Because the phenomenological contents of dreams come primarily from memory (i.e., combination of earlier, memorized perceptual images, events, etc) and not directly from senses this state is valuable in studying neural correlates of "pure" consciousness. (Brain-imaging while subject is asleep and reports dream contents upon awakening.) It would be also interesting to compare NCC of the same general content (e.g., some perceptual category) obtained in direct perception, awake imagery and in sleep/dream state. How gradations in subjective qualities are echoed in brain-process signatures. However, what comes to clinical diagnostics or personality assessment dream analysis would prove extremely complicated. As psychoanalysis has not been successfully developed into a (positivistic?) science so far I doubt modern brain imaging would add much to this direction of dream research. Too much unreliable, individualized, interpretation-dependent (and bias-prone) aspects make it jhighly difficult to make any scientifically valid conclusions. But I may be wrong :-).

I think i would have to answer in the same vein as Talis, Dreams it seems are disjoint memories drawn together into a episode by the brains ability to rationalize, and are almost purely subjective in form. The descriptions of them lose the detail, and form a Rationalization of that detail into a story line that makes sense at the time. While this might be a rich mechanism to look at the rationalization capacity, the real value I would think lies in the memories that are triggered, not the story-line.

Dreams would be an altered state of consciousness as compared to waking albeit evolutionarily natural as any other generic state. A chronobiological perspective, the biological changes of the brain across the states of the circadian cycle, could be a helpful framework to consider accompanying changes in consciousness. As an internally generated phenomenon, dreams would be closely linked to the traces already present in neural network structure, and in the context of a REM or NREM biology, surely I agree; but also perhaps representing something else. The conjoint change in biology and psychology across the natural states of the wake-sleep cycle clearly is a very under-studied phenomenon, with great potential I would think. Given that dreams are at their apex in REM, particularly late in night; the dopamine excess combined with noradrenalin and serotonin depletions would be likely to change our way of handling information, and so should the indication that brain orienting processes are highly engaged. As such, the biology of the brain while dreaming might give a functional framework to illuminate consciousness as such, with the task being to delineate the difference from the waking state in conjoint brain and mind behavior.

The answer depends on our understanding of "new" psychiatry. As mentioned above the content of dreams could hardly  be an object of "positivistic" science. But there are other than positivistic approaches to altered mental states, described by existentialic authors like Medard Boss or Binswanger. 

But this individualistic approach does not deliver biochemical results. 

Maybe the Jaspers dogma (you cannot understand the content of schizophrenic symptoms as you can understand the content if neurotic symptoms)  is not true.  And maybe we have to complete our understanding of altered mental states (not only stemming from bad genes or unfortunate brain chemistry ).  

So I think dreams are  usefull to understand the specific situations of our patients, but this is a hermeneutical not a neurochemical approach. 

Dreams involve neurological processes involved in things such as selecting memories, using imagination, visualization, creative problem solving, interpretation, emotional processing and emotional release. These are present in waking life at subliminal levels. The difference in waking life is there are many distractions in the conscious mind, related to maintaining waking consciousness and managing the consequences of daily life, that are also occurring. In sleep, neuroscientists can measure some of the subtler non-rational processes occurring more clearly, as some of the 'noise' has been removed. It would be interesting to see if the neurological processes involved are similar to dissociative states and hallucination as seen in psychosis and what the mechanisms are when people are moving from sleep to waking consciousness and whether these processes are more disturbed, from a neurological functioning perspective, for people who are stuck in a psychotic state of consciousness.

In terms of the value of research in this area to clinicians and people with psychosis, if this informed the development of, or led to new treatments being evolved, that helped people stimulate this capacity and alter their neurological processes to those more typically prioritized for functioning in daily life when psychosis was interfering with these, it could be useful. Certainly medication and some therapies aim to achieve this and for many people this helps. A book called "Brain Based Therapy" suggests there are neurological changes that occur during therapy that are responsible for the beneficial changes people experience in therapy. This is presented at a theoretical level however could potentially be studied as a way of seeing if the neurological changes from sleep to waking life were similar to those seen in shifting from psychosis to non psychosis states, to show how these can be consciously shifted through intervention other than medication. This would be helpful for those wanting alternative treatment options to medication and those whom medication has not resolved all the psychotic symptoms and they want to supplement medication with therapies. At times clinicians need a biological evidence base within a biomedical health system to justify funding to offer and provide these alternative services more routinely to people with psychosis.

Altered states of consciousness are on a different time line

So if you dream about five minutes we have the impression that we have dreamed much longer

I went to a conference where a psychiatrist from Scandinavia was talking about treating a young girl who was living at home in a rural community by visiting her every day and offering emotional and psychological support but giving no medication. She was not a risk to herself or others and she and her family did not want her to take medications. The girl eventually came out of her psychosis over a 9 month period. When she came out of it she said she remembered all the things that happened in it, "it was like being in a dream".

Connections were also non-locality. Past, present and future come together at one point.

• I agree with Ted’s point that “the phenomenological contents of dreams come primarily from memory and not directly from senses” and hence “this state is valuable in studying neural correlates of "pure" consciousness.” But I’m not sure that brain imaging adds much at this point. Comparing NCC in so far as we can capture them – yes…

• My interest comes more from the "clinical" side initially – and then what this means eg from the vantage of nosology, human diversity, and even neuroscience – hence my interest in Boss. Nowadays, it is broadly agreed that DSM categories (even more so than ICD) may be more or less reliable but simply and intrinsically lack validity. Given this state of affairs, more intuitive systems of categories (with as few as…. “a few”) such as Boss’ perhaps loose little of clinical utility (they may even be more useful clinically if not with respect to insurance, etc.).. and may be just as reliable! Dreams do offer a form of consciousness that is demonstrably structurally less complicated – and – given their simplified content – they may be easier to “sort out.” Boss asks two fundamental questions about dreaming experience which one cannot even begin to answer in waking life: “What’s in your world?” and “What are you doing about it?” From these questions, he proports to approach “depression,” “schizophrenia,” “anxiety,” etc. Seems to me that there is a lot of promise here and that inquiry was cut off, not by methodological problems, but by the hegemony of DSM diagnoses – which no longer map onto Boss’ categories.

• There remains an elegant simplicity to Boss which is worth far more attention that the “almost none” it currently receives. In any case, I’m considering an on-line discussion group of Boss….

Our article published in peer-reviewed Journal "Communicative & Integrative Biology". A few major points discussed in the paper:

(1) Brain is not the source of consciousness.

(2) Consciousness is ubiquitous in all living organisms, starting from bacteria to human beings.

(3) The individual cells in the multicellular organisms are also individually cognitive entities.

(4) Proposals like “artificial life”, “artificial intelligence”, “sentient machines” and so on are only fairytales because no designer can produce an artifact with the properties like internal teleology (Naturzweck) and formative force (bildende Kraft).

(5) The material origin of life and objective evolution are only misconceptions that biologists must overcome.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420889.2015.1085138

Are you familiar with Hans Jonas' " The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophical Biology"? There is substantial agreement here. Consciousness becomes "a mode of access" characteristic of all living organisms - again starting with bacteria. And there is agreement with your points 3 and 4.

Regarding point 5 -- well that may be the rub...  But you may want to take a look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2823620/ . In any case - all worth a discussion.  And thanks for directing attention here to your excellent publication!

Bakti's points 2,4,&5 are culturally acceptable only to some cultures, and while the debate is still out on some of these points, there is reason to believe that their answers are not written in stone. While there are a wide range of Conscious animals, there is little or no reason to assume consciousness for bacteria, It seems mostly to concentrate in the higher vertebrates and molluscs. Mostly it's a matter of interpretation of the word consciousness, which has a deep religious meaning in India. Some of the assumptions made in 4 are also cultural icons, The formative force for instance has proven to be the rather unsexy Entropy, a Force with no actual force involved. It lies at the heart of Evolution and drives it on its way.

The main point of number 4 is the complete rejection of the begginers stories for Artificial Intelligence. While I am not a proponent of GOFAI, the beginners stories do not represent the expected wealth of information to be found once we recognize what points are important.

Jonas point about all living things - including single cellad creatures etc - is that they are all "self-transcendent" - they ceaselessly "transact" ( not merely "interact") with their surrounding world. ) Nothing that is not alive does this. 

And also that being conscious - consciousness - does not necessarily involve self-consciousness. We humans obviously have the latter. Not so for single cellad creatures and the like.

Again it depends on what your definition of consciousness is.  There is little proof that higher molluscs are self-conscious.

However your work on Jonas suggests that there is a difference between life and non-alive mechanisms that is somehow captured in the ambiguous word transaction, that cannot be captured in the word interaction. I am not sure this distinction is real.