Dear Dr. Jouvet,
with great interest and delight I recently read your book "The paradox of sleep: the story of dreaming". Although I'm not working in this field, I've been wandering about the meaning of our dreams since one or two years from a scientific point of view and, still without being aware of your hypothesis, I developed the idea, that the main task of our dreams was to recreate our individual personalities and characters each night, while we are asleep. I was very happy to find this point of view elaborated by one of the most prominent dream researchers of our days. I tried to discuss my ideas with my colleagues in Austria and published a short letter in the newspaper of our society (the Austrian Neuroscience Association, in German language: "Warum wir träumen", i.e. "Why we dream"); however, there was no reaction to it.
While I was studying your book, a new idea came to my mind, how glycogen stores in the brain might play a role in the execution of our dreams. In the meantime I'm completely sure, that nobody at my institute or at any other institute of our university has any interest to listen to my theories on such a (non-scientific, they say) topic. However, I imagine that these considerations could have far-reaching implications, as e.g. psychiatric diseases (depression) or even neurological diseases (Alzheimer's).
Enclosed, please find a short outline of the hypothesis which, inspired by your book, came to my mind. If anyone, then you will be in the position to identify the weak points in this edifice of ideas.
With kind regards, yours sincerely
MB 7/00Dear Doctor Berger
I am sorry to answer your nice letter of July 9 so tardively - As you can see, I am now retired and use to travel frequently - for this reason, I have lost some contact with my former laboratory. I am glad that you could understand my theory about the purpose of dreaming. Since it is still speculative, it is not yet in the realm of "true scientific theory" but, at the moment, I don't imagine of any clearcut experiment which could either invalidate it or confirm it. Dreaming is probably one of the last frontiers of neurobiology - only few people unfortunately are getting interested in its mechanism. I don't think molecular biology would solve it either.
Your hypothesis concerning glycogen is fascinating and may be tested - my former pupil, Dr. Cespuglio is developping special chemitrodes for registering NAD/NADH. Apparently during waking the glucose is metabolized through the lactate pathway (using the lactate deshydrogenase) while it is metabolized through the pyruvate pathway [during sleep] (using the pyruvate deshydrogenase.) But, as you know, things are always more complicated in the brain and the mechanisms of paradoxical sleep are controlled not only by energetic mechanisms, but also by many neurotransmitters.
I expect some Austrian investigator, from Vienna, could start again to work on the mechanism of dreaming - 100 years after Sigmund Freud.
Thank you again for your very refreshing and encouraging letter.
With kind regards, yours sincerelyMichel Jouvet MJ 8/00