Final answer:
The activation-synthesis theory, developed by Alan Hobson, suggests that dreams are the brain's attempt to synthesize neural activity into coherent experiences, differing from Freud's and Jung's theories that connect dreams to the unconscious mind and collective archetypes, and from Cartwright's view that links dreams to significant personal life events.
Step-by-step explanation:
The activation-synthesis theory of dreaming, developed by neuroscientist Alan Hobson, proposes that dreams are our brain's attempt to make sense of random neural activity during REM sleep. Rather than being filled with inherent meaning as Freud suggested, Hobson's theory posits that dreams result from the brain's effort to synthesize this activity into a coherent narrative. This theory has evolved to suggest dreams as a state of protoconsciousness, a kind of virtual reality preparation for wakefulness, with evidence from lucid dreaming studies supporting this perspective.
Comparatively, Freud's psychoanalytic theory sees dreams as the "royal road" to the unconscious, reflecting repressed desires through latent content. Meanwhile, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed dreams connected us to a collective unconscious. Rosalind Cartwright's research takes a different approach, linking dream content to significant personal life events, with empirical evidence showing a correlation between dream content and daytime thoughts.