- ANAHEIM, Calif. (Reuters) - Sigmund Freud may have been right after all.
Thirty years after dismissing his theory on dreams, some scientists now
believe the founder of psychoanalysis was on the mark.
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- Freud said dreams were inspired by a
hidden wish, but that theory was scorned by scientists in the 1960s who
discovered that the period of sleep most associated with dreams -- the
rapid eye movement or REM period -- was controlled by a part of the brain
that had nothing to do with mental functions.
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- But on Monday scientists said that REM
sleep and dreams were not associated.
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- Mark Solms, a neurologist at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital in London and the Royal London Hospital, said recent research
had shown that dreams stem from a part of the brain that releases dopamine
neurons.
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- Speaking at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim, Solms described
findings based on 26 patients who had lesions on the part of the brain
that controls REM sleep. While none of them was able to experience REM
sleep, he said only one stopped dreaming.
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- But a study of 350 patients with lesions
on the brain's "dream center," a system of fibers in the frontal
lobe, showed all of them had stopped dreaming when those lesions occurred.
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- "Damage to this part of the brain
leads to a cessation in dreaming," Solms said.
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- He added that dopamine neurons -- located
in the frontal lobe -- stimulated the mind's "seeking system, it's
wanting system, it's motivational system. In short, the wishing system."
And that brings one back to Freud.
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- According to Freud, Solm said, the thought
process continued during sleep.
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- "He said the thought process was
the entrepreneur of dreams, but that entrepreneurs need capitalists, and
that the dream only kicks in when the capitalist, the unconscious wish,
latches on to the thought process," Solm said.
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- Another scientist, Yale University psychoanalyst
Morton Reiser, said although Freud's theory had been considered obsolete
and incompatible with contemporary neurobiology by some leading investigators,
"there are other dream researchers who find aspects of his theory
to be quite ... compatible with contemporary neurobiology."
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- Dreams, Reiser said, could play a vital
part in psychoanalysis.
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