The understanding of biological functions of sleep has improved recently, including an understanding of the deep evolutionary roots of sleep among animals. However, dreaming as an element of sleep may be particularly difficult to address in non-human animals because in humans dreaming involves a non-wakeful form of awareness typically identified through verbal report. Here, we argue that...
Contributions of specific sleep stages to cognitive processes are increasingly understood. Non-REM sleep is particularly implicated in episodic memory consolidation, whilst REM sleep preferentially consolidates and regulates emotional information, and gives rise to creativity and insight. Dream content reflects these processes: non-REM dreams are more likely to picture episodic memories,...
Dreams have been integral to human culture all over the world and throughout human history. In many ancient and medieval accounts of dreaming, dreams were often seen as prophetic, gifts from the gods, communications with ancestors, or as having some other kind of religious or spiritual meaning. In the early 20th century, oneirology had a huge makeover thanks to perhaps the most famous...
Dreams are extremely varied and are almost always a completely unique experience. However, there are some aspects of dreams that stand out as being common across many dreams. During rapid eye movement sleep, we have our most stereotypical ‘dream-like’ dreams, with the common characteristics mentioned before, like world simulation, bizarre occurrences, a narrative feel, and strong emotions....
Sci-fi has had a lot to say about dreaming over the years: film director Christopher Nolan, fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, anime director Satoshi Kon, and many others have explored the weird and wonderful world of dreams. Inception begins with the premise that it’s possible to enter someone’s dream and extract information from their mind. In the first experiment of its kind, a research team led...
Throughout history there have been reports and claims that consideration of dreams can produce personal realizations and insight. We assessed Exploration-Insight scores associated with discussing Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) dreams in connection with recent waking life experiences. Thirty-one participants were cued in the sleep laboratory for a daydream report and then awakened...
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and its main oscillatory feature, frontal theta, have been related to the processing of recent emotional memories. As memories constitute much of the source material for our dreams, we explored the link between REM frontal theta and the memory sources of dreaming, so as to elucidate the brain activities behind the formation of dream content. Twenty participants...
This study investigates the time course of incorporation of waking life experiences into daydreams. Thirty-one participants kept a diary for 10 days, reporting major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs) and major concerns (MCs). They were then cued for daydream, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and N2 dream reports in the sleep laboratory. There was a higher incorporation into...
Research has found that high thought suppressors dream more of their emotional waking-life experiences than low suppressors, in line with the dream rebound effect. The present study replicated and extended this finding. Participants (N=62) completed the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI), the Pittsberg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS21), and...
In this paper we propose an emotion assimilation function of sleep and dreaming. We offer explanations both for the mechanisms by which waking-life memories are initially selected for processing during sleep, and for the mechanisms by which those memories are subsequently transformed during sleep. We propose that emotions act as a marker for information to be selectively processed during sleep,...
Incorporation of details from waking life events into Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep dreams has been found to be highest on the night after, and then 5-7 nights after events (termed, respectively, the day-residue and dream-lag effects). In experiment 1, 44 participants kept a daily log for 10 days, reporting major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs), and major concerns...
There have been reports and claims in the psychotherapeutic literature that the consideration of recent dreams can result in personal realizations and insight. There is theoretical support for these claims from work on rapid eye movement (REM) sleep having a function of the consolidation of emotional memories and the creative formation of connections between new and older memories. To...
This paper addresses claims that dreams can be a source of personal insight. Whereas there has been anecdotal backing for such claims, there is now tangential support from findings of the facilitative effect of sleep on cognitive insight, and of REM sleep in particular on emotional memory consolidation. Furthermore, the presence in dreams of metaphorical representations of waking life indicates...
Hobson and Schredl’s (2011) discussion on continuity and discontinuity between waking life and dreaming raised important issues about the nature of continuity. We will address several of the points from the debate, drawing on some preliminary data that has been collected investigating the nature of continuity between dreaming and waking. The present commentary will address the following:...