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Résumé :
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The ever-increasing amount of sleep research has made necessary a critical reflection on methodological problems at every level and in every discipline, especially when the obtained data aids comprehension of sleep mechanisms and sleep functions in humans. Consequently, a symposium was organized at which there was critical consideration of such data and the fashion in which it has been, and should be, interpreted. The first part of the symposium, and the resulting proceedings volume, is devoted to the problem of confrontations between animal and human experimental data. There is consideration of the extent to which neurophysiological and neurochemical mechanisms are the same in different species, and to which the terms and concepts common to them cover the same basic realities in every realm of research. Emphasis, however, is put on the inadequacies of the basic models and on the discrepancies between animal and human data, rather than on the generally accepted convergent findings. Both psychological and psychoanalytic approaches to the mental activity of sleep are considered in the second section, and the data obtained through each means is correlated. The final section is devoted to general discussions on concepts and terminology, and on models and their heuristic values. Comprising all of the conference papers and ensuing discussions, this "state-of-the-art" volume will be a useful sourcebook for all researchers in the multitude of disciplines now applied to sleep research.
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