Thinking During Dreaming has Two
Distinct Components
David Kahn received a PhD
in physics from Yale University and has been working on the
neurobiology and neuropsychology of dreams since 1991. His
publications are on topics that include dreaming and the
self-organizing brain, dreaming and waking consciousness, and
emotion and cognition in dreaming.
Abstract
An investigation was recently
undertaken into how thinking during a dream is similar to, and
different from, thinking when awake. The study asked 26
participants who were students at a local college to pay attention
to their thinking in the dream. Specifically, the participants
were asked to judge whether their thinking during the dream was
similar to what it would have been had they been awake. The
participants were asked to do this for their thinking within the
plot of the dream, and for their thinking about the dream plot
itself. For example, one dreamer reported: “I’m on the Mass Pike.
I look over and I see Pete in his car. I get out of my car and he
gets out of his and we talk about how our summer is going.” The
dreamer stated that “Yes, I would want to know how he is doing and
to say hello, as I would had I been awake” And “No, I would not
get out of my car on the highway!, had I been awake.”
We
collected 178 dream reports from the 26 participants over a
two-week period as well as judgments on their thinking during the
dream. In general, we found that there are two distinct components
of thinking in dreams, one that is similar to and one that is
different from wake-state thinking. The component that is
different is the thinking about the event or plot itself. This
kind of “meta cognition” is mostly absent in dreaming.
The
question is why don’t we think about the event even if it is
preposterous (as getting out of the car in the middle of a super
highway to say hello to a friend), even though we do think pretty
much the same as when awake within the event (thinking it would be
nice to say hello to a friend)? We suggest that during dreaming we
experience the event as distinguished from imagining the event.
When awake we can
think about an event whether it is actually happening or whether
it is imagined. In dreaming, even though asleep, the visual and
motor areas of our brain are highly activated. This results in our
visualizing and feeling movement within the event.
During dreaming both the chemistry and the functional connections
of the brain change. Chemically, the brain changes from one rich
in serotonin and norepinephrine to one rich in acetycholine. This
chemical change is conducive to creating hallucinosis which leads
to experiencing inner events as happening externally. Further, the
dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, the seat of volitional control
and the precuneus which tracks our physical location in the
external world are inactivated during dreaming. Thus, during
dreaming we experience the dream as reality.
We
speculate that on a psychosocial level our findings suggest that
the inability to critically question the occurrence of the event
helps create a believable simulation that may help prepare us for
waking life events.
