Hobson And Jarley Biological Perspectives

Biological View The Biological Perspective was theorized by neurophysiologists and psychiatrists Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley. Also known as the activation-synthesis hypothesis, the theory states that dreams are simply created from the by products of the random stimulation of brain cells during REM sleep. Part of their theory suggests that there is a part of your brain in the brainstem, the pons, that can be activated to produce electrical impulses in your sleep periodically. While asleep, your motor and sensory abilities are shut down as well, however, this certain part of your brain is alert and continues to fire what Hobson and McCarley called bursts of neural static that were ultimately meaningless. These impulses are transferred to the thalamus which sends it to the higher level thinking parts of your brain. These parts in the cortex tries to rationalize these random electrical impulses. If we awake with a somewhat vague remembrance, we then label it as a dream and further try to find it’s significance. This is often times very difficult since these dreams are ultimately derived from something that was not supposed to make any sense to begin with.

The theory argues that the REM stage produces dreams and not the otherway around, contrary to popular belief. Hobson and McCarley used two methods of study in their research: review the data of past experiments and test the dreams of animals, specifically cats. The researchers disclaimed that although it can not be known for sure whether animals have dreams, their sleep stages are very similar to a