Noted Dream, Sleep Researcher Allan Hobson at LSC
Noted Dream, Sleep Researcher Allan Hobson at LSC
The New Humanism: Beyond Science and Religion
April 18, 2014
Dr. Allan Hobson believes that the “most informative and reliable teacher is oneself.” The Harvard Medical School-trained psychiatrist will describe how he reached this conclusion when he delivers an afternoon lecture at Lyndon State College on April 30. Hobson’s major research interests are the neurophysiological basis of the mind and behavior; sleep and dreaming; and the history of neurology and psychiatry. He lectures throughout the world on consciousness, sleep and dreaming.
Hobson is a member of the Boylston Medical Society and has received many awards and honors including a Distinguished Scientist Award from the Sleep Research Society. Hobson has served on numerous national and regional medical committees, and has been on the editorial board of several medical journals. He was a professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and directed the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston from 1968 to 2003. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and 10 books on sleep, dreaming and consciousness. In 2004, Harvard Medical School awarded Hobson for his lifetime dedication to sleep research.
Hobson has kept a dream journal for more than 50 years and will be sharing examples during the lecture. He will demonstrate how his “subjective conscious experience” has informed his recent theories about the self, the mind, and the brain.
Hobson asserts that one can glean more from fellow students than what one can learn in class. “Fifty years from now you will remember these social interactions as if they had occurred yesterday, whereas you will forget almost everything that you were taught in formal course work,” Hobson said. “In my lecture at LSC, I will assert that each of us is his own consciousness laboratory and that we can learn as much from ourselves and our associates as we can learn in a classroom. That’s what the title means. I am not opposed to science or religion but I am opposed to reliance on all received ideas. We need to move beyond science and religion toward self-discovery.”
Hobson will invite attendees to make “self-observations” and share them with him either via e-mail or through a visit to his farm in East Burke, Vt., home to his Dreamstage Brain and Sleep Science Museum.
Hobson’s lecture will be in the Burke Mountain Room on the fourth floor of the Samuel Read Hall Library and Academic Center at 4 p.m. It is free and open to the public. The presentation, part of Lyndon State College’s Spring 2014 Lecture and Arts Series, is sponsored by Hayes Ford and Vermont Broadcast Associates. The Series is made possible in part by the Harriett M. Sherman Lecture Fund.