Am J Psychiatry 1978; 135:1531-1535
Copyright © 1978 by American Psychiatric Association
An alternative view of the neurobiology of dreaming
GW Vogel
The author critiques the recently proposed activation-synthesis hypothesis
about the origin and formation of dreams. Many findings do not support the
new hypothesis that specific pontine physiological processes, rather than
mental processes, instigate dreams and produce their distortion. First,
dreaming often occurs in the absence of the pontine processes. Second,
forebrain activity (which can have mental correlates) is crucial to the
instigation and maintenance of dreaming sleep. Finally, activity of the
proposed pontine dream generator, which is claimed to cause dream
distortion, is not reliably accompanied by dream distortion.
