CONSCIOUSNESS

3. Cognitive Sciences and Psychology 135
183 REM Network and Dream Consciousness David Kahn
(Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA)
This paper presents data suggesting that dreaming reflects a state of consciousness unique
to sleep that provides the dreamer an opportunity to not only accept the implausible, but to
also believe and consciously experience it. In our studies the subjects were asked if their
thinking would have been different had they been awake, if they wondered what their dream
characters were thinking (Kahn & Hobson, 2005, a, b) and if they noticed implausibility
between a dream character and its wake life counterpart (Kahn, et al, 2002; Kahn & Hobson,
2003). The studies showed that during a dream we often wonder what our dream characters
are thinking and feeling about us, and, importantly, we rarely question the plausibility of the
unfolding events in the dream until we awaken, assuming we even remember them. We are not
aware that we are dreaming or lying in bed, but within the dream we are aware of ourselves as
thinking, feeling and acting as if we were experiencing the events in the dream. In this sense,
dream consciousness, resulting from activation of the REM network when we sleep, may be
regarded as useful in its own right whether the dream informs waking behavior or not. Dreaming
allows us to consciously experience what may not be possible to experience in wake life.
It is argued that this ability makes dream consciousness unique even if the experience does
not directly affect wake behavior. REM dreaming arises when the wake state proportion of
aminergic and cholinergic neurotransmitters changes to all cholinergic, and when the functional
connectivity between brain regions changes such that the neural activity in the dorsal
lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the precuneus diminish compared to wake levels. On
the other hand the neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and in the limbic and
paralimbic areas increase. Consciousness is profoundly affected by these alterations in chemical
and functional brain activation levels. For example, the minimal neural activity between
the DLPFC and Precuneus changes the way the dreamer consciously experiences him or herself
in space (not aware he or she is in bed). On the other hand, the continued neural activity in
the MPFC and limbic system increases affect in the dreamer often within a social context. The
paper will also briefly compare REM consciousness and its associated regional brain network
with mind wandering and its associated default network (Raichle, et al, 2001), and with lucid
dreaming consciousness and its associated hybrid network (Voss, et al, 2009). C11
184 The Phenomenon of Nocturnal Cognitive Problem-Solving Miloslava Kozmova
(Boston, MA)
Previously, dreams and problem-solving have been linked with incubation, which focuses
on posing a waking life problem prior to sleep and expecting the dream to develop an idea,
contribute to a solution, or assist in resolution of the problem in some way (Barrett, 1993,
2001; Krippner, 1981). Additionally, researchers investigated the problem-solving and adaptive
function of dreams connected with personal mythology (Kuper, 1983) and psychoanalytical
theory (Glucksman & Kramer, 2004; Greenberg, Katz, Schwartz, & Pearlman, 1992). It
is not yet known, however, how dreamers maneuver and negotiate problematic situations
and difficulties that unexpectedly and sometimes importunely arise during the immediacy
of dream scenario. The goal of this presentation is to report the results of the exploratory
study that has been guided by the question “What is the scope of cognitive problem-solving
strategies that dreamers are capable of employing for resolving situations encountered during
dreaming?” To elucidate the extent of dreamer’s abilities to problem-solve, the author drew
on an archival collection of 1,400 cross-cultural dreams self-selected by male and female
dreamers from seven different countries: Argentina, Brazil, England, Japan, two countries of
former Soviet Union (Russia and Ukraine) and the United States. Operationally defined and
then selected problem-solving dreams that demonstrated dreamers’ problem-solving efforts
were analyzed by the method of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1978).
From the constant comparative analysis of instances in which dreamers used their abilities to
solve their difficulties and adjust to surprises emerged a multilayered composite description of
the phenomenon of nocturnal cognitive problem-solving. The properties of the phenomenon
include dreamers’ strategizing in a unilateral or sequential fashion. Further, the dreamers’
problem-solving attempts during challenging or curious situations comprise a spectrum rang-