Allan Hobson

Induction of self awareness in dreams through frontal low current stimulation of gamma activity

Recent findings link fronto-temporal gamma electroencephalographic (EEG) activity to conscious awareness in dreams, but a causal relationship has not yet been established. We found that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences ongoing brain activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams. Other stimulation frequencies were not effective, suggesting that higher order consciousness is indeed related to synchronous oscillations around 25 and 40 Hz.

Measuring consciousness in dreams: The lucidity and consciousness in dreams scale

In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary research project aimed at assessing consciousness in dreams. For this purpose, we compared lucid dreams with normal non-lucid dreams from REM sleep. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams are an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness, giving valuable insights into the structure of conscious experience and its neural correlates during sleep. However, the precise differences between lucid and non-lucid dreams remain poorly understood. The construction of the Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams scale (LuCiD) was based on theoretical considerations and empirical observations. Exploratory factor analysis of the data from the first survey identified eight factors that were validated in a second survey using confirmatory factor analysis: INSIGHT, CONTROL, THOUGHT, REALISM, MEMORY, DISSOCIATION, NEGATIVE EMOTION, and POSITIVE EMOTION. While all factors are involved in dream consciousness, realism and negative emotion do not differentiate between lucid and non-lucid dreams, suggesting that lucid insight is separable from both bizarreness in dreams and a change in the subjectively experienced realism of the dream.

Lucid dreaming: an age-dependent brain dissociation

The current study focused on the distribution of lucid dreams in school children and young adults. The survey was conducted on a large sample of students aged 6–19 years. Questions distinguished between past and current experience with lucid dreams. Results suggest that lucid dreaming is quite pronounced in young children, its incidence rate drops at about age 16 years. Increased lucidity was found in those attending higher level compared with lower level schools. Taking methodological issues into account, we feel confident to propose a link between the natural occurrence of lucid dreaming and brain maturation.

Waking and dreaming: Related but structurally independent. Dream reports of congenitally paraplegic and deaf-mute persons

Models of dream analysis either assume a continuum of waking and dreaming or the existence of two dissociated realities. Both approaches rely on different methodology. Whereas continuity models are based on content analysis, discontinuity models use a structural approach. In our study, we applied both methods to test specific hypotheses about continuity or discontinuity. We contrasted dream reports of congenitally deaf-mute and congenitally paraplegic individuals with those of non-handicapped controls. Continuity theory would predict that either the deficit itself or compensatory experiences would surface in the dream narrative. We found that dream form and content of sensorially limited persons was indifferent from those of non-handicapped controls. Surprisingly, perceptual representations, even of modalities not experienced during waking, were quite common in the dream reports of our handicapped subjects. Results are discussed with respect to feedforward mechanisms and protoconsciousness theory of dreaming.

A mind to go out of: Reflections on primary and secondary consciousness ☆

Dreaming and waking are two brain-mind states, which are characterized by shared and differentiated properties at the levels of brain and consciousness. As part of our effort to capitalize on a comparison of these two states we have applied Edelmans distinction between primary and secondary consciousness, which we link to dreaming and waking respectively. In this paper we examine the implications of this contrastive analysis for theories of mental illness. We conclude that while dreaming is an almost perfect model of organic psychosis, it is less so for schizophrenia and major affective disorder where it must serve a primarily heuristic role helping us to model hallucinations and delusions but not the diseases themselves.

Dream content : Individual and generic aspects

Dream reports were collected from normal subjects in an effort to determine the degree to which dream reports can be used to identify individual dreamers. Judges were asked to group the reports by their authors. The judges scored the reports correctly at chance levels. This finding indicated that dreams may be at least as much like each other as they are the signature of individual dreamers. Our results suggest that dream reports cannot be used to identify the individuals who produced them when identifiers like names and gender of friends and family members are removed from the dream report. In addition to using dreams to learn about an individual, we must look at dreams as telling us about important common or generic aspects of human consciousness.

What is the State-of-the-Art on Lucid Dreaming? - Recent Advances and Questions for Future Research

Lucid dreaming may be defined as the conscious awareness that one is dreaming while dreaming. Instead of incorrectly assuming that one is awake, the dreamer gains insight about her or his real state of consciousness. Lucid dreaming is rare and evanescent, which probably accounts for lingering doubts about its veracity and for its marginalization in science. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence that lucid dreaming is a real phenomenon, including evidence for its occurrence, underlying mechanisms, and scientific value. Based on admittedly still limited but fast-growing empirical evidence, we will introduce four hypotheses centred around lucid dreaming that are deduced from empirical work and that will hopefully have a bearing on future consciousness research. The Brain Maturation Hypothesis (1) relates steps in ontogenetic brain development to the frequency of naturally occurring lucid dreams in children and adults, suggesting that in the immature brain, spontaneous and involuntary lucid dreaming results from accidental and untypical activation of the frontal cortex during REM sleep. The Hybrid State Hypothesis (2) and the Space of Consciousness Model (SoC) (3) build on the electrophysiological peculiarities observed in REM-sleep-induced lucid dreams, showing a wake-like EEG pattern in frontal parts of the brain and an REM sleep-like EEG in posterior areas. The Gamma Band Hypothesis (4) proposes that the same kind of oscillatory activity known to accompany conscious awareness in the awake brain promotes conscious awareness in REM sleep dreams. Finally, we present first experimental evidence that lower gamma band activity is indeed a necessary condition for the elicitation of conscious awareness in dreams.

The ancient art of memory

Revision of Freuds theory requires a new way of seeking dream meaning. With the idea of elaborative encoding, Sue Llewellyn has provided a method of dream interpretation that takes into account both modern sleep science and the ancient art of memory. Her synthesis is elegant and compelling. But is her hypothesis testable?

The Paradox of Sleep

On 2 April 1979, a small cloud of anthrax spores was accidentally released from a bioweapons production facility in Sverdlovsk, a Soviet city in the Ural Mountains. It drifted slowly southeast over a portion of the city’s southern suburbs—invisible, unrecognized. Two days later, the first victims fell ill. Over the following six weeks, some 100 people developed the disease and at least 70 died as a result of infection acquired as far as three miles downwind from the release point of the spores. This was the first and only known epidemic of inhalation anthrax. Calculations indicate that the quantity of spores released may have weighed less than one gram. Anthrax is one of the most deadly of the potential biological weapons and the agent most universally favored by those desiring to produce such weapons. In nature, it is mainly a disease of grazing animals, which acquire infection from contaminated soil. Natural infections in man result from contact with animals or animal products and usually cause an ulcer of the skin that is readily treated with antibiotics. There are occasional small outbreaks of gastrointestinal disease when undercooked, contaminated meat is consumed. However, inhalation anthrax is an exceedingly rare but grave form of the disease that kills up to 80% of its victims. From the onset of infection to death is usually no more than two to four days. Antibiotics are of little benefit in treatment unless administered very soon after the first symptoms occur. In her book Anthrax, Jeanne Guillemin provides the only detailed account of the appalling Sverdlovsk epidemic, an event that could be repeated on a far larger scale were anthrax spores in an aerosol form to be disseminated today by a terrorist. The book is structured around the evolving investigation of the event led by Harvard biologist Mathew Meselson, assisted by the author and several Russian and American scientists. The format is reminiscent of Berton Roueche’s New Yorker tales of epidemic sleuthing. From the time of occurrence of the epidemic in 1979, Russian scientists attributed its cause to the consumption of contaminated meat. However, rumors provided by emigrés suggested otherwise to US intelligence analysts. In the interest of defusing suspicions about Russian biological weapons developments, Meselson had repeatedly pressed Russian officials and scientists for a full and open investigation of the incident. Finally, in June 1992, permission was granted for an American team to visit Sverdlovsk. Russian Ministry of Health officials persisted in their assertion that the cause was contaminated meat and provided little essential data. The challenge to the team was that of investigating an epidemic more than a decade old, one in which the clinical records had been confiscated by the KGB and in which most victims had died of the disease. At the outset, an essential breakthrough occurred with the discovery of two pathologists who had completed numerous autopsies, 42 of which they considered to be classical inhalation anthrax. Fortunately, the specimens had been overlooked by KGB officials seeking to confiscate all relevant data. An American pathologist on the team was able to confirm that they were typical of inhalation anthrax. Gradually, thereafter, the story unfolded as the author, assisted by Russian counterparts, interviewed relatives of many of the survivors and systematically assembled, piece by piece, considerable information about the epidemic. Perhaps the most important finding was the discovery that the incubation period for inhalation anthrax was not two to six days, as experimental animal studies had shown and as standard textbooks proclaimed. Rather, it was two to at least forty-five days. The implication of this finding is that after discovery of an epidemic, there would be sufficient time to administer life-saving antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent disease in up to 75% of the potential victims. Scientists and policy-makers alike will be disappointed that the author did not devote more time and effort to the analysis and elucidation of the trove of epidemiological information that apparently was collected. And what might have been a riveting epidemiological detective story drifts too often into a rambling travelogue with extended irrelevant digressions. The book should be required reading for anyone seriously concerned about biological terrorism, but it is difficult to recommend it to others with a more general interest in epidemiology or cultural anthropology.