Dreaming and Episodic Memory: A Functional Dissociation?
- 1 January 2003
- journal article
- research article
- Published by MIT Press in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Vol. 15 (1), 1-9
- https://doi.org/10.1162/089892903321107774
Abstract
The activity that takes place in memory systems during sleep is likely to be related to the role of sleep in memory consolidation and learning, as well as to the generation of dream hallucinations. This study addressed the often-stated hypothesis that replay of whole episodic memories contributes to the multimodal hallucinations of sleep. Over a period of 14 days, 29 subjects kept a log of daytime activities, events, and concerns, wrote down any recalled dreams, and scored the dreams for incorporation of any waking experiences. While 65% of a total of 299 sleep mentation reports were judged to reflect aspects of recent waking life experiences, the episodic replay of waking events was found in no more than 1–2% of the dream reports. This finding has implications for understanding the unique memory processing that takes place during the night and is consistent with evidence that sleep has no role in episodic memory consolidation.Keywords
This publication has 32 references indexed in Scilit:
- REM Mentation in Narcoleptics and Normals: An Empirical Test of Two Neurocognitive TheoriesConsciousness and Cognition, 2000
- Dissociated Pattern of Activity in Visual Cortices and Their Projections During Human Rapid Eye Movement SleepScience, 1998
- The Hippocampo-Neocortical DialogueCerebral Cortex, 1996
- Dreaming in the Late Morning: Summation of REM and Diurnal Cortical ActivationConsciousness and Cognition, 1995
- REM and NREM Sleep Reports: Comparison of Word Frequencies by Cognitive ClassesPsychophysiology, 1983
- Dream content and adaptation to a stressful situation.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1975
- The Effects of Stress Films on Dream Affect and on Respiration and Eye‐Movement Activity During Rapid‐Eye‐Movement SleepPsychophysiology, 1975
- THE INFLUENCE OF THE LABORATORY SITUATION ON THE DREAMS OF THE EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTJournal Of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1965
- Presleep Determinants of Dream Content: Effects of Two FilmsPerceptual and Motor Skills, 1964
- Problems in Dream Content Study With Objective IndicatorsArchives of General Psychiatry, 1964