OUTLINE AND EVALUATE ONE NEUROBIOLOGICAL AND ONE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF DREAMING

Evidence to his theory would be many of the dreams are always associated with present concerns for e.g. in a study carried out by Hajek and Belcher (1991) on smokers in a quit smoking programme where many of the participants dreamt about smoking during the programme and up to one year after these dreams had a feeling of guilt and panic in the participant. Those who had the dreams on smoking and who had the guilt were more likely to quit smoking as opposed to those who did not. This theory suggests dreaming is the expressment and fulfilment of latent urges and desires. As the participants were in a smoking quit programme their desires would be to smoke and these desires were fulfilled through their dreams and further those who dreamt more about smoking were more likely to give up to those who had no or less dreams on smoking this shows that their wishes were fulfilled.

The wish fulfilment theory by Freud is proven to the dreamer being prevention to the dreamer of becoming aware of the latent thoughts as psychoanalysts have to interpret dreams so that the latent urges are fulfilled without the dreamer knowing. Also the fulfilment is there so the dreamer does not follow up the urges in real life. This theory was the first systematic theory of dreaming on the nature and function of dreams but has been known to be popular in culture rather than serious psychology. In that repressed era it was likely that there would be fulfilment taking place in dreams. As in the early part of the century was not open as it is today and due to that there is little repression with feelings in today’s society so there is no need for these dreams. Also the content of the dreams is open to analyst and there may be individual difference within the dreamer of the analyst in the way the dream is translated. Nightmares are also not explained and what would nightmares be fulfilling. Recent studies with patients who have brain damage in the cortical-limbic circuit in the front of the brain shows that dreams may reflect our unconscious wishes and desires as predicted by Freud.

Crick and Mitchson (1983) came up with a reverse learning theory. This theory suggests that the actual function of dreaming is to get rid of useless information taking up valuable space in the brain, so that the neural networks do not become overloaded therefore the brain works more efficiently. So any images seen in the dreams are a display of the information gathered that are being deleted and thrown away, it is said that this is the reason why dreams are weird s random useless information is being discarded and displayed at once. The dreams are a by product of a necessary brain activity as suggested by Hobson and McCarley (1977).

Evidence suggesting the validity of the theory is shown by the difference in cortex sizes amongst different species for e.g. the only animals without REM sleep would be dolphins and spiny anteaters there fore these mammals would not be able to get rid of the useless information stored but Crick and Mitchson say that the cortex sizes of theses animals are larger in ratio to their body size so there is no need to discard any information. However the human cortex has gone through more changes than the two animals and should have much more capacity this contradicts the explanation given by Crick and Mitchson. Winson (1997) says that the two animals do all their clearing up whilst awake and that is the reason why they have bigger cortex sizes opposed to humans and other mammals that do this whilst asleep in the REM stage.

The only way this theory can be backed up is that we do not remember our dreams; this suggests and proves that the information is being disposed and deleted. However many times dreams mean something as seen in the smoking quit programme by Hajek and Belcher. And babies and foetuses also have REM sleep but they have no or very little information in the first place so what do they get rid of? Another criticism would be that modern ideas suggest the brain has a vast amount of space available so there is no need to make space.

There are many theories of dreaming in both psychological and neurobiological areas. These theories and researchers suggest dreaming to be meaningless to others who say it is a form of reverse learning and problem solving which integrates a days experience with stored memories. An emerging view is that memories of the day’s events are stored in the hippocampus and then during sleep they are integrated with experiences permanently stored in the cortex. These sometimes become imagery of dreams which reflect the attempt to link recent memories with past ones. Neurobiological theories suggest dreams as accidental by products of brain activity. When getting rid of useless information but this does not explain dreams which mean something. Also psychological theories can only explain some dreams and do not account for the physiological process. Neurobiological theories could compensate for the physiological process by the activity found in REM and NREM sleep. However these theories are only partial explanations of REM activity when dreaming.