Are dreams only side-effects of brain-activation?

One theory about dreams is that they random firings of the brain, the “activation-synthesis” model of J. Allan Hobson.


One of the better neuroscience blogs on the web is www.neuroskeptic.blogspot.com. An excerpt from this blog about this random brain activation theory can be found below, with a link to the full article.


From neuroskeptic.blogspot.com:






April 7, 2010


J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley created a storm in 1977 with The Brain As A Dream State Generator; I read somewhere that it provoked more letters to the Editor in the American Journal of Psychiatry than any other paper in that journal.

Hobson and McCarley’s article was so controversial because they argued that dreams are essentially side-effects of brain activation. This was a direct attack on the Freudian view that we dream as a result of our subconscious desires, and that dreams have hidden meanings. Freudian psychoanalysis was incredibly influential in American psychiatry in the 1970s.

Freud believed that dreams exist to fulfil our fantasies, often though not always sexual ones. We dream about what we’d like to do – except we don’t dream about it directly, because we find much of our desires shameful, so our minds disguise the wishes behind layers of metaphor etc. “Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act…” Interpreting the symbolism of dreams can therefore shed light on the depths of the mind.

Hobson and McCarley argued that during REM sleep, our brains are active in a similar way to when we are awake; many of the systems responsible for alertness are switched on, unlike during deep, dreamless, non-REM sleep. But of course during REM there is no sensory input (our eyes are closed), and also, we are paralysed: an inhibitory pathway blocks the spinal cord, preventing us from moving, except for our eyes – hence why it’s Rapid Eye Movement sleep.

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