A pioneer in sleep and dream science surveys his life and work through the lens of dreaming and consciousness. J. Allan Hobson's scientific experimentation began in childhood, with a soot-filled investigation into the capacity of a chimney to admit Santa Claus. (He discovered that even with the damper open the chimney was far too narrow.) Hobson's life as an experimentalist has continued through a pioneering career devoted to aligning psychology and biology and to investigating the relationship of dreaming and consciousness. In Dream Life, Hobson conducts an experimental investigation into his life and work. Hobson charts his developing consciousness through a vividly imagined conception (in October of 1932), birth, and babyhood, offering a theory about "protoconsciousness" in fetuses and infants. He recounts his youthful zeal for scientific discovery, his early sexual experimentation, and his education. He describes taking on the entrenched Freudians at Harvard Medical School in the 1950s, as a maverick psychiatrist who wanted to replace psychoanalysis with biological science. He describes his further studies, his marriages and love affairs, his travels, and what he learned about the brain from his whiplash-induced amnesia after a 1963 automobile accident and from his "brain death" after a stroke in 2001. Through it all, Hobson uses his life as the ultimate case study for his theory that REM sleep provides a test pattern that allows the brain to develop "offline." Dreams—most intense in REM sleep, when the brain is active—need no Freudian-style decoding, he says. Dreaming is a glorious mental state, to be enjoyed and studied for what it tells us about consciousness.
We may spend up to one-third of our lives asleep--but there is no rest for the brain. On the contrary, sleeping is a time of continual, spontaneous brain activity largely independent of external stimuli. Through a brilliant examination of recent studies of sleep patterns, dreaming, and disorders such as insomnia, J. Allan Hobson reveals that we know about the physical basis of human consciousness and dispels many myths about sleeping.
What is dreaming, and what causes it? Why are dreams so strange and why are they so hard to remember? Replacing dream mystique with modern dream science, J. Allan Hobson provides a new and increasingly complete picture of how dreaming is created by the brain. Focusing on dreaming to explain the mechanisms of sleep, this book explores how the new science of dreaming is affecting theories in psychoanalysis, and how it is helping our understanding of the causes of mental illness. J. Allan Hobson investigates his own dreams to illustrate and explain some of the fascinating discoveries of modern sleep science, while challenging some of the traditionally accepted theories about the meaning of dreams. He reveals how dreaming maintains and develops the mind, why we go crazy in our dreams in order to avoid doing so when we are awake, and why sleep is not just good for health but essential for life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
In this book J. Allan Hobson sets out a compelling—and controversial—theory of consciousness. Our brain-mind, as he calls it, is not a fixed identity but a dynamic balancing act between the chemical systems that regulate waking and dreaming. With a new foreword by the author. In this book, J. Allan Hobson sets out a compelling—and controversial—theory of consciousness. Our brain-mind, as he calls it, is not a fixed identity but a dynamic balancing act between the chemical systems that regulate waking and dreaming. Drawing on his work both as a sleep researcher and as a psychiatrist, Hobson looks in particular at the strikingly similar chemical characteristics of the states of dreaming and psychosis. His underlying theme is that the form of our thoughts, emotions, dreams, and memories derive from specific nerve cells and electrochemical impulses described by neuroscientists. Among the questions Hobson explores are: What are dreams? Do they have any hidden meaning, or are they simply emotionally salient images whose peculiar narrative structure refects the unique neurophysiology of sleep? And what is the relationship between the delirium of our dream life and psychosis? Originally published by Little, Brown under the title The Chemistry of Conscious States.
In this BIT, a pioneer in sleep and dream science addresses the infant's experience of consciousness, considering developmental factors inaccessible to memory, the continuous evolution of the brain, and the importance of sleep to brain development.
An investigation into the brain's chemistry and the mechanisms of chemically altered states of consciousness. In this book, J. Allan Hobson offers a new understanding of altered states of consciousness based on knowledge of how our brain chemistry is balanced when we are awake and how that balance shifts when we fall asleep and dream. He draws on recent research that enables us to explain how psychedelic drugs work to disturb that balance and how similar imbalances may cause depression and schizophrenia. He also draws on work that expands our understanding of how certain drugs can correct imbalances and restore the brain's natural equilibrium. Hobson explains the chemical balance concept in terms of what we know about the regulation of normal states of consciousness over the course of the day by brain chemicals called neuromodulators. He presents striking confirmation of the principle that every drug that has transformative effects on consciousness interacts with the brain's own consciousness-altering chemicals. In the section called "The Medical Drugstore," Hobson describes drugs used to counteract anxiety and insomnia, to raise and lower mood, and to eliminate or diminish the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia. He discusses the risks involved in their administration, including the possibility of new disorders caused by indiscriminate long-term use. In "The Recreational Drugstore," Hobson discusses psychedelic drugs, narcotic analgesia, and natural drugs. He also considers the distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate drug use. In the concluding "Psychological Drugstore," he discusses the mind as an agent, not just the mediator, of change, and corrects many erroneous assumptions and practices that hinder the progress of psychoanalysis.
The Harvard professor and world-renowned expert on sleep shares the extent of what is known about dreaming, dream disorders, sleep deprivation, and much more.
While millions of patients with severe mental illnesses are neglected, those charged with caring for them are engaged in a troubling debate: Who should treat these patients-and how? On one side are psychoanalysts, on the other are pill-pushing psychiatrists. And on the fringe are neuroscientists, who are learning volumes about the brain but whose discoveries have largely been ignored. Truly, psychiatry is in crisis.In this important book, Harvard psychiatrist J. Allan Hobson and medical journalist Jonathan A. Leonard explore the roots of this predicament and propose, for the first time, the development of a more balanced approach to treatment-neurodynamics-that bridges the worlds of biomedicine, therapy, and neuroscience. Written with passion and informed by decades of experience, Out of Its Mind shows a clear path to reviving psychiatry, providing sound care for millions, and realizing humanity's ancient dream of treating not just the mind or brain alone, but both together.
A Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and neuroscientist shows how dream science draws on psychology and neurobiology to provide new insight into the nature of the human mind.
Where does consciousness come from and how does it work? Is it a purely biological thing? Where does the brain leave off and the mind begin? These questions, once viewed as ethereal and impossible to study empirically, are now being addressed by science in bold and startling new ways.In Consciousness, world-renowned neuropsychiatrist J. Allan Hobson presents a witty and introspective consideration of this mysterious concept, connecting it to specific areas of the brain and their chemical and physical states. Hobson guides his readers through the various states of waking, dreaming, and nonconsciousness using the theories and data of neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurophysiology. Although his ideas are based in science, his imaginative approach keeps us in touch with the mysterious and seductive nature of his subject.Richly woven, with references to literature, philosophy, and the author's personal experiences, Consciousness is a delightful and compact introduction to a concept central to the human experience.
An all-star lineup of scientists takes you to the front lines of brain research. Are we born to be shy? Why do we remember some events so clearly and others not at all? Are creativity and depression somehow linked? Do our dreams really have deeper meanings? Now in paperback, here is a wonderfully accessible introduction to the most important recent findings about how our health, behavior, feelings, and identities are influenced by what goes on inside our brains. In this timely book, eight pioneering researchers offer lively and stimulating discussions on the most exciting discoveries as well as a new way of understanding our emotions, moods, memories, and dreams. Inside, you'll find: * J. ALLAN HOBSON, author of the groundbreaking The Dreaming Brain, leading a tour of dream states and explaining why we dream and what dream studies reveal about our minds * ERIC KANDEL, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine, taking us along the chain of biological events that create long-term memories, revealing how we stand at the brink of helping those who suffer from grave mental and memory disorders * STEVEN HYMAN, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, tracing the links between nature and nurture, particularly in addiction and mental illness, to explain the relationship between inherited tendencies and the impact of life experience * KAY REDFIELD JAMISON, bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind, explaining manic depression, its prevalence among gifted artists, writers, and musicians, and the societal questions raised by trying to eradicate the "depression gene" . . . and much, much more. Whether discussing the brain-body connection, the sources of emotion, or the ethereal world of dreams, States of Mind enables you to share in the very latest explorations into the nature and function of the human mind.
As a psychiatric trainee at Harvard in the early 1960s, Dr Allan Hobson was taught commitment to psychoanalytic theory that was already suspect and is now almost entirely obsolete. Via a series of clinical case reports, the author first apologizes for the arrogant ignorance that he adopted from his teachers and then replaces Freudian doctrine with a scientific alternative called Psychodynamic Neurology. The new approach is solidly grounded in sleep and dream science and restores hypnosis to its rightful place in the therapeutic armamentarium. A central precept of Ego Damage and Repair is that the self and its subjective experience (including symptoms) are natural accompaniments of spontaneous and prenatal brain activation that persists throughout life as REM sleep dreaming. Far from being the nonsense theory that psychoanalytic opponents mock, Psychodynamic Neurology views the unconscious as a hyper-meaningful set of predictions about the world that constitutes a virtual reality model which is continuously updated by personal experience. To showcase the changes in psychotherapeutic practice that are recommended, the self treatment of Dr Glen Just is described in detail.
Psychodynamic Neurology: Dreams, Consciousness, and Virtual Realty presents a novel way of thinking about the value of dreaming, based in solid comprehension of scientific research on sleep and dreams, but with deep understanding of psychoanalytic and other interpretations of dreams. This book: Surveys the remarkable history of sleep research over the past few decades Examines the neurobiology of sleep and its implications for consciousness and well-being Addresses the nature of waking and dreaming consciousness and how they are deeply related Presents the neurogenesis, function, and clinical importance of a brain-based dream theory Our dreams are a mixture of anticipated virtual as well as remembered real experience. This book tells the story of how neuroscience has helped us reach this startling and exciting conclusion and how the new scientific model builds upon and departs from the dream theories of the past.
Our brains plan conscious experience in our sleep using our waking experience only to correct a built-in, virtual reality model of the world that becomes more fully active when we sleep. We become subjectively aware of that virtual reality model when we dream. Our dreams are a mixture of anticipated virtual and remembered real experience. This book tells the story of now neuroscience has helped us reach this startling and exciting conclusion and how the new scientific model builds upon and also departs from the dream theories of the past. It recounts how modern sleep and dream science developed from its inception in 1953 with the discovery of REM sleep and its association with dreaming. It explains how initial enthusiasm for Freud's dream theory waned and ultimately gave way to the alternative ideas described in detail throughout this book"--Provided by publisher.
Argues that the brain and the mind are one--that the thoughts, feelings, dreams, and memories that constitute our consciousness are in fact an amalgam of electrical impulses and chemical interactions.
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