Cessation of dreaming and ventromesial frontal-region infarcts

Abstract

Freud attributed the primary instigator of dreaming to the “libidinal drive” in his theory. Research support for this classical psychoanalytic theory was provided in Solms’s clinico-anatomical studies. He found that damage to the ventromesial frontal pathway caused both global cessation of dreaming and a reduction in motivated behaviour. However, most of the patients in Solms’s clinical series were cases of tumor and diffuse injury. These conditions rendered the localization work difficult and imprecise. In view of this, the present study investigated the association between dream cessation and lesions to the ventromesial frontal region in patients who were diagnosed with infarctions. Solms’s findings were largely replicated. In addition, results from the present study indicated that compared to the other neural components in the ventromesial frontal pathway, the role of the caudate nucleus appeared to be particularly salient in the functional architecture of dreaming.