Hobson J Allan
Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009 Nov;10(11):803-13. doi: 10.1038/nrn2716. Epub 2009 Oct 1.
Dreaming has fascinated and mystified humankind for ages: the bizarre and evanescent qualities of dreams have invited boundless speculation about their origin, meaning and purpose. For most of the twentieth century, scientific dream theories were mainly psychological. Since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the neural underpinnings of dreaming have become increasingly well understood, and it is now possible to complement the details of these brain mechanisms with a theory of consciousness that is derived from the study of dreaming. The theory advanced here emphasizes data that suggest that REM sleep may constitute a protoconscious state, providing a virtual reality model of the world that is of functional use to the development and maintenance of waking consciousness.
长久以来，梦境一直吸引着人类并使其感到困惑：梦境奇异且转瞬即逝的特质引发了人们对其起源、意义和目的的无尽猜测。在20世纪的大部分时间里，科学的梦境理论主要是心理学方面的。自从发现快速眼动（REM）睡眠以来，做梦的神经基础已越来越为人所理解，现在有可能用一种从对梦境的研究中得出的意识理论来补充这些脑机制的细节。这里提出的理论强调的一些数据表明，快速眼动睡眠可能构成一种原意识状态，提供一个对世界的虚拟现实模型，这对清醒意识的发展和维持具有功能性作用。
