ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the study of drug dreams might contribute to prove the validity of neuropsychoanalytic findings concerning the dreaming process. More or less concurrently with Mark Solms's observations, the functional neuroimaging studies also demonstrated that the dreaming process involves several forebrain structures, including the frontal and limbic areas and occipito–temporal cortical areas. In Solms's perspective, all the brain states that are correlated with dreaming imply cerebral activation during sleep. Under a neuropsychoanalytic perspective, studies have investigated the possibility to measure the change in mesolimbic–mesocortical dopamine (ML–MC DA) pathways circuits in drug-addicted patients via the Limbic System Check List, in relation to their drug dream activity. B. Johnson was the first to try to integrate the findings of neuropsychology of dreams with those of the neurobiology of addiction, by formulating the "neuropsychoanalytic hypothesis" of drug dreams. Drugs such as antipsychotics, which block dopamine transmission in the ML–MC system inhibit the dreaming activity.
