title: Bottom-up or top-down in dream neuroscience? A top-down critique of two bottom-up studies.
abstract: Recent neuroscientific studies of dreaming, specifically those in relation to waking sensory-motor impairments, but also more generally, betray a faulty understanding of the sort of process that dreaming is. They adhere to the belief that dreaming is a bottom-up phenomenon, whose form and content is dictated by sensory-motor brain stem activity, rather than a top-down process initiated and controlled by higher-level cognitive systems. But empirical data strongly support the latter alternative, and refute the conceptualization and interpretation of recent studies of dreaming in sensory-motor impairment in particular and of recent dream neuroscience in general.
authors.affiliation: 90339 Highway 101 North, Florence, OR 97439, United States.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Foulkes
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, United States. Electronic address: domhoff@ucsc.edu.
authors.forename: G William
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Domhoff
mesh_terms: D004325:Dreams / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009488:Neurosciences / Q000592:standards; D011582:Psychological Theory
keywords: Bottom-up vs. top-down; Dreaming; Neurocognition; Sensory–motor impairments