The New Science of Dreaming - 9780275990459

Barrett (psychology, Harvard Medical School) and McNamara (neurology, Boston U. School of Medicine) present a three-volume compendium of recent scientific research into the phenomenon of human dreams. The first volume, containing 11 chapters, deals with neurophysiological research into REM (rapid eye movement) stage dreams and non-REM dreams and includes chapters surveying the history of neurophysiological research into dreams, cellular and molecular models, drug effects, neuroimaging, dream characteristics and the frontal lobe, the interaction of dream content with REM Behavior Disorder, physiologies and dream characteristics of REM and non-REM sleep states, and changes in dream recall and content associated with neurological disorders. Volume two presents cognitive, personality, and clinical research on dreams. Its 11 chapters discuss gender differences, a model for predicting dream recall, the effects of personality on dream content, the relationship between suicidality and nightmares, dreams as an emotional regulation function, parapsychological research on dreaming, and the literature on lucid dreaming, among other topics. The final volume presents cultural and theoretical perspectives and includes discussion of dreams as the origin of literature, ethnographic perspectives, the role of dreams in different religious traditions, dreams as an evolutionarily developed function of threat simulation or of problem solving, psychoanalytic understandings, and application of complexity theory and network theory to the social interconnections of characters in and among dreams. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)