The Dreaming Brain

by J. Allan Hobson

A Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and neuroscientist shows how dream science draws on psychology and neurobiology to provide new insight into the nature of the human mind.

Genres: Psychology, Science, Neuroscience

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

John Allan Hobson is an American psychiatrist and dream researcher. He is known for his research on rapid eye movement sleep. He is Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Reviews

[Aaron Michael]

The activation-synthesis model, proposed by Hobson and McCarley in the 1970s, asserts that during REM sleep, the brainstem generates spontaneous, random neural signals.
These signals activate various regions of the cortex, which then synthesize a narrative or storyline out of this activity. In essence, dreams are the brain's effort to impose meaning on otherwise chaotic neural firing. This model diverges from earlier theories that viewed dreams as direct reflections of subconscious desires; instead, dreams are seen as byproducts of brain activation.

[Lana Damian]

On bookshelf

[Erin]

I can't decide whether to give this book one star or five stars, so 3 is a compromise. If judged by the accuracy of its claims, this book would not fare very well. However, this book, and Hobson's "Activation-Synthesis" theory of dreaming in general have been enormously influential in the field of sleep and dreaming, greatly shaping how we think about these issues today. Five stars for historical importance.

[Lazarus P Badpenny Esq]

"The five cardinal characteristics of dream mentation may also be seen in the hallucinations, disorientations, bizarre thoughts, delusions, and amnesias of patients with mental illness. Thus, were it not for the fact that we are asleep when they occur, we would be obliged to say that our dreams are formally psychotic and that we are all, during dreaming, formally delirious and demented."