Question

Describe the physiological correlates of dreaming. What has the study of these correlates taught us about dreaming? Describe two key studies as part of your answer. Use APA format

Answer 1

• The goal of one of the study was to seek physiological correlates of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a dissociated state with aspects of waking and dreaming combined in a way so as to suggest a specific alteration in brain physiology for which we now present preliminary but intriguing evidence. It was shown that the unusual combination of hallucinatory dream activity and wake-like reflective awareness and agentive control experienced in lucid dreams is paralleled by significant changes in electrophysiology.
• Lucid dreaming is the experience of achieving conscious awareness of dreaming while still asleep. Lucid dreams are generally thought to arise from non-lucid dreams in REM sleep.
  
• The voluntary eye movements can be used as behavioral indication of lucidity in the sleeping, dreaming subject, as evidenced by EEG and EMG tracings of sleep. Such signal-verified lucid dreams, in which dreamers not only realize that they are currently dreaming, but are also able to deliberately control their own behavior, enabling them to signal lucidity by making prearranged patterns of eye movements, constitute lucid control dreams.
• In another study,Taylor (1999) describes the inferior parietal lobe as the essential site in the brain for consciousness. Our results demonstrate that—particularly during lucid REM sleep—physiological correlates of conscious activities may be found in parietal regions. It might thus be concluded that lucid dreaming as a conscious act is based on the understanding of the meaning of words such as “This is a dream.”