ABSTRACT

Beyond REM Sleep – Other Electrophysiologic Correlates of Dreaming

J. F. Pagel MD 

J. F. Pagel MD, Assistant Clinical Professor University of Colorado Medical School. Director: Penrose-St. Francis Sleep Laboratory (Colorado Springs) and the Sleep Center of Southern Colorado (Pueblo). Past-chair of the Dream Section of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Author of 60 papers on sleep and dream including: The effects of ethnicity, age, gender, stress and creative interest on dream use, Non-dreamers, Dreaming and creativity in Filmmakers, The effects of daytime somnolence, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy on dream recall, Drug induced nightmares, and the Definition of Dream.

Summary of Presentation

Sleep staging requires electophyiologic data for characterization including channels of electroencephalograph (EEG), electromyelograph (EMG) and electrooculograph (EOG). As such, sleep stages are artificial constructs that have been utilized to explain associated physiologic variables occurring during sleep. Dreaming of some type occurs throughout sleep. This presentation reaches beyond sleep staging to assess the correlation of dreaming with specific EOG, EEG, and EEG variables that may or may not be associated with the classically delineated stages of sleep.

Learning Objectives.

1. An overview of defining dreaming both philosophically and for research purposes.

2. A review of current theories of the electrophysiological correlates of dreaming.

3. A survey of dream recall literature as associated with specific sleep staging and electrophysiologic data.

Evaluation questions:

1. Does everyone have REM sleep? Yes

2. Does everyone remember dreaming when awaken from REM sleep? No

3. Definitions of dream include what three characteristics of dreaming? 1) occurs in a sleep or awake state, 2) includes recall, & 3) has content.

Abstract 

Dreaming is a cognitive state associated with REM sleep, NREM sleep, PGO spikes, Hippocampus Theta and Saw tooth waves (electrophysiological markers that have been associated with dreaming), EMG activity and lack of activity, and EOG conjugate and non-conjugate rapid and slow eye movement. At present there is strong evidence that the association between the cognitive experience of dreaming and REM sleep is not specific or close. There is a major paradigm shift occurring in our understanding of the association between sleep and dreaming. REM sleep and dreaming appear to be doubly dissociable states with different physiological mechanisms (in all likelihood dreams and REM sleep serve different functional purposes). Dreaming clearly occurs outside of REM sleep. REM sleep occurs without reports of dreaming.

REM sleep can be understood within the context of sleep without invoking mental phenomena or quasi-conscious processes - the cognitive process of dreaming. In order to preserve the model (REM sleep = Dreaming), theorists have been forced to propose that most cognitive activity occurring during sleep (any thought, feeling or emotion that is not bizarre and hallucinogenic) must be excluded from the definition of dreaming. The other mental activity of sleep that is not bizarre or hallucinatory is not dreaming. It has no clear name, though authors have called this non-dreaming ‘mental activity of sleep.’ It has been proposed, as well, that REM sleep must be re-defined to occur not only in sleep but also throughout the waking. Any bizarre, hallucinatory type thought is a dream, whether it occurs in sleep, wake, or in some intermediary state. In order to preserve the theory that REMS = Dreaming, the entire field of sleep and dream study, and our concepts of waking consciousness must be altered.

Dreaming correlates with other physiological processes occurring during sleep (PGO spikes, Hippocampus Theta and Saw tooth waves (electrophysiological markers that have been associated with dreaming), EMG activity and lack of activity, and EOG conjugate and non-conjugate rapid and slow eye movement). Reaching beyond classic descriptionsof the correlation of dream recall with various stages of sleep, this study reviews the correlation of dreaming with each of these electrophysiologic variables.

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