Allan Hobson

James Allan Hobson, M.D. (born June 3, 1933) is an American psychiatrist and dream researcher. He is known for his research on the Rapid eye movement sleep.

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Biography

Hobson grew up in Hartford Connecticut.^[1] In 1955 he obtained his A.B. degree from Wesleyan University. Four years later he earned his MD degree at Harvard Medical School in 1959.

For the following two years he interned at Bellevue Hospital Center, New York. Then in 1960 he was a resident in Psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston for a year. Dr. Hobson then traveled to France where he was a Special Fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health for the Department of Physiology at the University of Lyon.

Upon returning to the United States, he went back to the Psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston until 1966. The next year he had a son named Ian. Ian was brain-damaged, but would eventually be able to live on his own when he was older. In 2001 he had twin children.

He worked in numerous hospitals and research laboratories over the years and is currently the Director of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center.^[2]

Dr. Hobson has received four awards for his work:^[1]

• Admission to the Boylston Medical Society
• The Benjamin Rush Gold Medal for Best Scientific Exhibit
• Honorary member of the American Psychiatric Association since 1978.
• Recipient of the 1998 Distinguished Scientist Award of the Sleep Research Society

Work

Dream theories

Dr. Hobson's research specialty is quantifying mental events and correlating them with quantified brain events, with special reference to waking, sleeping and dreaming. He believes that dreams are created when random energy signals reach the brain's cortex during REM sleep. The cortex attempts to make sense of the random inputs it is receiving, which causes dreams.^[3] Dr. Hobson clearly dismisses the idea that there are deep, nonphysiological, or hidden meanings in dreams. He calls such notions "the mystique of fortune cookie dream interpretation." For years he has proven his theories through lab testing with mice and human subjects.^[4] Hobson does not, however, explain how the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer has control of the content, fits into his theories.

In addition to his many paid appointments, Dr. Hobson is actively involved with four groups relating to his neurological sleep research: the Society Memberships, the Society for Neuroscience, the Society for Sleep Research, the AAAS, and the IASD Former president for the International Association for the study of Dreams.^[5]

Books

Dr. Hobson has published six books that relate to his mental health and dream research. The following is a complete list:^[6]

• 1989, Abnormal States of Brain and Mind
• 1992, Sleep and Dreams
• 1989, Dreaming Brain
• 2000, Dreaming As Delirium: How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind
• 2002, Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness
• 2002, Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction
• 2002, Out of Its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis, a Call for Reform

References

• The Mind Science Foundation (2007). Tom Slick Research Awards in Consciousness 2005-2006. Retrieved on 2007-03-25.