Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0598853 (forgetting)
 3,232 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

I have reviewed Hobson and McCarley's activation-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming which attempts to show that the instigation and certain formal aspects of dreaming are physiologically determined by a brainstem neuronal mechanism, their reasons for suggesting major revisions in psychoanalytic dream theory, and neurophysiological data that are inconsistent with their hypothesis. I then discussed the concept of mind-body isomorphism pointing out that they use this concept inconsistently, that despite their denials they regularly view physiology as primary and psychological processes as secondary, and that they frequently make the error of mixing the languages of physiology and psychology in their explanatory statements. Finally, in order to evaluate Hobson and McCarley's claim that their findings require revision of psychoanalytic dream theory, I examined their discussions of chase dreams, flying dreams, sexual dreams, the formal characteristics of dreams, the forgetting of dreams, and the instigation of dreams. I concluded that although their fascinating physiological findings may be central to understanding the neurobiology of REM sleep, they do not alter the meaning and interpretation of dreams gleaned through psychoanalytic study.
 ...
PMID:Psychoanalytic dream theory and recent neurobiological findings about REM sleep. 652 68

Psychoanalysts since Freud have largely neglected his important, paradigmatic ideas on the possibility of 'thought-transference' (telepathy) as an influence in mental life. A chance recording of two dreams which proved to coincide in some detail with distant reality events again suggests evidence in favour of the telepathy hypothesis. On interpretation, one of these dreams reveals even greater correspondence with the reality event and shows the mechanism of transformation of the repressed wish from latent dream content into manifest dream, utilizing a number of elements of the dream instigator, an apparently telepathically received day residue. Working with this material proceeded against very strong resistance, most evident in repeated forgetting of one or another bit of the clinical data. This has been the fate of ideas pertaining to the occult since Freud's first formulations, as is documented here by references to the early history of psychoanalysis. The issue now and for the future is whether psychoanalysis will continue to ignore the crucial question of validity in regard to the telepathy hypothesis. The psychoanalytic method is uniquely qualified to investigate so-called parapsychological phenomena and has the same obligation to do so as with other mental events. We need to examine the evidence in spite of the threat posed to our conventional understanding of the limits of the mind by the very act of acknowledging the question. If we can overcome our resistance to undertaking this task, we may find that, once again, Freud pointed the way towards discovery of a new paradigm in science.
 ...
PMID:Freud's 'thought-transference', repression, and the future of psychoanalysis. 685 49

The different brain functional states during sleep and wakefulness are associated with differences in processing strategies, memory stores, and EEG patterns. Shifts of functional state occur spontaneously or as orienting reactions to processed information, and cause the formal characteristics of dreams. Forgetting of dreams is a function of the magnitude of the difference between states during storage and recall. Based on EEG similarities between sleep stages and developmental stages, brain states during sleep in adults are proposed to correspond functionally with waking states during childhood. Repeated functional regressions occur during sleep, with access to earlier memory material and cognitive strategies unavailable during waking life, so that earlier experiences can be used for current problems. This dream work constitutes the biological significance of sleep.
 ...
PMID:Dreaming: The functional state-shift hypothesis. A neuropsychophysiological model. 686 Aug 75

We describe a systems-level computational model, called TraceLink, that can explain the major characteristics of the neuropsychology of amnesia and of semantic dementia, a recently discovered syndrome in which there is a progressive loss of semantic memory. It also approximates the normal forgetting curve and presents an explanation of why spaced learning is more efficient than massed learning. A central assumption is that consolidation of memory takes place, probably during dream sleep. The model consists of three systems: trace system (certain parts of the neocortex), link system (includes the hippocampus), and the modulatory system (includes certain basal forebrain nuclei). Lesioning each of these causes a characteristic form of amnesia or semantic dementia. Lesioning the modulatory system causes anterograde amnesia only. Lesioning the link system causes a correlated degree of retrograde and anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia shows the characteristic Ribot curve with relative sparing of remote memories but loss of recent ones. Lesioning the trace system causes semantic dementia. We also review the main sources of constraints for the model and discuss its status and function as well as its falsifiability.
 ...
PMID:Interaction of cortex and hippocampus in a model of amnesia and semantic dementia. 1052 91

The idea that sleep could serve a cognitive function has remained popular since Freud stated that dreams were "not nonsense" but a time to sort out experiences [S. Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, May 1897, in The Origins of Psychoanalysis - Personal Letters of Sigmund Freud, M. Bonaparte, A. Freud, E. Kris (Eds.), Translated by E. Mosbacher, J. Strachey, Basic Books and Imago Publishing, 1954]. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is associated with dream reports, is now known to be is important for acquisition of some tasks [A. Karni, D. Tanne, B.S. Rubenstein, J.J.M. Askenasy, D. Sagi, Dependence on REM sleep of overnight improvement of a perceptual skill, Science 265 (1994) 679-682; C. Smith, Sleep states and learning: a review of the animal literature, Biobehav. Rev. 9 (1985) 157-168]; although why this is so remains obscure. It has been proposed that memories may be consolidated during REM sleep or that forgetting of unnecessary material occurs in this state [F. Crick, G. Mitchison, The function of dream sleep, Nature 304 (1983) 111-114; D. Marr, Simple memory: a theory for archicortex, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B. 262 (1971) 23-81]. We studied the firing of multiple single neurons in the hippocampus, a structure that is important for episodic memory, during familiar and novel experiences and in subsequent REM sleep. Cells active in familiar places during waking exhibited a reversal of firing phase relative to local theta oscillations in REM sleep. Because firing-phase can influence whether synapses are strengthened or weakened [C. Holscher, R. Anwyl, M.J. Rowan, Stimulation on the positive phase of hippocampal theta rhythm induces long-term potentiation that can be depotentiated by stimulation on the negative phase in area CA1 in vivo, J. Neurosci. 15 (1977) 6470-6477; P.T. Huerta, J.E. Lisman, Bidirectional synaptic plasticity induced by a single burst during cholinergic theta oscillation in CA1 in vitro, Neuron 15 (1995) 1053-1063; C. Pavlides, Y.J. Greenstein, M. Grudman, J. Winson, Long-term potentiation in the dentate gyrus is induced preferentially on the positive phase of theta-rhythm, Brain Res. 439 (1988) 383-387] this experience-dependent phase shift, which developed progressively over multiple sessions in the environment, is consistent with the hypothesis that circuits may be restructured during REM sleep by selectively strengthening recently acquired memories and weakening older ones.
 ...
PMID:Experience-dependent phase-reversal of hippocampal neuron firing during REM sleep. 1065 Jan 47

In this paper I discuss the nature and role of dream and the dreaming process in Jungian clinical practice in the light of neuroscience. Insights from contemporary neuroscience support rather than contest Jung's view that emotional truth, not censorship or disguise, underpins the dreaming process. I use clinical material to illustrate how work with dreams within the total interactive experience of the analytic dyad enables the development of the emotional scaffolding necessary for the development of 'mind'. Large scale evidence-based research reveals that dreaming is caused by brain activity during sleep that is both biochemically and regionally different from that of waking states. Recent imaging studies confirm that dreams are the mind's vehicle for the processing of emotional states of being, particularly the fear, anxiety, anger or elation that often figure prominently. Dream sleep is understood as also being the guardian of memory, playing a part in forgetting, encoding and affective organization of memory. In the clinical section of the paper I let a series of dreams speak for themselves, revealing the emotionally salient concerns of the dreamer, weaving past and present, transference and reality together in a way that demonstrates the healthy attempt of the brain-mind to come to terms with difficult emotional experience from the past. The dreams become dreamable as part of the meaning-making process of analysis.
 ...
PMID:The dreaming mind-brain: a Jungian perspective. 1645 18

An experiment was carried out to test whether forgetting of dream material is due to repression. Under this assumption one would expect that free associations starting from forgotten elements encounter successively growing resistance. Subjects brought along notes of dreams and were later tested for recognition of short sequences of their dreams. In addition, they produced free associations to 5 elements they had remembered and to 5 elements not identified in the recognition test. Skin conductance responses (SCR) and perceived unpleasantness were recorded. The main results were: In comparison to recognized dream material, unrecognized elements elicited associations accompanied by greater psychophysiologic activation. During associations to the latter stimuli, increase of SCR was more frequent. Our findings are in line with Freud's assumption that forgetting of dreams is an effect of repression.
 ...
PMID:[Does repression explain the forgetting of dreams? An experimental approach to Freud's theory of dreams]. 1898 39

The concept of 'repression' dates back to Freud, assuming that undesirable memories can become suppressed and that dreams ease repression by permitting these memories to be reinstated. Here, we followed this idea adopting the 'directed forgetting' approach of experimental psychology. The voluntary suppression of unwanted memories results in impaired later retrieval. Because sleep is known to benefit consolidation of newly learned materials, including cognitive skills, we hypothesized that memory suppression would be enhanced by sleep, and perhaps particularly by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is associated more often with dream reports. Subjects (n=42) learned a list of word-pairs and, subsequently, the first (cue) words of the pairs were presented again; for half these words subjects had to recall respective second words (response pairs) and for the other half they had to keep respective second words out of mind (suppression pairs). Retrieval of both response and suppression pairs was tested after 8h of sleep or wakefulness (main experiment) or after 3-h periods of early slow wave sleep (SWS)-rich or late REM-rich sleep (supplementary experiment). Response pairs were generally recalled better after sleep than wakefulness (P<0.05). Recall of suppression pairs was, as expected, worse than of response pairs. Contrary to our hypothesis, memory for suppression pairs was not affected differentially by sleep. In the supplementary experiment, compared to SWS-rich sleep, REM-rich sleep even improved recall of suppression pairs (P<0.05). Thus, sleep does not benefit the forgetting of unwanted memories but, on the contrary, REM sleep might even counteract the voluntary suppression of memories making them more accessible for retrieval.
 ...
PMID:Sleep's role in the processing of unwanted memories. 2072 21

We tested whether dreams can anticipate a stressful exam and how failure/success in dreams affect next-day performance. We collected information on students' dreams during the night preceding the medical school entrance exam. Demographic, academic, sleep and dream characteristics were compared to the students' grades on the exam. Of the 719 respondents to the questionnaire (of 2324 total students), 60.4% dreamt of the exam during the night preceding it. Problems with the exam appeared in 78% of dreams and primarily involved being late and forgetting answers. Reporting a dream about the exam on the pre-exam night was associated with better performance on the exam (p=.01). The frequency of dreams concerning the exam during the first term predicted proportionally higher performance on the exam (R=0.1, p=.01). These results suggest that the negative anticipation of a stressful event in dreams is common and that this episodic simulation provides a cognitive gain.
 ...
PMID:Will students pass a competitive exam that they failed in their dreams? 2510 80