Dreaming and REM-sleep: History of a scientific denial whose disappearance entailed a reconciliation of the neuroscience and the cognitive psychological approaches to dreaming
University Library Heidelberg November 8, 2017 DOI: 10.11588/ijodr.2018.1.42384 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Citations | 12 |
| Key points | Argues that the long-held view that REM sleep is the neural basis of dreaming persisted from the 1950s despite five categories of published counter-evidence, and was only widely abandoned around the start of the 21st century, when a new generation of sleep physiologists accepted that dreaming is not tied to REM sleep. Contends that this shift opened a new era of research on dreaming's neural bases, and attributes the earlier denial of counter-evidence to psycho-physiological reductionism among many sleep specialists of the time. |
Abstract
Since around 2010, important changes occurred in research on the neural bases of dreaming. From the 1960s until the end of the century, most sleep physiologists and some dream researchers continued to adhere to the view that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was the functional state of the brain concomitant to dreaming, in spite of numerous published findings falsifying that view. At the beginning of the 21st century only, the idea that the neural basis of dreaming is not REM sleep was accepted by a new generation of sleep physiologists. The present article firstly presents how the REM sleep hypothesis of dreaming originated in the 1950s and became the received view on the neurophysiological bases of dreaming. Secondly, five categories of counter-evidence published during the following decades are summarized. The next section recalls the long-lasting denial of the body of counter-evidence. The Discussion section starts with two cognitive topics: dream recall and the definition of dreaming. We then discuss the relationships between the neuroscience and the cognitive-psychological approaches to dreaming. The main categories of current experiments on the neural bases of dreaming are then presented. They show that giving up the received view permitted neuroscience research on dreaming to enter a new era. The last part of the article proposes an explanation of the scientific denial by the psycho-physiological reductionism of many sleep specialists of the time. The main drawbacks of a reductionism stance are listed and the article ends on a lesson to draw from this historical episode.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 8
- 'I love you': the first phrase detected from dreams. Sleep Science 2022
- Dreaming is a conscious experience in its own right: proponents of non-cognitive and non-executive theories of dreaming suffer from a retrospective illusion of their waking extended self. Consciousness and Cognition May 30, 2025
- A systematic review of dreams and nightmares recall in patients with rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder. Journal of Sleep Research June 1, 2023
- Dream recall frequency is associated with attention rather than with working memory abilities. Journal of Sleep Research October 1, 2022
- Methodological Recommendations to Control for Factors Influencing Dream and Nightmare Recall in Clinical and Experimental Studies of Dreaming. Frontiers in Neurology 2020
and 3 more in the library