Dreams of chase or pursuit, falling, sex, flying, nudity, failing an examination, one's own and other's death, fire, teeth falling out and some other themes experienced, even if only rarely, by many people all over the world have been labelled 'typical dreams'. This essay argues that typical dreaming, rather a syndrome of themes than monothematic, reflects an extraordinary state of mind and brain. Odd and particularly memorable perceptions, as well as emerging awareness of sleep and dreaming -- i.e. parallels to (...) lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, complex partial seizure, epileptic and migraine auras, and aspects of dreaming after trauma -- can be traced with some plausibility in all prominent variants of typical dreaming. When viewed from this perspective, for example, dream pursuers are much more a shadow of the bodily self than a metaphor for the psycho- biographical situation or evolutionarily implemented sparring partners who make dreamers fit for the struggle for survival during waking hours. (shrink)

The brain adapts to changes that take place in the body. Deprivation of input results in size reduction of cortical representations, whereas an increase in input results in an increase of representational space. Amputation forms one of the most dramatic disturbances of the integrity of the body. The brain adapts in many ways to this breakdown of the afferent–efferent equilibrium. However, almost all studies focus on the sensorimotor consequences. It is not known whether adaptation takes place also at other “levels” (...) in the system. The present study addresses the question whether amputees dream about their intact body, as before the amputation, or about the body after the amputation and whether the dream content was a function of time since the amputation and type of amputation. The results show that the majority of the dreamers reported dreams about their intact body although the mean time that elapsed since the amputation was twelve years. There is no clear relation with the type of amputation. The results give modest evidence for the existence of a basic neural representation of the body that is, at least, partly genetically determined and by this relatively insensitive for changes in the sensory input. (shrink)

Reports of phantom limbs amongst aplasics have often been presented as evidence that body image is ‘hard-wired’ in the brain and that neither sensory input nor proprioceptive feedback are essential to its formation. Although attempts have been made to account for these phantoms by other means, these have been on a case by case basis and no satisfactory alternative framework has been proposed. This paper collates the accounts of aplasic phantoms and presents them as compatible with a four-part hypothesis, in (...) which body image is learnt from experience during both pre- and post-natal development, and in which cross-cortical connections and mirror neurons play prominent roles. This model unites several previously disparate theories to offer a viable solution to several longstanding phantom limb mysteries and serves to highlight avenues worthy of further inquiry. (shrink)

Objective: Caloric vestibular stimulation has traditionally been used as a tool for neurological diagnosis. More recently, however, it has been applied to a range of phenomena within the cognitive neurosciences. Here, we provide an overview of such studies and review our work using CVS to investigate the neural mechanisms of a visual phenomenon - binocular rivalry. We outline the interhemispheric switch model of rivalry supported by this work and its extension to a metarivalry model of interocular-grouping phenomena. In addition, studies (...) showing a slow rate of binocular rivalry in bipolar disorder are discussed, and the relationship between this finding and the interhemispheric switch model is described. We also review the effects of CVS in various clinical contexts, explain how the technique is performed and discuss methodological issues in its application. (shrink)