Outline and evaluate one neurobiological theory of dreaming

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Zainab Rahman

Outline and evaluate one neurobiological theory of dreaming

Neurobiological theories suggest that the main factor in dreaming is REM activity. According to the activation synthesis theory (Hobson & McCarley 1977), dreams are merely the brain's reaction to random biological processes that occur during sleep.

Various parts of the brain continue to function and produce stimuli during sleep and REM sleep in particular. The brain then takes these internal stimuli and attempts to make some sort of sense of them (synthesis). To do this it uses other random stimuli and memories, especially those easily accessible in the short-term memory. For example, the randomly produced stimuli might resemble those produced when running. The sleeper could then dream of running. The brain then attempts to explain random signals from the lower brain produce a random dream with no deep or hidden meanings or purpose.

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 Some envision dreams as simply the brain's technique for memory consolidation and clean-up activity, know as the reverse learning theory (Crick & Mitchison, 1983). Others see dreams as an emotional safety net, emphasizing the rich emotions and deep personal meaning that dreamers sometimes experience (Cartwright, 1990).  

This theory has the advantage that it is based on detailed information about the brain processes, but the disadvantage is that it does not fully explain the existence of coherent dreams. On the whole, the activation-synthesis hypothesis has the advantage that it renders dreams meaningless and removes any need to understand or interpret ...

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