Talk:Activation-synthesis hypothesis

Expert-needed

I am watching a documentrary on dreams which mentions Hobson and McCarley's work and it appears to conflict with some parts of this article (ref: PBS NOVA "What Are Dreams?" 2009). In particular, first, the (Dream|REM) section states that REM sleep is an evolutionarily recent behavior of humans (I presume implying that dreaming is evolutionarily recent [see below re: "Bias"]. However Matt Wilson of MIT ~2001 did experiments on rats which seems to demonstrate REM style dream activity in rats, and other experiments in cats and dogs in which motor inhibition was disabled during REM sleep demonstrated behaviors strongly suggestive of REM dreaming in humans (which is also attested by human subjects with REM sleep disorders in which their motor activity was disinhibited). The article leaves the reader with the impression that Dreams and/or REM sleep are unique to humans, which the Nova special suggests is false. The article seems to imply that dreams are unique to REM sleep; again contradicted by the Nova special, which documents that dreams also occur during Non-REM sleep, though their characteristics differ from those experienced during REM sleep. The article is obviously biased towards REM sleep dreams as that appears to be the stage of sleep towards which Hobson and McCarley's hypothesis applies, but the article gives the impression that a) that is the only time dreams occur, and b) that the observations of H & M apply to all dream states; both of which are contradicted by the Nova episode.

BIAS: As a whole, the article is written as if to imply that dreaming occurs only in REM sleep, which appears to be a mischaracterization.

I note that many of the references are rather old (40+ years for half of them). While this does not in itself invalidate them, the apparent conflicts with more recent research are apparent and suggest that the article could benefit greatly from reflecting, if not incorporating the results of more recent research. I lack the expertise to a) update the article, and b) adjust the article to remove any errant implications such as the 'REM sleep == Dreams' bias noted (and more specifically, the article tends to be vague as to what is correlated with REM sleep and what is correlated with dreams occurring during REM sleep -- seeming to blur the distinction between the effects of REM sleep and the effects of dreaming together).

Apophenian Alchemy (talk) 00:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

ETA: It appears that the suggestion that humans alone dream is restricted to certain section(s) [e.g. Dreams:REM] and is conflicted by other portions which do explicitly refer to REM in non-human subjects; however, even then there is general confusion throughout the article as it refers to dreams, REM sleep, primary consciousness and secondary consciousness without distinguishing which applies to humans, when, and how, and which applies to non-humans; the article notes that "only humans have been experimentally shown to experience secondary consciousness" with the obvious implication that dream states in non-human animals does not include features of secondary consciousness; not being an expert, I can suspect but not confirm that this only implies that it has not been demonstrated in non-humans, NOT that it has been demonstrated "not to occur in non-humans" -- which appears to be what the author of the article is hinting at (cf. Background:waking, "This includes humans experiencing the awareness of being aware of ourselves, an intrinsic ability to humans" -- again, confusing existing in humans with existing only in humans; needs to be rephrased). Anyway. As noted, the different states and characterizations are poorly delineated.

Also: 1) Article states the dreamer cannot distinguish the dream state from the waking state; while this is typical of the dream state it is not an essential feature of the dream state. (See also, lucid dreaming; likely yet another artifact of outdated research and models). 2) The comment above this section refers to an ungrammatical sentence in the article which results in a sentence which has no sense; I'm unable to locate the sentence in question, but noted it on my first reading; I'm getting fatigued so I will look for it later and add a note if I find it; this is just to note that that complaint hasn't been adequately resolved (I couldn't make out the intended meaning from the context). Apophenian Alchemy (talk) 01:53, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, apparently elephants and bottle-nosed dolphins exhibit "self-awareness" as well (and crows are a likely candidate, though I don't have specific research at hand). (e.g. When an 'X' is painted on an elephant's head and guided to a mirror, she recognizes that the X is on her head and attempts to remove it.) Apophenian Alchemy (talk) 12:00, 5 July 2011 (UTC)