Special Seminar on Consciousness: Allan Hobson (Harvard)
Course Description
THE BRAIN BASIS OF CONSCIOUS STATES
Within the past fifty years, our knowledge of how the brain controls consciousness has increased exponentially so that we are now in a position to model the brain-mind as a unified system. This course is designed to give the student an historical context combining neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism in which to situate the new data and concepts. Special emphasis will be placed upon the development of scientifically rigorous introspection as a necessary part of the synthetic enterprise now facing those who would like to understand consciousness itself. To that end the course will also be a hands-on workshop in the formal analysis of dreams and related mental states.
Subjects to be covered include: the EEG and human sleep lab; comparative animal studies; development and sleep, and brain lesion and stimulation approaches. At the center of the course will be a detailed discussion of the reciprocal interaction and activation-synthesis models of sleep cycle control and dreaming based upon single cell recording studies by Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley. Experimental tests of those models using neuropharmacological and neuroanatomical methods will be described together with the data from formal analysis as described above. Recent advances in brain imaging and neuropsychological studies in humans complement the contemporary attempts at theory building and psychoanalytic revision are considered together with a pathophysiological approach to sleep disorders.
The functional assumption that sleep, dreaming, and waking consciousness are mutually enhancing and adaptive will be explicated throughout the course which will conclude with a review of the fatal effects of sleep deprivation and the beneficial effects of sleep on learning and related wake state activities.
Dates:
Saturday, 14 February
Sunday, 15 February
Times:
To be fixed, probably 10.00-16.00 each day
Participants: max 25
External students: Students outside the Mind and Brain program must register with Annette Winkelmann. Space is limited.
Prerequisites:
- At least introductory level neuroscience and psychology.
- Text: Allan Hobson. Dreaming: An Introduction to Sleep Science. Oxford 2003
Allan Hobson is well known for his dream research (rapid eye movement in sleep). He is Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
