Sleep and Dreaming

• Siffre cave study

  Aims: To investigate how living without external cues could affect the sleep/wake cycle

  Results:

  • severe effects of darkness and loneliness- he became depressed
  • worsened eye sight and his memory was affected
  • his sleep/wake cycle became longer than 24 hours and more varied

  Conclusions:

  • a lot of variation on sleep/wake cycle without day light and time cues
• Activation-synthesis theory of dreaming

  Activation: random thoughts are sent within the brain during REM sleep

  Synthesis: the random thoughts that are sent are what we dream, and these dreams are made to make sense by us
• Activation-Synthesis Strengths + Weakness

  Strengths:

  • a lot of evidence to support this theory (many people were observed in a sleep lab under controlled conditions)
  • studies on sleeping cats has supported this theory

  Weaknesses:

  Our thoughts aren't always random as:

  • a lot of the time we can trace our dreams to what we have done during the day
  • meaning that there is some meaning to what we see

  This theory has also been changed many times over the past few years