Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind
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.

1112082661
Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind
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.

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Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind

Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind

by J. Allan Hobson
Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind

Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind

by J. Allan Hobson

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Overview

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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780262581790
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 10/28/1999
Series: Bradford Books (Paperback)
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

J. Allan Hobson is Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of The Dreaming Brain: How the Brain Creates Both the Sense and The Nonsense of Dreams, Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind (MIT Press,1999), The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness (MIT Press, 1999, 2001), and other books.

Table of Contents

PREFACE TO THE MIT PRESS EDITION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART ONE DEFINING THE BRAIN-MIND
The Brain Is Insane
Dreaming as Delirium
What Is the Mind?
Brain-Mind Unity
From Waking to Dreaming . . . And Back Again
A Calm in the Storm
Brain-Mind Schizophrenia
Freud versus Skinner: They're Both Wrong
The New Neuroscience
Principles of the Brain-Mind Paradigm
Computers, Galaxies, and the Buddha
Why a New Paradigm?
Delia's Dream Delirium
Mental Status Exam
General Appearance and Behavior
Sensorium
Orientation
Attention
Memory
Intellectual Functions
Language and Stream-of-Talk
Mental Content
Insight and Judgment
Emotion
Diagnosing Delia's Dream: A Case of Delirium
The Cause of Delia's Delirium
Reducing Delia's Psychosis
A Groggy Night
Frantic Pens, a Military Installation, and Electric Currents
What the Sleep Lab Findings Mean
A Look Inside the Dreaming Brain
A Chemical Balancing Act
Learning from Psychosis
Traveling in Brain-Mind Space
What Made Delia Dream?
The Three Dimensions of Brain-Mind Space
Fine-Tuning the Aim Model
Activation (A)
Information Source (I)
Mode (M)
Moving in Aim Space
Curing Psychoses
PART TWO ANALYZING THE BRAIN-MIND
Lost and Found: Orientation and Disorientation
Orientation: A Necessary Trick
Orientation and the Orienting Response
The Map Room of the Brain
Creating the Bizarreness of Dreams
Plot Incongruity
Plot Discontinuity
Cognitive Uncertainty
Micro Bizarreness, Macro Stability
Disorientation in Different States
My Lost Mother
The Story of Our Lives: Memory and Confabulation
That Car Looks Like It's Been inan Accident
Memory, Remembering, and Learning
How Learning Works
Managing Memory
Confabulation in Waking, Dreaming, and Fantasy
Dream Splicing
Whose Dreams Are You Dreaming?
Seeing Is Believing: Perception and Hallucination
How We See
Sleep Deprivation and Hallucination
My Red-Eye Vision
Dreams As Seizure
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Bend in the Road
Motor-Pattern Generators
The Primacy of Movement
Movement Is the Key to Learning
We Dream so that We May Learn
Chapters 9 The Heart of the Brain-Mind: Emotion and Instinct
Why Science Has Shunned Emotion
What Is Emotion?
Where Do Emotions Come From?
Fear More Than Joy
Ah Men! Ah Women!
What Are Emotions Good For?
Rehearsing Our Lives
Stop, Look, and Listen: Attention and Distraction
Focusing Outward or Inward
Measuring Attention
Watching Ourselves Dream . . . And Hallucinate
Changing Focus and Paying Attention
Loss of Vigilance
The Benefits of Distraction
Ups and Downs: Energy, Mood, and Health
Linking Mind to Body
Regulating Body Temperature
Sleep and the Immune System
REM as Supersleep
The State of Depression
Antidepressant Drugs
Restoring Energy, Mood, and Health
Delia and Bertal
Delia's "Animation" Dream
What Is Consciousness? What Is the Mind?
A New Definition of Consciousness
A New Definition of the Mind
Conscious and Nonconscious
Is the Mind Causal?
Realigning Psychology and Neurology
Leaving Some of Our Lives to Chance
Association and Dissociation
A Conscious Decision to Alter Consciousness
PART THREE CHANGING THE BRAIN-MIND
How the Brain-Mind Heals Itself
Scientific Humanism
Finding Your Sleep Niche
It's Normal to Be Abnormal
The Thomas Edison Syndrome
Physician, Heal Thyself!
Sleep When Tired
Get Up When Wakeful
Practice the Relaxation Response
Exercise
Tobacco and Alcohol
Sex
Breakfast
Stop Telling Ethnic Jokes
Changing Brain-Mind States to Improve Your Health
Dental Surgery under Hypnosis
Itch, Be Gone!
The Brain-Mind in Trance
Jumping Lumberjacks!
Somnambulism and Sleepwalking
The Tape-Recorder Cure
The Placebo Effect
Learning from Delia
The Last Resort: Using Drugs to Change Your State
The Body's Drugs and Man's Interference
Recovering from Skid Row
Beating Insomnia
No Drugs or New Drugs
Bertal's Way Out
INDEX
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