Consciousness during dreams.

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Two aspects of consciousness are first considered: consciousness as awareness (phenomenological meaning) and consciousness as strategic control (functional meaning). As to awareness, three types can be distinguished: first, awareness as the phenomenal experiences of objects and events; second, awareness as meta-awareness, i.e., the awareness of mental life itself; third, awareness as self-awareness, i.e., the awareness of being oneself. While phenomenal experience and self-awareness are usually present during dreaming (even if many modifications are possible), meta-awareness is usually absent (apart from some particular experiences of self-reflectiveness) with the major exception of lucid dreaming. Consciousness as strategic control may also be present in dreams. The functioning of consciousness is then analyzed, following a cognitive model of dream production. In such a model, the dream is supposed to be the product of the interaction of three components: (a) the bottom-up activation of mnemonic elements coming from LTM systems, (b) interpretative and elaborative top-down processes, and (c) monitoring of phenomenal experience. A feedback circulation is activated among the components, where the top-down interpretative organization and the conscious monitoring of the oneiric scene elicitates other mnemonic contents, according to the requirements of the dream plot. This dream productive activity is submitted to unconscious and conscious processes.