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Bill Domhoff (2005) has challenged the activation synthesis model of dreaming on the basis of a misreading of the neurobiological literature and an individualistic view of dream psychology. The author begins his reply by clarifying and emphasizing the formal approach to dream cognitions. Instead of focusing on the individual aspects of dreaming that interest Domhoff activation synthesis strives to identify and measure the generic differences that characterize all dreams and that are likely to correlate with the neurobiological findings. He then goes on to point out that such formal features as the visuomotor imagery, the emotional intensification, and the defective cognition of dreams do correlate with the cellular and molecular neurobiological data from animal studies and with the brain imaging and lesion data from human studies. individual differences may also exist but these are not relevant to the main task of sleep psychophysiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dreaming consciousness can be quite different from waking consciousness and this difference must depend upon the underlying neurobiology. Our approach is to infer the underlying brain basis for this difference by studying dream reports and comparing them with waking. In this study we investigated mentation during dreaming by asking subjects to provide us with dream reports and by asking them to create a dream log. In the dream log, the subjects recorded all implausibility, illogicality or inappropriateness of character during the dream narrative when compared to the character's real-life waking counterpart. Thus, the dream acted as its own control in comparing waking and dreaming mentation. Our results showed that recognition of the implausibility of a character occurred far less often during the dream than outside of the dream when the subject compared the dream character to its real-life waking counterpart. Further, not all kinds of implausibility were equally likely to occur in the dream. The most common implausibility both during the dream and when compared to the character's real-life counterpart was a character's behaviour. Calling on existing imaging data of the brain in REM sleep, we speculate on the brain-basis of these results in terms of the inaccessibility of episodic memory during dreaming and the diminished role of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex during REM sleep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To appreciate the neural underpinnings of sleep, it is important to view this universal mammalian behaviour at multiple levels of its biological organization. Molecularly, the circadian rhythm of sleep involves interlocking positive- and negative-feedback mechanisms of circadian genes and their protein products in cells of the suprachiasmatic nucleus that are entrained to ambient conditions by light. Circadian information is integrated with information on homeostatic sleep need in nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus. These nuclei interact with arousal systems in the posterior hypothalamus, basal forebrain and brainstem to control sleep onset. During sleep, an ultradian oscillator in the mesopontine junction controls the regular alternation of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep. Sleep cycles are accompanied by neuromodulatory influences on forebrain structures that influence behaviour, consciousness and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses the state of dream sciences, such as phenomenology, psychophysiology, neurobiology, neuropsychology, models and philosophy and learning and memory as of 2000. Bizarreness of dreams; Neurobiological explanations on formal dream features; Discussion on whether dreaming is the subjective correlate of rapid eye movement sleep physiology.