Why are dreams strange? Why are they so difficult to remember? And what is their function? We still do not really know the answers to these fundamental questions, which Sue Llewellyn addresses in her provocative article on dreaming as elaborative encoding. Besides being a forceful reminder of the ancient art of memory, I appreciate the effort to tie this tradition to modern science in an integrative way. For me, the approach links quantitative studies of dream bizarreness (Hobson et al. Reference Hobson, Hoffman, Helfand and Kostner1987), the neurophysiology of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (Hobson et al. Reference Hobson, Pace-Schott and Stickgold2000), and the experimental study of sleep and memory (Stickgold et al. Reference Stickgold, Hobson, Fosse and Fosse2001).
In essence, Llewellyn is telling us that dreams are bizarre because their content is scrambled by the altered physiology of REM sleep (low aminergic, high cholinergic tone), which allows fragments of the dream to be reordered to facilitate the efficient storage of emotional salient information. This theory is capital because it allows us to retain the idea that dreams are, somehow, meaningful while setting aside the unlikely suggestion of Freud that the function of dreaming is to disguise and conceal unacceptable wishes to protect consciousness (Hobson and McCarley Reference Hobson and McCarley1977; McCarley and Hobson Reference McCarley and Hobson1977).
Llewellyn's elaborative encoding theory of is more compatible with the completely opposite view that REM sleep and dreaming are positive collaborators that shape and update waking consciousness (Hobson Reference Hobson2009). My own theory of REM dreams as protoconsciousness is not entirely independent of the idea of elaborative encoding. In fact, the two ideas are not only theoretical cohesive but mutually enhancing by providing a theoretical mechanism by which diurnal waking experience could be integrated with what I take to be the evolutionary memory by which the genome creates REM as an epigenetic program of virtual reality for the fetal brain.
So the good news is theoretical coherence of an entirely novel sort. The bad news regards testability. For elaborative encoding to be more than literary window dressing, it is essential to propose experimental tests to prove it wrong, and I must confess that I do not see how this can be done. Anecdotal self-analysis will not do here. We must not tolerate neo-Freudianism, no matter how brilliant. Will Sue Llewellyn, the experimentalist, please stand up?
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Why are dreams strange? Why are they so difficult to remember? And what is their function? We still do not really know the answers to these fundamental questions, which Sue Llewellyn addresses in her provocative article on dreaming as elaborative encoding. Besides being a forceful reminder of the ancient art of memory, I appreciate the effort to tie this tradition to modern science in an integrative way. For me, the approach links quantitative studies of dream bizarreness (Hobson et al. Reference Hobson, Hoffman, Helfand and Kostner1987), the neurophysiology of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (Hobson et al. Reference Hobson, Pace-Schott and Stickgold2000), and the experimental study of sleep and memory (Stickgold et al. Reference Stickgold, Hobson, Fosse and Fosse2001).
In essence, Llewellyn is telling us that dreams are bizarre because their content is scrambled by the altered physiology of REM sleep (low aminergic, high cholinergic tone), which allows fragments of the dream to be reordered to facilitate the efficient storage of emotional salient information. This theory is capital because it allows us to retain the idea that dreams are, somehow, meaningful while setting aside the unlikely suggestion of Freud that the function of dreaming is to disguise and conceal unacceptable wishes to protect consciousness (Hobson and McCarley Reference Hobson and McCarley1977; McCarley and Hobson Reference McCarley and Hobson1977).
Llewellyn's elaborative encoding theory of is more compatible with the completely opposite view that REM sleep and dreaming are positive collaborators that shape and update waking consciousness (Hobson Reference Hobson2009). My own theory of REM dreams as protoconsciousness is not entirely independent of the idea of elaborative encoding. In fact, the two ideas are not only theoretical cohesive but mutually enhancing by providing a theoretical mechanism by which diurnal waking experience could be integrated with what I take to be the evolutionary memory by which the genome creates REM as an epigenetic program of virtual reality for the fetal brain.
So the good news is theoretical coherence of an entirely novel sort. The bad news regards testability. For elaborative encoding to be more than literary window dressing, it is essential to propose experimental tests to prove it wrong, and I must confess that I do not see how this can be done. Anecdotal self-analysis will not do here. We must not tolerate neo-Freudianism, no matter how brilliant. Will Sue Llewellyn, the experimentalist, please stand up?