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29Sentience and the Origins of Consciousness: From Cartesian Duality to Markovian MonismEntropy 22 (5): 516. 2020.This essay addresses Cartesian duality and how its implicit dialectic might be repaired using physics and information theory. Our agenda is to describe a key distinction in the physical sciences that may provide a foundation for the distinction between mind and matter, and between sentient and intentional systems. From this perspective, it becomes tenable to talk about the physics of sentience and ‘forces’ that underwrite our beliefs (in the sense of probability distributions represented by our …Read more
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16A Response to Our Theatre CriticsJournal of Consciousness Studies 23 (3-4): 245-254. 2016.We would like to thank Dolega and Dewhurst for a thought-provoking and informed deconstruction of our article, which we take as applause from valued members of our audience. In brief, we fully concur with the theatre-free formulation offered by Dolega and Dewhurst and take the opportunity to explain why we used the Cartesian theatre metaphor. We do this by drawing an analogy between consciousness and evolution. This analogy is used to emphasize the circular causality inherent in the free energy …Read more
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105Consciousness, Dreams, and Inference: The Cartesian Theatre RevisitedJournal of Consciousness Studies 21 (1-2): 6-32. 2014.This paper considers the Cartesian theatre as a metaphor for the virtual reality models that the brain uses to make inferences about the world. This treatment derives from our attempts to understand dreaming and waking consciousness in terms of free energy minimization. The idea here is that the Cartesian theatre is not observed by an internal audience but furnishes a theatre in which fictive narratives and fantasies can be rehearsed and tested against sensory evidence. We suppose the brain is d…Read more
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Drugs and DreamsIn D. Barrett & Patrick McNamara (eds.), The New Science of Dreaming, Praeger Publishers. pp. 1--85. 2007.
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Current understanding of cellular models of REM expressionIn D. Barrett & Patrick McNamara (eds.), The New Science of Dreaming, Praeger Publishers. pp. 1--77. 2007.
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Simulation, or hybrid?In Christopher Grau (ed.), Philosophers Explore the Matrix, Oxford University Press. pp. 177. 2005.
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14The Enduring Self: A First-Person Account of Brain Insult SurvivalIn Todd E. Feinberg & Julian Paul Keenan (eds.), The Lost Self:Pathologies of the Brain and Identity: Pathologies of the Brain and Identity, Oxford University Press. pp. 251. 2005.
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156States of consciousness: Normal and abnormal variationIn Morris Moscovitch, Philip Zelazo & Evan Thompson (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press. pp. 435--444. 2007.
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Consciousness: Its vicissitudes in waking and sleepIn Michael S. Gazzaniga (ed.), The New Cognitive Neurosciences: 2nd Edition, Mit Press. 2000.
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3The conscious state paradigm: A neurocognitive approach to waking, sleeping, and dreamingIn Michael S. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences, Mit Press. 1995.
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167The cognitive neuroscience of sleep: Neuronal systems, consciousness and learningNature Reviews Neuroscience 3 679-93. 2002.
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32State dependence of character perception: Implausibility differences in dreaming and waking consciousnessJournal of Consciousness Studies 10 (3): 57-68. 2003.Dreaming consciousness can be quite different from waking consciousness and this difference must depend upon the underlying neurobiology. Our approach is to infer the underlying brain basis for this difference by studying dream reports and comparing them with waking. In this study we investigated mentation during dreaming by asking subjects to provide us with dream reports and by asking them to create a dream log. In the dream log, the subjects recorded all implausibility, illogicality or inappr…Read more
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20The conscious state paradigm: A neuropsychological analysis of waking, sleeping, and dreamingIn Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak & Alwyn Scott (eds.), Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates, Mit Press. pp. 2--473. 1998.
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87The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of ConsciousnessMIT Press. 2002.In this book J. Allan Hobson offers a new understanding of altered states of consciousness based on knowledge of how our brain chemistry is balanced when we are...
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13Dreaming: A Very Short IntroductionOxford University Press UK. 2005.What is dreaming, and what causes it? Why are dreams so strange, and why are they so hard to remember? Replacing dream mystique with modern dream science, J. Allan Hobson provides a new and increasingly complete picture of how dreaming is created by the brain. Dreaming explores how the new science of dreaming is affecting theories in psychoanalysis, and how it is helping our understanding of the causes of mental illness. Through an investigation of his own dreams to illustrate and explain some o…Read more
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311Dreaming and the brain: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious statesBehavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (6). 2000.Sleep researchers in different disciplines disagree about how fully dreaming can be explained in terms of brain physiology. Debate has focused on whether REM sleep dreaming is qualitatively different from nonREM (NREM) sleep and waking. A review of psychophysiological studies shows clear quantitative differences between REM and NREM mentation and between REM and waking mentation. Recent neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies also differentiate REM, NREM, and waking in features with phenomen…Read more
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75Dreaming: A Neurocognitive ApproachConsciousness and Cognition 3 (1): 1-15. 1994.The studies reported in the following articles are aimed at providing a comprehensive, detailed, and quantitative picture of cognition in human dreaming. Our main premises are that waking, REM sleep, and non-REM sleep represent physiologically distinct and identifiable brain states and that the differences between waking, REM, and NREM mentation reflect these physiological differences. We have studied dreams at a formal level of analysis and, in these papers, have studied the specific dream prop…Read more
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10States of ConsciousnessIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley-blackwell. 2007.Consciousness undergoes dramatic and stereotyped changes in parallel with changes in brain state over the sleep‐wake cycle. No change is more striking or more informative than that which differentiates waking and REM sleep dreaming. For example, dreaming is characterized by internally generated perceptions, by false beliefs, by cognitive impairments, by emotional intensification, and by amnesia. When they occur in waking, these formal state features characterize what is called mental illness. Be…Read more
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11Altered States of Consciousness: Drug‐Induced StatesIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 141--153. 2007.
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Altered states of consciousness: Drug induced statesIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley-blackwell. 2007.
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31Normal and abnormal states of consciousnessIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 101--113. 2007.
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27Emotion and Visual Imagery in Dream Reports: A Narrative Graphing ApproachConsciousness and Cognition 3 (1): 89-99. 1994.To test the notion that shifts in visual imagery and attention are correlated with experiences of emotion, we studied 10 dream reports using an affirmative probe of emotion and a quantitative measure of plot discontinuity. We found that emotion, especially changes in emotion, are correlated with discontinuities in visual imagery. These correlations are quantified using a new graph theoretical method for analyzing narrative reports
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33A New Approach to Dream Bizarreness: Graphing Continuity and Discontinuity of Visual Attention in Narrative ReportsConsciousness and Cognition 3 (1): 61-88. 1994.In this paper, a new method of quantitatively assessing continuity and discontinuity of visual attention is developed. The method is based on representing narrative information using graph theory. It is applicable to any type of narrative report. Since dream reports are often described as bizarre, and since bizarreness is partially characterized by discontinuities in plot, we chose to test our method on a set of dream data. Using specific criteria for identifying and arranging objects of visual …Read more
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30Dream Splicing: A New Technique for Assessing Thematic Coherence in Subjective Reports of Mental ActivityConsciousness and Cognition 3 (1): 114-128. 1994.A novel "dream splicing" technique allows the objective evaluation of thematic coherence in dreams. In this study, dream reports were cut into segments and segments randomly recombined to form spliced reports. Judges then attempted to distinguish spliced reports from intact ones. Five judges correctly scored 22 spliced and intact reports 82% of the time ; 13 of the 22 reports were correctly scored by all five judges . We conclude that most dream reports contain sufficient coherence to allow judg…Read more
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45A New Paradigm for Dream Research: Mentation Reports Following Spontaneous Arousal from REM and NREM Sleep Recorded in a Home SettingConsciousness and Cognition 3 (1): 16-29. 1994.The "Nightcap," a relatively nonintrusive and "user-friendly" sleep monitoring system, was used by 11 subjects on 10 consecutive nights in their homes. Eighty-eight sleep mentation reports were obtained after spontaneous awakenings from Nightcap-identified REM sleep and 61 were obtained from NREM awakenings. Sleep mentation was recalled in 83% of REM reports and 54% of NREM reports. The median length of REM reports was 148 words compared to 21 words for NREM reports. Twenty-four percent of the R…Read more
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25Eyelid movements and mental activity at sleep onsetConsciousness and Cognition 7 (1): 67-84. 1998.The nature and time course of sleep onset mentation was studied in the home environment using the Nightcap, a reliable, cost-effective, and relatively noninvasive sleep monitor. The Nightcap, linked to a personal computer, reliably identified sleep onset according to changes in perceived sleepiness and the appearance of hypnagogic dream features. Awakenings were performed by the computer after 15 s to 5 min of sleep as defined by eyelid quiescence. Awakenings from longer periods of sleep were as…Read more
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38Constraint on the Transformation of Characters, Objects, and Settings in Dream ReportsConsciousness and Cognition 3 (1): 100-113. 1994.To extend the hypothesis that bizarre discontinuities in dreams result from the interaction of chaotic, "bottom-up" brainstem activation with "top-down" cortical synthesis, we have performed a detailed analysis of dream discontinuities using a new methodology that allows for objective characterization of this formal dream feature. Transformations of characters and objects in dream reports were found to follow definite associational rules. While there were 11 examples of character–character trans…Read more
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27Self-Representation and Bizarreness in Children′s Dream Reports Collected in the Home SettingConsciousness and Cognition 3 (1): 30-45. 1994.We have conducted a home-based study of children′s dream reports in which parents used open-ended interviewing styles to collect 88 dream reports from their 4- to 10-year-old children in the comfortable and supportive environment of their own homes. Particular attention was paid to formal properties including characters , settings, self-representation, and bizarreness. In contrast to previous studies, our data indicate that young children are able to give long, detailed reports of their dreams t…Read more
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