PSY234 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Agreeableness, Lobotomy, Disinhibition
2 Jun 2018
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Week 4 Lecture: PSYC234
Neuropsychoanalysis
• Background: Freud trains in neurology
• Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895/1950)
• “We must recollect that our provisional ideas in psychology will presumably
some day be based on an organic substructure”
• Freud (1938/1940): pharmacological therapy for psychological disorders?
• Psychoanalysis + neuroscience = neuropsychoanalysis
• Neuropscyhoanalysis
o Neuroscientific study of Freudian theory
o Subjective data alone do not provide a solid foundation for a science of
psychoanalysis
o Evolutionary roots of mind
o Emphasises emotional life and subjectivity
o Emphasises motivational drives
o Animal/human research
o Resurrecting Freudian theory
o Neuroscience of dreams
o Clinical neuroscience
Affective neuroscience
• Homeostatic drives (hunger, sex)
• Primary emotional systems
• Panksepp (1998, 2015): 7 subcortical ‘basic emotional command systems’
• Evidence: within/cross-species neural circuitry
• SEEKING (appetitive foraging)
• LUST, FEAR (freezing and flight), RAGE, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF
(separation distress), & PLAY
SEEKING system –
• Expecting/Wanting system involved in:
o Goal-directed activities
o Generating anticipation and excitement
o ‘Coupling’ (linking drives to objects)
o ‘Enacting’ via consummatory actions
• “The SEEKING system, under the guidance of various regulatory imbalances,
external incentive cues and past learning, helps take thirsty animals to water,
cold animals to warmth, hungry animals to food, and sexually aroused animals
towards opportunities for orgasmic gratification” (Panksepp)
The interpretation of dreams (Freud, 1900)
• “Royal road to the Unconscious” (Freud)
• Dreams, motivations and wish-fulfilment
• Response to stimulation and frustration
• Waking fantasy and sleeping fantasy
• Undisguised wish-fulfilment
• Regression to primary process
Freud’s analysis: biological frustration and dreams
• Salty foods cause dehydration
• Dehydration causes a ‘desire’ (or wish) to drink during sleep
• Dream of drinking is an imaginary (hallucinatory) satisfaction
• Minnesota Starvation Experiment (1944/5): “Hunger made the med obsessed
with food. They would dream and fantasise about food, read and talk about
food…”
• ‘Guardians of sleep’
Nightmares? (Freud)
• Anxiety dreams, nightmares
• Psychical Conflict: “…the dreamer fighting against his own wishes is to be
compared with a summation of two separate, though in some way intimately
connected, people…” (Freud)
• Repression and censorship
Dreams & REM sleep (neuroscience):
• Aserinsky & Kleitman (1953):
o Rapid-eye movement sleep
o 4 stages of non-REM sleep
o REM sleep occurs in 90-100 minute cycles
o REM associated with brainstem activation (pons)
• Paradoxical sleep: highly active brain (as if awake)
• 70-95% of normal Subjects report dreaming if awoken during REM sleep
• Non-REM sleep = 5-10% dreaming reports
• NREM sleep dreams are often impoverished (less vivid/non-visual) compared
to REM dreams
• Mammals and REM states
• REM in utero
• Hobson & McCarley (1977)
o Activation-synthesis model of dreams/AIM model
o Dreams occur due to chaotic brain stem activity associated with REM
sleep – there is no desire to it at all
o “Motivationally neutral”
o Dreams are meaningless = random images and illogical thinking
o Dream-bizarreness = ‘loss of organizing capacity’
REM = Dreams: Problems
• Random images and coherent dream plots?
• Dreaming can occur independently of REM sleep:
o i) vivid dreaming can occur prior to REM sleep
o ii) Brain-stem lesions which eliminate REM sleep do not eliminate
dreaming
▪ Loss of dreaming associated with other parts of the brain
Dreams and psychosis:
Document Summary
Affective neuroscience: homeostatic drives (hunger, sex, primary emotional systems, panksepp (1998, 2015): 7 subcortical basic emotional command systems", evidence: within/cross-species neural circuitry, seeking (appetitive foraging, lust, fear (freezing and flight), rage, care, panic/grief (separation distress), & play. The interpretation of dreams (freud, 1900: royal road to the unconscious (freud, dreams, motivations and wish-fulfilment, response to stimulation and frustration, waking fantasy and sleeping fantasy, undisguised wish-fulfilment, regression to primary process. They would dream and fantasise about food, read and talk about food . Nightmares? (freud: anxiety dreams, nightmares, psychical conflict: the dreamer fighting against his own wishes is to be compared with a summation of two separate, though in some way intimately connected, people (freud, repression and censorship. Dreams and psychosis: 1940-1975: schizophrenia and leucotomies (prefrontal lobotomy) to reduce psychotic symptoms, surgical damage to dopamine pathway, result = cessation of dreaming and impoverished fantasy and curiosity in waking life.
