Onset dreams

In order for a sleep onset dream to become a hypnagogic hallucination, the internal stimulus strength has only to achieve a momentary advantage over the diminished force of external stimuli to generate emotionally salient perceptions. Because the prevalent emotion is anxiety, the salient imagery is fearsome, as befits the evolutionary theory advanced above. Better safe than sorry, and Forewarned is fore-armed, as we say. 

So, we may have to settle for sleep-onset dreaming if we want to see the effect of learning on mental content. If we are willing to accept this gift of nature, we may be able to learn from it, as our recent studies of novices learning the video games Tetris and Alpine Racer have taught us. 

Hallucination Enhanced in deep trance Enhanced in sleep onset dreams to markedly enhanced in REM sleep dreams... 

Hypnagogic hallucinations—Bizarre and often frightening dreams and sounds that occur during the onset or waking up from cataplexy. 

One of the most instructive examples of state boundary crossing is the tendency to experience dreamlike visuomotor sensations at sleep onset. These are called hypnagogic hallucinations if the subject is still awake enough to notice or be aroused by them. Apparently, one need only carry waking brain activation over the sleep boundary and dreaming will im-... 

This normalizing account of hypnagogic hallucinations lends itself nicely to explanation in terms of AIM and hence to integration with those spontaneous and induced alterations in conscious state that interest us most. For example, an exaggeration of the normal tendency to hallucinate at sleep onset is seen in narcolepsy, as well as with the use of clinical and recreational drugs that alter the M axis of the AIM model in ways that promote REM sleep phenomena, including the intense dreaming often associated with it. 

Many narcoleptic patients show a marked intensification of sleep onset REM physiology, making the enhancement of hypnagogic hallucinations easily understandable. Because narcolepsy is also associated with the occurrence of hallucinations on awakening from REM sleep, I will defer discussion of the clinical aspects of the disorder until we have considered these hypnopompic extensions of dreaming into the wake state. 

I consider it to be a matter of fact that consciousness is a continuum of states, that aspects of two or more sometimes distinct states can coexist, that consciousness can be dreamlike even in waking, and that it is likely to be more so at sleep onset. I also know that dreaming can occur in light sleep in the early morning. It thus seems to me quite reasonable to propose that we can explain many of these facts by changes in the level and distribution of activation in the forebrain, and that one forebrain site can become an input source for another. 

From such experimental evidence one may infer that in animals, and possibly in man, LSD-25 in l°w doses leads to an arousal state that can last for several hours. In view of the more recent information about paradoxical sleep, a somewhat different conclusion may be justified. An "arousal" pattern in the EEG does not necessarily signal the onset of arousal, but may just as well indicate the phase of paradoxical sleep. This suggests that in dream sleep, or REM sleep, the cerebral cortex is physiologically in a state similar to that... 

Case (i) Japanese viral encephalitis of a 28-year-old woman. Symptoms unconscious for 19 days, left-sided hemiplegia, constant convulsive motion on the right side of the body, loss of all superficial and deep reflexes. Prior to the onset of this disease, the patient was reported to have almost regular dreams of being murdered by a group of people. Then she developed headache, fever and unconscious state. 

Vogel, G., Foulkes D., and Trosman, H. Ego functions and dreaming during sleep onset. Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 1966, 14, 238-248. Reprinted in C. Tart (ed.). Altered States of Consciousness A Book of Readings. New York Wiley, 1969, pp. 75-92. 

There are some reports by users that methadone use may cause hallucinations. While it is well known that heroin users often describe a dream-like mental state when using heroin, this effect is rarely seen in people who use methadone. The reason behind this is probably due to methadone s slower onset of action and reduced level of intensity. Likewise, while users of heroin and other harder narcotics sometimes report feelings of acute anxiety, especially when first using the drug, users of methadone rarely report these psychological effects. 

Freud s idea that he could avoid suggesting content by laying a client down on a couch (encouraging a pre-sleep relaxation) and sitting behind him or her (to remove any personal impact) seems grossly naive in retrospect. Sleep onset is a particularly fruitful state for the elaboration of fantasy and dream-like mental activity that incorporated local conditions shamelessly. And any patient, hysterical or not, would know - by 1910 at the very latest - what Freud expected in the way of associations . Now that the false memory phenomenon is so well known, it is easy for us to see what mischief Freud s scientific precautions must have cost him. To avoid repeating these mistakes, we need to be much more critical, and much more versatile, than Freud was. 

---