[Dreaming is a hypnic state of consciousness: getting rid of the Goblot hypothesis and its modern avatars].
In the late nineteenth century, French logician Edmond Goblot first hypothesized that dreaming occurred at the moment of awakening only. Revisiting--more or less directly--Goblot's hypothesis, several contemporary authors have since renewed this unusual claim that oniric experience does not occur during sleep. So did some influential analytical philosophers (Wittgenstein, Malcolm, Dennett), with their typical formalism, and famous dream researcher Calvin Hall, who tried to provide experimental evidence for the Goblot's hypothesis. More recently, French neurobiologist Jean-Pol Tassin claimed, on the basis of controversial neurobiological and cognitive principles, that only awakening gives rise to a dream, by instantaneous shaping of information issuing of neural networks activated during preceding sleep. Actually, numerous and robust experimental data in sleep psychophysiology clearly rule out Goblot's hypothesis and its modern avatars. Thus, results of studies using nocturnal awakenings (with or without preceding hypnic stimulation), as well as observations of onirical behaviours (like rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorders, or voluntary movements of lucid dreamers) demonstrate that dreaming definitely occurs during sleep. Actually, cortical evoked potentials can be observed during sleep, which likely reflect controlled cognitive processes. Dreaming is a hypnic state of consciousness, and seems to represent a sleep thought which, although uneasily accessible, is nevertheless open to psychological investigation.
Guénolé
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Service de Psychiatrie de l'Enfant et de l'Adolescent, CHRU de Caen, Avenue Georges-Clemenceau, 14033 Caen cedex, France. guenole fabian@yahoo.fr
Nicolas
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A
D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D004325:Dreams / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005073:Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology