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The Meaning of Dreams Dreams May Reflect a Fundamental Aspect of Mammalian Memory Processing

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The Meaning of Dreams Dreams May Reflect a Fundamental Aspect of Mammalian Memory Processing The Meaning of Dreams Dreams may reflect a fundamental aspect of mammalian memory processing. Crucial information acquired during the waking state may be reprocessed during sleep by Jonathan Winson The Author hroughout history human beings have sought to understand the meaning of dreams. The ancient Egyptians believed dreams JONATHAN WINSON possessed oracular power—in the Bible, for example, Joseph’s started his career as an elucidation of Pharaoh’s dream averted seven years of famine. SCALA/ART RESOURCE aeronautical engineer, grad- TOther cultures have interpreted dreams as inspirational, curative or alterna- uating with an engineering degree from the California tive reality. During the past century, scientists have offered conflicting psy- Institute of Technology in chological and neuroscientific explanations for dreams. In 1900, with the 1946. He completed his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud proposed that Ph.D. in mathematics at dreams were the “royal road” to the unconscious; that they revealed in dis- Columbia University and guised form the deepest elements of an individual’s inner life. then turned to business for More recently, in contrast, dreams have been characterized as meaningless, 15 years. Because of his keen interest in neurosci- the result of random nerve cell activity. Dreaming has also been viewed as the ence, however, Winson means by which the brain rids itself of unnecessary information—a process started to do research at the of “reverse learning,” or unlearning. Rockefeller University on Based on recent findings in my own and other neuroscientific laboratories, memory processing during I propose that dreams are indeed meaningful. Studies of the hippocampus (a waking and sleeping states. brain structure crucial to memory), of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and In 1979 he became an asso- of a brain wave called theta rhythm suggest that dreaming reflects a pivotal ciate professor there and as professor emeritus contin- aspect of the processing of memory. In particular, studies of theta rhythm in ues his work on memory subprimate animals have provided an evolutionary clue to the meaning of and dreaming. His research dreams. They appear to be the nightly record of a basic mammalian memo- has been supported by the ry process: the means by which animals form strategies for survival and National Institute of Men- evaluate current experience in light of those strategies. The existence of this tal Health, the National Sci- process may explain the meaning of dreams in human beings. ence Foundation and the Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation. Stages of Sleep and Dreaming he physiology of dreaming was first understood in 1953, when re- Tsearchers characterized the human sleep cycle. They found that sleep in humans is initiated by the hypnogogic state, a period of several minutes Dreaming occurs solely when thoughts consist of fragmented images or minidramas. The hyp- during REM sleep. nogogic state is followed by slow-wave sleep, so called because at that time the brain waves of the neocortex (the convoluted outer mantle of the brain) are low in frequency and large in amplitude. These signals are measured as electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. Researchers also discovered that a night’s sleep is punctuated by periods in which the EEG readings are irregular in frequency and low in amplitude— similar to those observed in awake individuals. These periods of mental ac- tivity are called REM sleep. Dreaming takes place solely during these peri- ods. While in REM sleep, motor neurons are inhibited, preventing the body from moving freely but allowing extremities to remain slightly active. Eyes Photo Researchers, Inc. Photo Researchers, JACOB’S LADDER, painted in 1973 by Marc Chagall, depicts a biblical story. Jacob dreams of angels ascend- LABAT/JERRICAN LABAT/JERRICAN ing to and descending from heaven on a ladder. 58 Mysteries of the Mind Reprinted from the November 1990 issue Copyright 1990 Scientific American, Inc. move rapidly in unison under closed This sleep cycle—alternating slow- entists have discovered additional neu- lids, breathing becomes irregular and wave and REM sleep—appears to be rophysiological aspects of REM sleep. heart rate increases. present in all placental and marsupial They determined that neural control of The first REM stage of the night fol- mammals. Mammals exhibit the vari- this stage of the sleep cycle is centered lows 90 minutes of slow-wave sleep and ous REM-associated characteristics ob- in the brain stem (the brain region clos- lasts for 10 minutes. The second and served in humans, including EEG read- est to the spinal cord) and that during third REM periods follow shorter slow- ings similar to those of the awake state. REM sleep neural signals—called pon- wave sleep episodes but grow progres- Animals also dream. By destroying neu- tine-geniculate-occipital (PGO) cortex sively longer themselves. The fourth and rons in the brain stem that inhibit move- spikes—proceed from the brain stem to final REM interval lasts 20 to 30 min- ment during sleep, researchers found the center of visual processing, the visu- utes and is followed by awakening. If a that sleeping cats rose up and attacked al cortex. Brain stem neurons also initi- dream is remembered at all, it is most or were startled by invisible objects—os- ate a sinusoidal wave (one resembling a often the one that occurred in this last tensibly images from dreams. sine curve) in the hippocampus. This phase of REM sleep. By studying subprimate animals, sci- brain signal is called theta rhythm. Copyright 1990 Scientific American, Inc. PREFRONTAL CORTEX were merely the “best fit” the forebrain could provide to this random bombard- ment from the brain stem. Although SEPTUM dreams might at times appear to have psychological content, their bizarreness was inherently meaningless. The sense, or plot, of dreams resulted from order that was imposed on the chaos of neural signals, Hobson said. “That order is a function of our own personal view of the world, our remote memories,” Hobson wrote. In other words, the individual’s emotional vo- cabulary could be relevant to dreams. In a further revision of the original hy- pothesis, Hobson also suggested that brain stem activation may merely serve to switch from one dream episode to another. Reverse Learning VISUAL lthough Hobson and McCarley had HIPPOCAMPUS ENTORHINAL CORTEX CORTEX A presented an explanation of dream HIPPOCAMPUS content, the basic function of REM sleep admittedly remained unknown. In 1983 BRAIN STEM Francis Crick of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and Graeme Mitchison of the University of Cambridge in England DENTATE GYRUS proposed the idea of reverse learning. SPINAL CORD Working from the Hobson-McCarley CA3 CA1 CELLS assumption of random neocortical bom- CELLS OL DONNER bardment by PGO waves and their own AR C knowledge of the behavior of stimulated ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN and cross section of the hippocampus show some of the neural networks, they postulated that a regions involved in dreaming. In the hippocampus, incoming information is processed complex associational neural network sequentially in the dentate gyrus and the CA3 and the CA1 pyramidal cells. In subpri- such as the neocortex might become mate species, theta rhythm is generated in the dentate gyrus and the CA1 cells. overloaded by vast amounts of incoming information. The neocortex could then develop false, or “parasitic,” thoughts At least one animal experiences slow- unknown. In light of the discovery of that would jeopardize the true and or- wave but not REM sleep—and, conse- REM sleep, certain elements of his psy- derly storage of memory. quently, does not exhibit theta rhythm choanalytic theory were modified, and According to Crick and Mitchison’s when asleep. This animal is the echidna, the stage was set for more neurological- hypothesis, REM sleep served to erase or spiny anteater, an egg-laying mam- ly based theories. Dreaming came to be these spurious associations on a regular mal (called a monotreme) that provides understood as part of a biologically de- basis. Random PGO waves impinged on some insight into the origin of dream- termined sleep cycle. Yet the central the neocortex, resulting in erasure, or un- ing. The absence of REM sleep in the concept of Freud’s theory—namely, the learning, of the false information. This echidna suggests that this stage of the belief that dreams reveal a censored process served an essential function: it sleep cycle evolved some 140 million representation of our innermost uncon- allowed the orderly processing of mem- years ago, when marsupials and placen- scious feelings and concerns—continues ory. In humans, dreams were a running tals diverged from the monotreme line. to be used in psychoanalysis. record of these parasitic thoughts—ma- (Monotremes were the first mammals Some theorists abandoned Freud al- terial to be purged from memory. “We to develop from reptiles.) together following the neurological dis- dream to forget,” Crick and Mitchison By all evolutionary criteria, the perpet- coveries. In 1977 J. Allan Hobson and wrote. uation of a complex brain process such Robert McCarley of Harvard Medical The two researchers proposed a revi- as REM sleep indicates that it serves an School proposed the “activation-syn- sion in 1986. Erasure of parasitic important function for the survival of thesis” hypothesis. They suggested that thoughts accounted only for bizarre mammalian species. Understanding that dreaming consists of associations and dream content. Nothing could be said function might reveal the meaning of memories elicited from the forebrain (the about dream narrative. Furthermore, dreams. neocortex and associated structures) in dreaming to forget, they said, was bet- When Freud wrote The Interpretation response to random signals from the ter expressed as dreaming to reduce of Dreams, the physiology of sleep was brain stem such as PGO spikes. Dreams fantasy or obsession. 60 Mysteries of the Mind The Meaning of Dreams Copyright 1990 Scientific American, Inc.
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