A great deal of physiological and psychological research has been done on dreams. The advent of tools to measure brain waves, eye movement, and muscle tone have enabled the field of dream research to make dramatic advances in the last 40 years. Dream research has also contributed to theories on how the mind works, and neural network theory has provided the first memory models to adequately account for the associative and emotional characteristics of dreams. In addition, recent research on the phenomenon of lucid dreaming is changing our understanding of consciousness itself, and of the relationship between consciousness and sleep. Yet despite the progress in understanding REM sleep and dreaming, relatively few therapeutic applications have been developed.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Overview of REM sleep theories
REM sleep physiology
Theoretical studies
Studies of dreaming and memory
Neural network models
Field independence and dreaming
Intense dreams
Nightmares
Archetypal dreams
Background to lucid dreaming
Lucid dreaming
Understanding intense dreams
Conclusions