Until recently, understanding the neurobiology of dreaming has relied upon on correlating a subjective dream report with a measure of brain activity or function sampled from a different occasion. As such, most assumptions about dreaming come from the neuroscience of rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep from which many, but not all, dream reports are recalled. Core features of REM sleep (intense emotional activation, a reduction in activity in most frontal regions, particularly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, along with increased dopamine, acetylcholine, cholinergic activation) align with typical dream characteristics (characterised by fear, reduced reality monitoring, increased bizarreness and hyperassociativity, respectively). The default mode network offers a way of understanding the nature of dreaming more independently from a REM sleep context, and electroencephalography methods paired with serial awakenings to elicit dream reports demonstrate how high-frequency activity in posterior regions may be associated with dreaming. Nevertheless, all measures of dreaming rely fundamentally on recall processes, so our understanding of dreaming must embrace and address memory's crucial involvement in dream report production.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
December 2023
Issue Editors
-
Cover Image
Cover Image
Inside this issue of Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, authors explore some of the causes and consequences of poor sleep, including breathing and cardiovascular disorders. The benefits of sleep for cognition and mental health are also looked at alongside the neurological basis of these benefits - including reactivation and dreaming.
Review Article|
December 22 2023
The neurocognition of dreaming: key questions and foci
Caroline L. Horton
DrEAMSLab, Bishop Grosseteste University, Longdales Road, Lincoln LN1 3DY, U.K.
Correspondence: C. L. Horton ([email protected])
Search for other works by this author on:
Publisher: Portland Press Ltd
Received:
May 31 2023
Revision Received:
November 30 2023
Accepted:
December 01 2023
Online ISSN: 2397-8562
Print ISSN: 2397-8554
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society and the Royal Society of Biology
2023
Emerg Top Life Sci (2023) 7 (5): 477–486.
Article history
Received:
May 31 2023
Revision Received:
November 30 2023
Accepted:
December 01 2023
Citation
Caroline L. Horton; The neurocognition of dreaming: key questions and foci. Emerg Top Life Sci 22 December 2023; 7 (5): 477–486. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/ETLS20230099
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Sign in to your personal account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.