IUBio

Consciousness

Dag Stenberg dag.stenberg at nospam.helsinki.fi.invalid
Wed Jan 21 10:12:55 EST 2004


In bionet.neuroscience k p  Collins <kpaulc@[----------]earthlink.net> wrote:
> But neither of the above hypotheses with respect to dream's
> often-vivid imagery is commensurate with my hypothesis
> that the image stays on the retina - =unless= there's some
> active feed-forward to the retina during sleep, and, to
> have visual 'coherence' [be that as it is in dream imagery]
> this feed-forward to the retina would have to(?) be 'con-
> nected' to the TD E/I-minimization mechanisms.
> 

Do you perhaps think that dreams occur in the retina???????
What we perceive as dreams during our "dreaming-consciousness" is surely
constructed in the cortex under the influence of stimulation rising from
the parabrachial area of the pons and conveyed to the cortex by way of
the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus. This activity seems to
have nothing to do with any retinal activity. On the contrary, I am
convinced that retinal output to the thalamus is depressed during that
time, although I should really check.

A neuroanatomical connection has little meaning until supported by
physiological evidence of a function. The connection may always be
there, like a street, but the traffic varies.

Dag Stenberg



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