovered a physiological state known as


“rapid eye movement” (REM) sleep. This is a paradoxical state: we remain fast
asleep but our brains are as highly aroused and active as during normal waking
hours. It occurs every 90 minutes during sleep. Experiments in the 1950s showed
that 80% of people woken from this state of sleep reported dreams, whereas only
10% of people woken from non-REM sleep said the same. This led to the
conclusion that REM sleep was the physiological equivalent of dreaming.

By the 1970s, Freud’s theory of dreaming was in trouble when Allan Hobson of
Harvard Medical School and Robert McCarley laid bare the mechanism behind
REM sleep. It is controlled by a switch located in the brain stem, called the pons,
that has very little to do with mental life aside from regulating levels
of wakefulness. Hobson had established that REM sleep, and hence dreaming, had
no connection with any conscious desires and that it had nothing to do with wish
fulfilment. Hobson went on to say that dreams were generated by
the random activation of the forebrain.

Mark Solms is a professor of neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town,


who originally trained as a neuroscientist but began studying dreams after later
training as a psychoanalyst. “You see things in dreams because your visual cortex
is excited. You hear things because auditory cortex is excited,” he says. “The
forebrain connects all the images together in a futile attempt to make a story or an
episode out of what’s happening. The narrative doesn’t mean anything.”

Hobson’s “activation synthesis theory” remained the accepted explanation for how
dreams are generated and Freud’s ideas were discounted by mainstream scientists.
That is until Solms made the chance discovery that people with lesions on their
pons were still having dreams.

“I was taken aback – we know that damage to this structure leads to a loss of REM
sleep and therefore it must lead to a loss of dreaming,” recalls Solms. He had
disassociated REM sleep from dreams but it left the question wide open once more:
what part of the brain was causing dreams?
The answer came as another surprise. “There were brain structures which, when
damaged, led to a cessation of dreaming,” explains Solms. One was the part of the
brain that processes spatial cognition. But more interesting was the fact that
dreaming also stopped with damage to a part of the brain that controlled
motivation.

A TOUGH DAY AT WORK

The other day I had an unusually tough day at work as a waitress so when I got
home in the evening I fell fast asleep. In the dream I had, I was back at work. The
restaurant was filled with big, well-built Chinese men taking part in a rice-eating
contest and we were all running off our feet to make sure there was enough rice on
the tables. After two hours of the contest, we ran out of rice and the Chinese men
became very angry. They started shouting and breaking the bowls. I wanted to
come up to them, but my feet were glued to the floor and I couldn’t move an inch. I
was terrified. Then I looked out of the window but instead of the familiar view of
the park surrounding the restaurant, I saw the Torre Glories. I blinked in disbelief
but the building was still there! When I was struggling to free myself I heard
church bells ringing and I woke up.

Sleep Disorders
Everyone wants to get a good night’s sleep and while many people do sleep well, many can’t
fall asleep, stay asleep for a way too long or do strange things when they sleep, such as
shouting, muttering gibberish or wandering outside.

There is no one single disorder responsible for all types of sleep problems. Actually, there are
many of them, each with different causes, characteristics, treatments and different impacts on
people’s lives. They fall into two major types of sleep disorders: parasomnias and
dyssomnias.

Parasomnias are disruptive sleep disorders that can happen when a person is falling asleep or
at any point in the sleep cycle. NREM-related parasomnias include night terrors, sleepwalking
(also known as somnambulism), sleep-related eating disorder (SRED), whereas REM-related
parasomnias include nightmare disorder, sleep paralysis and REM sleep behaviour disorder.

Dyssomnias are those sleep disorders that cause either the inability to get to sleep, remain
asleep or excessive sleepiness, such as insomnia, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, sleep
apnoea, hypersomnia or circadian rhythm sleep disorders.

Some sleep disorders, if untreated, are more dangerous than you think. Insomnia or
narcolepsy can disrupt all aspects of a person’s life, including his/her physical and emotional
well-being. Adult sleepwalking may be even more dangerous. Many sleepwalkers do things
that, although benign when a person is awake, are potentially harmful to them and other
people, such as climbing out of a window or sleep driving. People with REM sleep behaviour
disorder may also harm themselves and others, especially when they act out violent dreams.
The same is for SRED. Sleepeaters may injure themselves while preparing dishes. Another
thing is the consumption of strange combinations of food and non-food items, such as laundry
starch, cigarettes or cleaning liquids. Sleep apnoea, another dangerous disorder, may lead to
sudden death due to interrupted heartbeat.

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