Coininentary/lAeweüytv. Elaborative encoding surrouncUngs (American Academy of Sleep Medicine 2001; Hisliikawa 1976). SP arises from anomalous intmsion of REM-related motor inhibition and haUucinoid imagery into waking consciousness (Hishikawa & Shimizu 1995; Takeuchi et al. 1992). Across diverse samples and measures, SP hallucinations reUably fit diree factors (Gheyne & Girard 2004; 2007): An ominous felt presence forms a core intruder experience, accompanied by niultisensory haUucinations. Incubus experiences instantiate the intmder as perched on the chest, suffocating die experiencer or committing physical or sexual assault. Vestibular-motor experiences comprise iUusory movement, vestibular sensations, and more bUssful out-of-body phenomena. Despite die history reviewed by Llewellyn diat supports contributions of memory to dreaming, SP hallucinations are generally modeled as epiphenomena of REM-induced activation of amygdala and emotional brain, sensory, and associational posterior brain regions, widi reduced prefrontal monitoring (Gheyne & Girard 2007; 2009). LleweUyn offers an interesting perspective that SP haUucinations might also reflect elaborative encocUng. SP experiences appear to be consistent widi the mnemonic principles appUed by LleweUyn to REM dreaming: drainaticA)izarre association, visual complexity, imagination, emotional arousal, narrative, embodiment, organization, movement, and spatial association. Nonetheless, note diat SP haUucinations and dreams diverge in some ways. Although dream reports and SP haUucinations are primarily visual and auditoiy, die latter involve more substantial tactile, physiological, and vestibular-motor experiences. Whereas dream imagery is entirely endogenous, unconsti'ained by sensoiy input, SP hallucinations present a unique interface between perception, imagination, and expression of intemal representations (Girard et al. 2007). Half of SP experiencers maintain dieir abiUty to open dieir eyes and perceive their surroundings . HaUucinations overlaid on diis environment are perceived with a vivid sense of extemal reaUty. SP haUucinations are also distinguished as more terrifying, vivid, complex, and multisensory tlian odier forms of hypnagogic imagery (Gheyne et al. 1999). The potential to test memory for aspects of tlie real environment and how diese are integrated with memory for haUucinatoiy experiences offers an interesting prospect for investigation. It would also be interesting to code and compare SP narratives witli reports of dreams and waking episodic memories. Novel binding of episodic memories to form hyperassociative dream scenes depends on an underlying commonaUty. As in LleweUyn's example, fear provides such an overarching theme for dream narrative and is especiaUy common and extreme during SP episodes (Sharpless et al. 2010). Gheyne and Girard (2007) proposed diat a threatening felt presence forms a core delusion from which SP haUucinations elaborate. Experiencers often rate die terror of intmder and incubus haUucinations "off die scale." This fear is thought to arise from REM activation of die amygdala and extended direat-activated vigilance system in die context of waking consciousness whUe experiencing ominous haUucinations, helplessly paralyzed, typicaUy supine in the dark. Gheyne and Girard (2007) suggest that REM initiation of this vigilance system also offers a model for diematic organization of dreams more generaUy. Incorporating LleweUyn's proposal, it might be wordivvhile to consider the amygdala's role in emotional enhancement of recoUection (Sharot et al. 2004) and diat, via the hippocampus (Sharot et al. 2007), fear might serve an integrative mnemonic function. LleweUyn proposes that encoding of recent memories is enhanced via hyperassociations widi emotionaUy saUent remote memories. Aspects of SP have been associated widi a history of trauma (Abrams et al. 2008) and, in at least one case, related to remote memory of childliood abuse (McNaUy & Glancy 2005). Such cases may provide insight into the nature of hyperassociative binding. Aldiough core elements are consistent, incubus assaults take various culturally specific instantiations such as old-hag attacks, aUen abductions, spirits, and demons (Gheyne et al. 1999), sometimes widi fatal consequences (Adler 2011).
LleweUyn differentiates nonconscious episodic hyperassociations bound during REM from conscious semantic associations formed in waking and NREM sleep. The unique mix of REM and waking in SP may evoke not only episodic associations, but integrate semantic representations. SP narratives might dien reflect a product of elaborative encoding of prior experiences and instantiations of culturaUy relevant schema. It might be informative to explore the extent to which SP experiences are guided by cultural fables and, conversely, whedier elaborative encoding during SP shapes memories that influence cultural accounts. What individual and contextual factors give rise to die direatening intruder versus bUssful vestibular-motor experiences? How do personal encounters and navigational experience relate to dreaming and SP associations involving persons and places? Llewellyn reminds diat self-identity reUes on coherent autobiographical memoiy. Whereas dreams involve first-person perspective from an embodied, agential self, vestibular-motor haUucinations include out-of-body experiences. Perhaps elaborative encoding of movement-related memories in die form of typicaUy nonconscious hyperassociations during anomalous waking paralysis chaUenges the continuity of body and "self" Spatial attributes of intmder and vestibular-motor haUucinations have been Unked to intrinsic biases in sensoiy and motor function (Girard & Gheyne 2004; Giraj-d et al. 2007). These findings suggest diat place associations might not relate solely to hyperassociations with remembered places, but depend in part on individual differences in sensorimotor functions. Given the conscious state during SP episodes and ability of individuals to recaU their experiences vividly, future research should probe relations between the waking "night-mare" and episodic memories. Elaborative encoding predicts diat cuing diis associative network should enhance retrieval of Unked memories. On die other hand, disruption of normal differentiation between waking and stages of sleep can impair memory and cognition (Terzaghi et al. 2012). Although SP is considered common among cognitively intact individuals, relations between SP and cognitive abilities lack systematic study. Whereas LleweUyn highUghts the hippocampus and binding of recent and remote memories, die cognitive domains involved are also impUcated in more extended brain networks supporting not only memory of die past but also episodic simulation of imagined future events (Addis et al. 2009). Thus, processes underlying elaborative encoding might function not only to strengthen episodic memory, but also to create novel imaginative scenarios for adaptive activation and honing of neural systems, such as diose involved in threat detection (Boyer & Bergstrom 2011).
Ontological significance of the dream world doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13001337 Gordon Globus Department of Psychiatry, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697. [email protected]
Abstract: Sometimes while sleeping we find ourselves thrown ajiiidst an authentic, albeit bizarre, world. The process of integration by means of which memory elements might be fabricated into a seamless world indistinguishable from the world of waking life is not e.\-plained by Llewellyn, who focuses instead on the elaborative encoding of memories. Ontological implications of the sometimes indisceniibility of wake and dream worlds iU'e considered.
Some dreams are thought-Uke, whereas some are foggy and vague, but sometimes dream worlds are so vivid, so audientic, diat on waking we have to reason out diat "it was only a dream." We may find ourselves while dreaming dirown amidst a sometimes fantastic yet utterly real world. ("Thrownness" is die sheer finding oneself always already amidst some world or other BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2013) 36:6
619
Commentary/L\ewe]\yn: Elaborative encoding [Heidegger 1999].) That it only "seems to be real" is somediing we add in retrospect. Llewellyn tells us, as did Freud (1899/1999) more than a centuiy ago, that "the stuff of dreams is the stuff of memory" (abstract) and that hyperassociated memories (cf Freud's "primary process") are integrated into compositional wholes that have never been present to die senses. (Freud, too, called his dream theory "compositional.") Memory elements are "merged and fused to constmct visual scenes" (sect. 1, para, 2), which are experienced as realistic. Hyperassociations wrought between episodic memories through elaborative encoding engender a fabricated visual image, (sect. 8, para. 3) This often bizarre, composite [dream] image has not been present to the senses; it is not "real" because it hyperassociates several memories, (abstract, para. 2) That the bizarre composite image is not real is a detached assessment made by a judicious waking self, not by a dream self frantically mnning for his hfe from a dream tiger! As Llewellyn states regarding her quicksand dream, "I never doubt that the events portrayed are actually unfolding in 'real time' before my eyes" (sect. 4.2.3, para. 1). But how a relating, binding, integrating, compositing, merging, fusing, constmcting, engendering, fabricating, synthesizing process might work on a mishmash of elaboratively encoded memories so as to hoist an authentic seamless world at times indistinguishable from the tuorld of waking life is left unexplained by Llewellyn. To the deconstmctive eye, the very proliferation of such terms, all appUed by Llewellyn to basically the same idea, signals something awry in her argument: an emphasis on the cognitive at the expense of the perceptual. Since some dream content is easily seen as a revival of memory traces, die lacuna in the argument is easily passed over. The sun sparkling on the water, cMdren playing on the beach...tliese she has likely seen previously, and it seems plausible that diis part of die dream could be merely revived and composited memory images...but then a grown-up throws a child across the sand; the child lands on his or her ear and disappears into the sand; another chüd/baby is thrown...so vividly real is the quicksand that Llewellyn wakes up terrified! Surely Llewellyn has never seen such a specific scene in the past. How might one's thrownness amidst an authentic, unique, unified world during dreaming be achieved from a set of episodic disparate memory traces, whatever their hyperassociation? That world thrownness during dreaming (which may even be consciously created in the case of "lucid dreaming" [LaBerge 1985] can be indiscernible from that of waking should give us pause: Indiscemibles demand the same explanation. If the dreamer can find herself thrown amidst an audientic world when sensory informing is shut down, then this raises the most peculiar and frightening possibility that there is no world actually out there in waldng either, despite our always finding ourselves already amidst one. Both waking and dreaming worlds might be continually created de novo, a "formative creativity" (Globus 1987), radier than transformative of sensory inputs and memory traces. If world thrownness is a formative constmction, this need not start us down a shppery slope to a God-dependent idealism along Berkeleyan soUpsistic hnes (Foster 1982) or to an idealistic Borgesian metaphysics (Borges 1998). I have proposed instead a species of monadology in which physical reality is stricdy quantum at all scales, an "abground" (Heidegger 1999) closed to observation, whereas die presencing world is a "dis-closure" constituted by living dissipative brains operating with quantum degrees of freedom (Globus 2003; 2009) under die logic of quantum thermofield brain dynamics (VitieUo 1995; 2001). The dream world, I suggest, is not a cognitive compositing by a rapid eye movement (REM)-sleepy ¿ricoieur using the hyperassociated memory trace materials at hand, not a transfonnative creation but an episodic fonnative process out of the "unknowable and unspeakable" (Bell 1987) abground of the quantum realm.
620
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2013) 36:6
The wake world, too, is a dis-closure, but witli the added benefit of an input operator on tlie disclosive process. In that the fantastic dream world is so ephemeral and quickly forgotten, we take it to be cognitive play and miss its profound significance. The dream is via regia to ontology.
A three-legged stool needs a stronger third leg doi:10.1017/S0140525X13001349 Ramon Greenberg Department of Psychiatry, Han/ard Medical School, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, MA 02115. [email protected]
Abstract: VVliereas the target article stresses the neurobiology and psychology of dreams, this commentary emphasizes that the role of dreams in emotional integration and adaptation contributes to a fuller understanding of dreaming and memory. The dream presented in the target article is used, witliin tlie constraints of space, as a possible example of a broader approach to dream material.
The target article is a remarkably scholarly, comprehensive discussion of memory research (see the lengthy hst of references) and its relation to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Llewellyn uses as an organizing principle the ancient art of memory (AAOM) - the way our ancestors supported memory before die age of print and die Intemet. Significant memory was not just leaming by rote but an active process requiring creative activity. Llewellyn Hkens • the activity in REM sleep to AAOM. She accepts the idea that dreaming is mainly a phenomenon associated with REM sleep and proposes that dreams represent a vivid example of AAOM in action. She bases her arguments on her extensive review of "neurobiology and psychology" (sect. 1, para. 4), which has clearly supported the role of REM sleep in memory organization. The point of this commentary is to suggest that neurobiology and psychology are two long and strong legs of a three-legged stool, but that to fully understand die role of REM sleep and dreaming a third leg must be equally strong. This third leg, I would contend, is the information that has been accumulated from our clinical and research work with human subjects' dreams. Although Llewellyn touches on research on human subjects dreams, this infonnation as presented in the target article lacks the emphasis and depth of the other two legs. Early studies of REM sleep and memory proposed that REM sleep was involved in memory consohdation (Greenberg 1970). This tumed out to be accurate, to some degree, but it also eventually proved to be more complicated than just consolidation (Greenberg et al. 1970). Some types of memory seemed to be REM dependent wliile others didn't. Llewellyn uses the semantic-versus-episodic distinction. Greenberg & Pearhnan (1974) prefer Seligman's (1970) preparedversus-unprepared-leaming formulation as an effort to explain why word-list or one-trial leaming do not seem to require REM sleep whereas more complicated tasks for animals and emotionally adaptive requirements for humans are REM dependent (Greenberg & Pearlman 1974). This fonniJation about differences in types of information that require REM sleep points to the idea that, as die author and many earlier writers (Breger et al. 1971; French & Fromm 1964; Greenberg & Pearhnan 1975) suggest, diere is an "integration of recent memories with remote parts of associative memories or networks." More important is the nature of such memories. Llewellyn refers to literature suggesting that the emotional dimension is important in the memories. Llewellyn does not really spell out the actual natiu'e of this emotional dimension, however, and I would like to remind readers of some research that makes this clearer. Llewellyn points to Freud's statement that dreams have images from the previous day's experience. However, Freud (1900) talked about these images as indifferent. It would seem
Copyright of Behavioral & Brain Sciences is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
LleweUyn differentiates nonconscious episodic hyperassociations bound during REM from conscious semantic associations formed in waking and NREM sleep. The unique mix of REM and waking in SP may evoke not only episodic associations, but integrate semantic representations. SP narratives might dien reflect a product of elaborative encoding of prior experiences and instantiations of culturaUy relevant schema. It might be informative to explore the extent to which SP experiences are guided by cultural fables and, conversely, whedier elaborative encoding during SP shapes memories that influence cultural accounts. What individual and contextual factors give rise to die direatening intruder versus bUssful vestibular-motor experiences? How do personal encounters and navigational experience relate to dreaming and SP associations involving persons and places? Llewellyn reminds diat self-identity reUes on coherent autobiographical memoiy. Whereas dreams involve first-person perspective from an embodied, agential self, vestibular-motor haUucinations include out-of-body experiences. Perhaps elaborative encoding of movement-related memories in die form of typicaUy nonconscious hyperassociations during anomalous waking paralysis chaUenges the continuity of body and "self" Spatial attributes of intmder and vestibular-motor haUucinations have been Unked to intrinsic biases in sensoiy and motor function (Girard & Gheyne 2004; Giraj-d et al. 2007). These findings suggest diat place associations might not relate solely to hyperassociations with remembered places, but depend in part on individual differences in sensorimotor functions. Given the conscious state during SP episodes and ability of individuals to recaU their experiences vividly, future research should probe relations between the waking "night-mare" and episodic memories. Elaborative encoding predicts diat cuing diis associative network should enhance retrieval of Unked memories. On die other hand, disruption of normal differentiation between waking and stages of sleep can impair memory and cognition (Terzaghi et al. 2012). Although SP is considered common among cognitively intact individuals, relations between SP and cognitive abilities lack systematic study. Whereas LleweUyn highUghts the hippocampus and binding of recent and remote memories, die cognitive domains involved are also impUcated in more extended brain networks supporting not only memory of die past but also episodic simulation of imagined future events (Addis et al. 2009). Thus, processes underlying elaborative encoding might function not only to strengthen episodic memory, but also to create novel imaginative scenarios for adaptive activation and honing of neural systems, such as diose involved in threat detection (Boyer & Bergstrom 2011).
Ontological significance of the dream world doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13001337 Gordon Globus Department of Psychiatry, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697. [email protected]
Abstract: Sometimes while sleeping we find ourselves thrown ajiiidst an authentic, albeit bizarre, world. The process of integration by means of which memory elements might be fabricated into a seamless world indistinguishable from the world of waking life is not e.\-plained by Llewellyn, who focuses instead on the elaborative encoding of memories. Ontological implications of the sometimes indisceniibility of wake and dream worlds iU'e considered.
Some dreams are thought-Uke, whereas some are foggy and vague, but sometimes dream worlds are so vivid, so audientic, diat on waking we have to reason out diat "it was only a dream." We may find ourselves while dreaming dirown amidst a sometimes fantastic yet utterly real world. ("Thrownness" is die sheer finding oneself always already amidst some world or other BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2013) 36:6
619
Commentary/L\ewe]\yn: Elaborative encoding [Heidegger 1999].) That it only "seems to be real" is somediing we add in retrospect. Llewellyn tells us, as did Freud (1899/1999) more than a centuiy ago, that "the stuff of dreams is the stuff of memory" (abstract) and that hyperassociated memories (cf Freud's "primary process") are integrated into compositional wholes that have never been present to die senses. (Freud, too, called his dream theory "compositional.") Memory elements are "merged and fused to constmct visual scenes" (sect. 1, para, 2), which are experienced as realistic. Hyperassociations wrought between episodic memories through elaborative encoding engender a fabricated visual image, (sect. 8, para. 3) This often bizarre, composite [dream] image has not been present to the senses; it is not "real" because it hyperassociates several memories, (abstract, para. 2) That the bizarre composite image is not real is a detached assessment made by a judicious waking self, not by a dream self frantically mnning for his hfe from a dream tiger! As Llewellyn states regarding her quicksand dream, "I never doubt that the events portrayed are actually unfolding in 'real time' before my eyes" (sect. 4.2.3, para. 1). But how a relating, binding, integrating, compositing, merging, fusing, constmcting, engendering, fabricating, synthesizing process might work on a mishmash of elaboratively encoded memories so as to hoist an authentic seamless world at times indistinguishable from the tuorld of waking life is left unexplained by Llewellyn. To the deconstmctive eye, the very proliferation of such terms, all appUed by Llewellyn to basically the same idea, signals something awry in her argument: an emphasis on the cognitive at the expense of the perceptual. Since some dream content is easily seen as a revival of memory traces, die lacuna in the argument is easily passed over. The sun sparkling on the water, cMdren playing on the beach...tliese she has likely seen previously, and it seems plausible that diis part of die dream could be merely revived and composited memory images...but then a grown-up throws a child across the sand; the child lands on his or her ear and disappears into the sand; another chüd/baby is thrown...so vividly real is the quicksand that Llewellyn wakes up terrified! Surely Llewellyn has never seen such a specific scene in the past. How might one's thrownness amidst an authentic, unique, unified world during dreaming be achieved from a set of episodic disparate memory traces, whatever their hyperassociation? That world thrownness during dreaming (which may even be consciously created in the case of "lucid dreaming" [LaBerge 1985] can be indiscernible from that of waking should give us pause: Indiscemibles demand the same explanation. If the dreamer can find herself thrown amidst an audientic world when sensory informing is shut down, then this raises the most peculiar and frightening possibility that there is no world actually out there in waldng either, despite our always finding ourselves already amidst one. Both waking and dreaming worlds might be continually created de novo, a "formative creativity" (Globus 1987), radier than transformative of sensory inputs and memory traces. If world thrownness is a formative constmction, this need not start us down a shppery slope to a God-dependent idealism along Berkeleyan soUpsistic hnes (Foster 1982) or to an idealistic Borgesian metaphysics (Borges 1998). I have proposed instead a species of monadology in which physical reality is stricdy quantum at all scales, an "abground" (Heidegger 1999) closed to observation, whereas die presencing world is a "dis-closure" constituted by living dissipative brains operating with quantum degrees of freedom (Globus 2003; 2009) under die logic of quantum thermofield brain dynamics (VitieUo 1995; 2001). The dream world, I suggest, is not a cognitive compositing by a rapid eye movement (REM)-sleepy ¿ricoieur using the hyperassociated memory trace materials at hand, not a transfonnative creation but an episodic fonnative process out of the "unknowable and unspeakable" (Bell 1987) abground of the quantum realm.
620
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2013) 36:6
The wake world, too, is a dis-closure, but witli the added benefit of an input operator on tlie disclosive process. In that the fantastic dream world is so ephemeral and quickly forgotten, we take it to be cognitive play and miss its profound significance. The dream is via regia to ontology.
A three-legged stool needs a stronger third leg doi:10.1017/S0140525X13001349 Ramon Greenberg Department of Psychiatry, Han/ard Medical School, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, MA 02115. [email protected]
Abstract: VVliereas the target article stresses the neurobiology and psychology of dreams, this commentary emphasizes that the role of dreams in emotional integration and adaptation contributes to a fuller understanding of dreaming and memory. The dream presented in the target article is used, witliin tlie constraints of space, as a possible example of a broader approach to dream material.
The target article is a remarkably scholarly, comprehensive discussion of memory research (see the lengthy hst of references) and its relation to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Llewellyn uses as an organizing principle the ancient art of memory (AAOM) - the way our ancestors supported memory before die age of print and die Intemet. Significant memory was not just leaming by rote but an active process requiring creative activity. Llewellyn Hkens • the activity in REM sleep to AAOM. She accepts the idea that dreaming is mainly a phenomenon associated with REM sleep and proposes that dreams represent a vivid example of AAOM in action. She bases her arguments on her extensive review of "neurobiology and psychology" (sect. 1, para. 4), which has clearly supported the role of REM sleep in memory organization. The point of this commentary is to suggest that neurobiology and psychology are two long and strong legs of a three-legged stool, but that to fully understand die role of REM sleep and dreaming a third leg must be equally strong. This third leg, I would contend, is the information that has been accumulated from our clinical and research work with human subjects' dreams. Although Llewellyn touches on research on human subjects dreams, this infonnation as presented in the target article lacks the emphasis and depth of the other two legs. Early studies of REM sleep and memory proposed that REM sleep was involved in memory consohdation (Greenberg 1970). This tumed out to be accurate, to some degree, but it also eventually proved to be more complicated than just consolidation (Greenberg et al. 1970). Some types of memory seemed to be REM dependent wliile others didn't. Llewellyn uses the semantic-versus-episodic distinction. Greenberg & Pearhnan (1974) prefer Seligman's (1970) preparedversus-unprepared-leaming formulation as an effort to explain why word-list or one-trial leaming do not seem to require REM sleep whereas more complicated tasks for animals and emotionally adaptive requirements for humans are REM dependent (Greenberg & Pearlman 1974). This fonniJation about differences in types of information that require REM sleep points to the idea that, as die author and many earlier writers (Breger et al. 1971; French & Fromm 1964; Greenberg & Pearhnan 1975) suggest, diere is an "integration of recent memories with remote parts of associative memories or networks." More important is the nature of such memories. Llewellyn refers to literature suggesting that the emotional dimension is important in the memories. Llewellyn does not really spell out the actual natiu'e of this emotional dimension, however, and I would like to remind readers of some research that makes this clearer. Llewellyn points to Freud's statement that dreams have images from the previous day's experience. However, Freud (1900) talked about these images as indifferent. It would seem
Copyright of Behavioral & Brain Sciences is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
