cool piece that discusses the Reticular Activating System (RAS) is here. TAF ‘prevents premature closure of the RAS’ so it makes sense that it is associated with vivid dreams…
I wonder whethe TAF would enhance the effects of hypnosis and/or other kinds of personal change programs (bodywork?)
Transforming the Mind - Background Psychology
At this level of the brain, the basal region, in the brain stem, we also find the Reticular Activating System (RAS), an area which is enormously important because of its role in arousal and awareness. Our ability to think and perceive, even our power to respond to stimuli with anything beyond a mere reflex, is due to the brain cortex, but the cortex cannot function unless it is in an aroused state - awake. The brain cortex cannot wake itself up; what awakens the cortex from sleep and keeps it awake is the RAS. The RAS is also invoked in order to switch from perception of things outside us, to perception of things within our inner world. The RAS regulates and controls all our muscular activity and all our sensory perceptions; the cortex and RAS operate in a feedback mode, the purpose of which is to maintain an optimum level of arousal (see the following paper ‘States of Cortical Arousal’).
Sensations which reach the brain cortex are fed back to the RAS, and when the level of activity becomes too high, the RAS sends inhibitory signals to the cortex to reduce the excitation. Anxiety states occur when the inhibitory function of the RAS fails to keep cortical activity within comfortable limits. On the other hand, in a sensory deprivation situation, where the level of stimulation reaching the RAS via the cortex is too low, the RAS sends stimulating signals to the cortex to maintain alertness, frequently resulting in hallucinations. It is the RAS which switches on the cortex during sleep to produce vivid dreams. It is also responsible, during dreaming sleep, for inhibiting the activity of the whole spinal cord, so that the person does not literally enact the dream and possibly endanger himself. It is the function of biofeedback to facilitate co-operation between the cortex and the RAS, in order to achieve self-regulation.
The brain can receive, classify and respond to sensory information without such data penetrating into consciousness. However, if a repeated stimulus finally results in conscious awareness, this is because the RAS has been activated. This is the capacity of the brain for selective attention: when reading a book, especially if it is sufficiently interesting, the reader will be oblivious to surrounding distractions. This duality of perception is necessary to man’s survival. Consciousness is a limited capacity system and needs to be used to maximum advantage. Limiting inflow of data would be detrimental, but what is needed is a variable restriction on what enters into consciousness. To achieve this, at the pre-conscious stage of the perceptual process, the brain detects the meaning of the incoming information and then initiates an appropriate change in the level of its sensitivity from the RAS level. In this way, important, meaningful data are more likely than trivial information to achieve conscious representation.
That the RAS can be trained is clear. Mother will awake on hearing her baby while father sleeps on. Father, in the country, will awake when he hears the dog bark, but on a visit to town he soon learns to ignore a dog’s bark while he is sleeping. Many functions have a completely automatic program - if one wishes to move an arm, there is no need to decide which muscles to use.
However, we can run almost all our life ‘on automatic’; our reactions to other people and particular situations are very often controlled by a program, the existence of which we are completely unaware. Such habits based on fixed beliefs may well be irrational: ungrounded in reality, inappropriate and self-defeating. Such a program or reaction had been imprinted in a rather traumatic situation, or may have been installed by a process of repetitive conditioning, but we go on responding the same old way, though the present situation may be significantly different. This is the price we risk paying for the advantages of a variable threshold to consciousness. Psychotherapy helps us to look at these old habits and to learn why we make a particular response or have a particular reaction, so that new, more appropriate programs may be consciously installed.
The RAS and the limbic system work closely together. The top part of the brain stem contains the RAS which then merges into the mid-brain limbic system: a collection of associated structures that play an important role in emotion and motivation. The central part of the limbic system is the hippocampus, which processes incoming information from short-term to long-term memory, and is therefore vital to learning. The limbic system seems to be responsible for many of the strange phenomena of altered states of consciousness, such as loss of body boundaries, feelings of floating or flying and strange visual experiences such as sensations of white light.
.