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Dreaming represents a peculiar form of cognitive activity during sleep. On the basis of the well-known relationship between sleep and memory, there has been a growing interest in the predictive role of human brain activity during sleep on dream recall. Neuroimaging studies indicate that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is characterized by limbic activation and prefrontal cortex deactivation. This pattern could explain the presence of emotional contents in dream reports. Furthermore, the morphoanatomical measures of amygdala and hippocampus predict some features of dream contents (bizarreness, vividness, and emotional load). More relevant for a general view of dreaming mechanisms, empirical data from neuropsychological and electroencephalographic (EEG) studies support the hypothesis that there is a sort of continuity between the neurophysiological mechanisms of encoding and retrieval of episodic memories across sleep and wakefulness. A notable overlap between the electrophysiological mechanisms underlying emotional memory formation and some peculiar EEG features of REM sleep has been suggested. In particular, theta (5–8 Hz) EEG oscillations on frontal regions in the pre-awakening sleep are predictive of dream recall, which parallels the predictive relation during wakefulness between theta activity and successful retrieval of episodic memory. Although some observations support an interpretation more in terms of an intraindividual than interindividual mechanism, the existing empirical evidence still precludes from definitely disentangling if this relation is explained by state- or trait-like differences.

There are several ways to incorporate evolutionary concepts into economic thinking. This article reviews the most important transfers of this kind into evolutionary economics. It broadly differentiates between approaches that draw on an analogy construction to the biological sphere, those that make metaphorical use of Darwinian ideas, and avenues that are based on the fact that other forms of - cultural - evolution rest upon foundations laid before by natural selection. It is shown that an evolutionary approach within economics informed by insights from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and anthropology contributes to more realistic models of human behavior in economic contexts.

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada ao ISPA - Instituto Universitário As descobertas encontradas pela análise de conteúdo na literatura, de que a maioria dos sonhos são realistas e baseados em aspectos de vida do dia a dia, relativos a desejos, interesses, receios e medos corroboram as hipóteses da teoria psicanalítica acerca da existência de uma relação directa entre a vigília e o conteúdo dos sonhos, indo ao encontro da hipótese de continuidade. Ainda, estudos sobre os sonhos nas crianças que apoiam a perspectiva desenvolvimentista têm constatado diferenças nos conteúdos dos sonhos, consoante a idade e o sexo das mesmas. Devido à escassez de literatura e evidências empíricas sobre esta temática nas crianças em Portugal, considerou-se pertinente este estudo, que tem como objectivo principal contribuir para uma compreensão mais aprofundada da vivência dos sonhos nas crianças portuguesas, analisando e identificando os seus conteúdos, de acordo com o sexo e idade. Participaram no presente estudo 103 alunos do 4º, 5º e 6º ano de escolaridade, com idades compreendidas entre os 8 e os 11 anos, provenientes de escolas do Concelho de Cascais. Os alunos responderam a um Questionário criado pelo investigador, constituído por uma escala de 50 itens e três perguntas de resposta aberta. A análise dos resultados realizada permitiu observar diferenças nos conteúdos dos sonhos das crianças em relação à idade e o género das mesmas. Estes resultados apoiam a hipótese de continuidade do sonho uma vez que a maioria dos sonhos das crianças da nossa amostra refletiram as suas vivências do dia a dia na vigília. Constatou-se também uma relação entre os conteúdos dos sonhos e o desenvolvimento emocional, cognitivo e social da criança. ABSTRACT: The findings yielded by several content analyses in the literature, that the majority of dreams are realistic and based on everyday aspects related to wishes, interests, and fears, corroborate the hypothesis of the psychoanalytic theory concerning the existence of a direct relationship between awakening and the content of dreams, thus supporting the continuity hypothesis. Moreover, studies on children’s dreams which support the developmental perspective have found differences in the contents of the dreams according to the children’s age and gender. Owing to the scarcity of theoretical and empirical evidence regarding this topic on Portuguese children, it was considered pertinent to conduct the present study whose main goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the experiencing of dreams on Portuguese children, analysing and identifying their content according to gender and age. 103 students on the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, aged 8 to 11, from schools in Cascais participated in the present study. The students filled in a questionnaire created by the researcher consisting of 50 items and 3 open-ended questions. The content analysis conducted on the data showed differences in the contents of the children’s dreams according to their age and gender. The data support the dream continuity hypothesis since the majority of the reported dreams reflected the participating children’s everyday experiences while awake. A relationship between the content of the dreams and the child’s emotional, cognitive, and social development was also obtained.

According to the advocates of a Generalized Darwinism (GD), the three core Darwinian principles of variation, selection and retention (or inheritance) can be used as a general framework for the development of theories explaining evolutionary processes in the socio­economic domain. Even though these are originally biological terms, GD argues that they can be re-defined in such a way as to abstract from biological particulars. We argue that this approach does not only risk to misguide positive theory development, but that it may also impede the construction of a coherent evolutionary approach to policy implications. This is shown with respect to the positive, instrumental and normative theories such an approach is supposed to be based upon.

Doubts about the decidability of moral questions have often been used as an excuse for economists to eschew any normative propositions. Evolutionary economics, still lacking a well-developed normative branch, gives rise to a form of descriptive moral relativism. This paper wants to explore the consequences of adopting a form of meta-ethical and normative moral relativism as well. It develops a normative position called ‘naturalistic relativism’, which is a naturalistically reconstructed neo-pragmatist form of relativism. The paper also gives an argument why this position seems to be the adequate normative correlate for evolutionary economics.