Consciousness during dreams.
Consciousness and Cognition March 1, 2001 P C Cicogna, M Bosinelli
Dreaming involves two aspects of consciousness: awareness and strategic control. Awareness has three types: phenomenal experience of objects/events, meta-awareness (awareness of mental life), and self-awareness (awareness of being oneself). Phenomenal experience and self-awareness are usually present during dreaming, but meta-awareness is typically absent except in lucid dreaming. Strategic control can also occur in dreams. A cognitive model proposes that dreams result from three interacting components: bottom-up activation of memories, top-down interpretative processes, and monitoring of phenomenal experience. A feedback loop among these components generates the dream plot, guided by both unconscious and conscious processes.