ABSTRACT
The biggest difference with respect to wakefulness is the absence of self-reflective awareness, which makes it possible to distinguish between reality and the internal production of images, fantasies, and dreams. While the dream self appears to be impoverished in its access to systems like autobiographical memories, bodily awareness, self-monitoring and that form of consciousness that yields a unity of experience that the self ‘owns’, the dream self appears to surpass waking Self with respect to experience of emotions and perceptiveness. Todorova and Zugaro have shown that, during slow sleep, the hippocampus spontaneously fires up and selectively sends information to the neocortex, which in turn responds by activating itself. This specific exchange of information is often followed by a period of silence (delta waves) and then by the typical rhythmic activity of sleep through ‘sleep spindles’. The concept of self-consolidation can be likened to the recombination of the elements of autobiographical memory, which is decontextualized and therefore available for new links.
