An epiphenomenon is a secondary symptom that may or may not be related to a disease, and can be caused accidentally or directly by the primary phenomenon. It can be confusing in a clinical or research context, making causal relationships unclear. The dream is an example of an epiphenomenon studied in medical research.
From a medical point of view, an epiphenomenon is a secondary or additional symptom that a patient develops in the course of a disease and which may or may not be related to the disease in question. It may also refer to a secondary symptom or other event that could mask the true cause-and-effect relationship being studied. For example, a drug might appear to increase your risk for a certain disease but, in reality, it may be the condition that was the reason for taking the drug in the first place that actually increases your risk for the disease.
In the common definition of epiphenomena outside the medical setting, it is usually implied that an epiphenomenon is caused by the primary phenomenon, the phenomenon currently under study. It is also usually implied that the epiphenomenon cannot influence the primary phenomenon. None of these are necessarily true in the medical definition. Epiphenomena in medicine can be caused accidentally or directly by the primary phenomenon, although they may or may not appear to be related to it. They can also be completely unrelated to the condition in question and, in fact, they can be symptoms of a co-occurring disorder, i.e. a disorder that occurs at the same time as the one currently being studied.
An epiphenomenon that appears in a clinical or research context can be confusing, because its existence makes causal relationships unclear. Medical personnel and patients may be unsure whether the epiphenomenon is a side effect of the primary phenomenon or an entirely new condition. They may not be able to tell whether the secondary symptom was caused by the disease, the treatment used for the disease, or something else totally unrelated to the disease and its treatment. This is especially complicated when it makes logical sense to the medical staff or the patient that the secondary symptom is related to the primary condition.
The dream is an example of an epiphenomenon that has been talked about and studied in medical research. It’s not clear whether the dream is simply a byproduct of sleep or has a purpose in and of itself. In an effort to learn more about the relationship between sleep and dreaming, some studies examine dreaming in normal subjects versus dreaming in narcoleptics or other people who have problems with sleep or dreams. Researchers must be creative in finding ways to determine the true causality behind the dream, just as they must be in determining the causality behind any epiphenomenon.
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