Until recently, most researchers thought that mental illness could be understood by biological means or by psychoanalytic methods, but that there was not much overlap. Dr. Reiser said that recent research is beginning to blur those lines. He stated that it is becoming better understood that the brain is the organ of the mind in much the same way that the stomach is the organ of digestion. The psychiatrist will soon need to know how the brain enables the mind to perform its functions.

Dr. Reiser believes that the problem then becomes bringing the brain scientist (neuroscientist) together with the mind scientist (psychiatrist) to study the same phenomena and learn what their approaches have in common. Dreams, and how they are used in memory, may be one place for this to occur.

Memories are coded and stored in the brain according to the sense impression that came during the event. From the psychoanalytic point of view, memories are organized by the emotion associated with them. The mind keeps working on the problem through the night and, to borrow from computer terminology, the "printout" is the dream.

The neuroscientist looks at dreaming and finds that the images in the dream are processed in the hippocampus and other primitive parts of the brain. They are not really available for adaptive function until they go through these systems, which generate and regulate emotions.

Together, these findings suggest that images and memories are organized neurologically by linking images to the regions of the brain modulating emotion. The theories of both psychiatrists and neuroscientists are therefore almost identical.

Further evidence, according to Dr. Reiser, comes from studies of dreams among patients whose lives are in turmoil. The dreams of those in distress are much more colorful and active.

Early studies in rats learning to negotiate a maze show there are specific patterns of activity in the rat brain as it maps the territory. When the rats dream, the same cells fire in a similar pattern.

Dr. Reiser hopes that combining neuroscience with psychiatry will show that mental illness is medical illness.