Chasing The Dream

Similar to many other fields in Psychiatry, understanding sleep and dreams as biological events remain unconsolidated and a work in progress. In 'The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams', psychologist Patrick McNamara describes the neuroscience of sleep and dreams while emphasizing on the evolutionary and social significance of the two. Organized into two sections, Part I Sleep and Part II Dreams, McNamara walks through definitions, characteristics, variations and theories of sleep and dreams. He draws examples from human case studies to describe the two phenomena in relation to human anatomy, as well as citing animal studies to explain possible mechanisms.

McNamara approaches sleep and dreams as physiological and social functions that can be explained within the paradigm of Darwinian evolutionary biology. In other words, sleeping and dreaming involve fitness 'trade-offs' in our social context, such that one’s 'sleep expression' centers around his or her interactions with others. Biological features of solitary sleepers appear different from those of co-sleepers, and the latter is more likely to be an 'evolutionary default' for humans based on behavioral patterns across lifespans; McNamara describes this in relation to social attachment throughout one’s life. Throughout various stages of human life cycles, McNamara argues that characteristics of dreaming also change based on social behavioral patterns at each stage. Various types of dreaming experiences are summarized in Chapter 10 including 'unusual dream types' (e.g., lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis dreams, nightmares), and McNamara evaluates possible mechanisms of recalling one’s dreams.

The Appendix of the book introduces various methods to investigate behaviors associated to sleep and dreams, such as analysis of biological rhythms and dream content. Examples include use of sleep diary to track perception of one’s sleep, neuromodulators to promote sleep or wakefulness, the EEG to capture surface electrical activity of the brain, the 'Hall/Van de Castle system' for scoring dream content, polysomnogram for measuring total sleep time, and others. Although there are strengths and limitations of each method, the section describes how each method works and relevant situations to use them. Since deviations from regular brain activity profiles can lead to sleep disorders as introduced in Chapter 5, effective use of aforementioned neuroscience study methods may help more individuals to identify and overcome problems with their sleep. Furthermore, some big data resources relevant to the topic are provided, such as de-identified clinical data, archives of sleep studies, collections of dream narratives, and questionnaires to identify sleep patterns.

Patrick McNamara, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at Northcentral University, Associate Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and Research Associate Professor of Neurology at Department of Neurology, University of Minnesota School Of Medicine in Minneapolis. He is the author of over 60 papers on sleep and dreams several single author books and co-edited volumes on sleep and dreams. His most recent book is 'The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams'. He maintains a blog on sleep and dreams for Psychology Today online. He has been awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health to study evolutionary biology and functions of sleep and dreams as well as REM and NREM dream differences. In 2009-10 he appeared on the PBS (NOVA), program ‘What Are Dreams?’ In 2012-13 he appeared in PBS 'Closer to Truth' series on sleep and dreams. In 2013 he was named Chief Science Advisor to Dreamboard.com. He is regularly interviewed on sleep and dreams in international media forums including online blogs, traditional radio and TV, and traditional print magazines/newspapers such as Time magazine, Science Weekly, and the Daily Mail in London. His work on nightmares and dreams has been turned into a theater production and an art installation in Washington DC.

Michelle Carr, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Rochester in the Department of Psychiatry, working in the Sleep and Neurophysiology Research Laboratory with Dr. Wilfred Pigeon. She previously completed postdoctoral training at the Swansea University Sleep Laboratory with Dr. Mark Blagrove, and received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Montreal in 2016, conducting research with Dr. Tore Nielsen at the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory. Her research interests center on sleep psychophysiology, disturbed dreaming, and dream engineering - applying technologies to influence sleep and dreams to benefit memory, creativity, emotional or physical well-being. She led the organization of the Dream Engineering Workshop at MIT Media Laboratory in January 2019, and guest edited a Special Issue on Dream Engineering with the journal Consciousness and Cognition. She also translates dream science research to the public by writing for Psychology Today.

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