Frontiers in Sleep
June 24, 2026
Adam Haar Horowitz, Karen R Konkoly, Michelle Carr et al.
Targeted dream incubation (TDI) is a highly effective method for eliciting hypnagogic dreams related to specific topics through the presentation of verbal prompts and serial awakenings at sleep onset. In this pilot study, we tested whether TDI at sleep onset can effectively direct dream content in subsequent rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We allowed participants a daytime nap opportunity...
Sleep
May 1, 2026
Westley Youngren, Victoria West Staples, Emma Angle et al.
Abstract Introduction Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) is the process of giving an individual auditory cues (i.e., “think of a tree”) while they are falling asleep, with the goal of shaping dream content (into something such as a tree). Recent research has demonstrated TDI may be able to increase dream self-efficacy (DSE) and influence other mental health outcomes. Thus, our study explored how...
SLEEPJ
May 1, 2026
Victoria West Staples, Westley Youngren, Emma Angle et al.
Both heightened nightmare (NM) distress, intense negative emotional reactions to nightmares, and low dream self-efficacy (DSE; the perceived ability to manage or influence dream experiences), are understudied contributors to posttraumatic functioning. Individuals with lower DSE shows increased suicide risk in trauma survivors and may increase emotional disturbances during sleep, while NM...
March 31, 2026
Michelle Carr, Kennedy Robertson
Dreams have long served as a bridge between human cognition and the sacred, offering spaces where the boundaries of self, culture, and spirituality are renegotiated. Across history, they have been regarded not only as private experiences but also as vehicles of prophecy, divine affirmation, and symbolic meaning that shape religious worldviews. Whether in theistic traditions, where dreams have...
Sleep
May 1, 2025
Westley Youngren, Emma Angle, Victoria West Staples et al.
Abstract Introduction Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) is the process of utilizing verbal cues (such as, “while you try to fall asleep, try and think of a tree”) during pre-sleep stages in order to directly shape dream content. Preliminary results have demonstrated that TDI may be able to increase dreaming self-efficacy (DSE). Our study aimed to replicate and extend initial findings by examining...
Sleep
May 1, 2025
Westley Youngren, Emma Angle, Victoria West Staples et al.
Research has begun to identify self-efficacy as a crucial variable related to positive treatment outcomes. For treatments targeting nightmares, self-efficacy related to dreaming (DSE) has been proposed to be a key mechanism of change. Additionally, a robust amount of research exists that links nightmares to suicide, suggesting that mechanisms related to trauma-related nightmares may also be...
SLEEP Advances
March 8, 2025
Westley Youngren, Adam Haar Horowitz, Victoria West Staples et al.
4 citations
Abstract This preliminary study investigates the potential for a technique that enables purposeful guiding of dream content (Targeted Dream Incubation; TDI) to change the degree to which an individual feels in control of their dreams (Dream Self-Efficacy; DSE). DSE is a subset of a larger concept of self-efficacy relating to one’s belief in their own abilities and competencies. Examining DSE...
arXiv (Cornell University)
February 13, 2025
Pinyao Liu, Keon Ju M. Lee, Alexander Steinmaurer et al.
We present DreamLLM-3D, a composite multimodal AI system behind an immersive art installation for dream re-experiencing. It enables automated dream content analysis for immersive dream-reliving, by integrating a Large Language Model (LLM) with text-to-3D Generative AI. The LLM processes voiced dream reports to identify key dream entities (characters and objects), social interaction, and dream...
Behavioral Sleep Medicine
2025
Michelle Carr, Westley Youngren, Martin Seehuus et al.
6 citations
This study aimed to investigate relationships between lucid dreaming and sleep and mental health outcomes within a representative sample of the general population. We also sought to examine how nightmares interact with the relationship between lucid dreaming, sleep, and mental health outcomes. Participants (N = 1332) completed measures of lucid dream frequency, nightmare frequency, anxiety and...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 1, 2024
Remington Mallett, Karen R Konkoly, Tore Nielsen et al.
Dreams have long captivated human curiosity, but empirical research in this area has faced significant methodological challenges. Recent interdisciplinary advances have now opened up new opportunities for studying dreams. This review synthesizes these advances into three methodological frameworks and describes how they overcome historical barriers in dream research. First, with observable...
Sleep
April 12, 2023
Claudia Picard-Deland, Karen R Konkoly, Rachel Raider et al.
Memories of waking-life events are incorporated into dreams, but their incorporation is not uniform across a night of sleep. This study aimed to elucidate ways in which such memory sources vary by sleep stage and time of night. Twenty healthy participants (11 F; 24.1 ± 5.7 years) spent a night in the laboratory and were awakened for dream collection approximately 12 times spread across early,...
PLoS One
October 6, 2021
Claudia Picard-Deland, Tore Nielsen, Michelle Carr
27 citations
The phenomenon of dreaming about the laboratory when participating in a sleep study is common. The content of such dreams draws upon episodic memory fragments of the participant's lab experience, generally, experimenters, electrodes, the lab setting, and experimental tasks. However, as common as such dreams are, they have rarely been given a thorough quantitative or qualitative treatment. Here...
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
April 15, 2021
Remington Mallett, Michelle Carr, Martin Freegard et al.
7 citations
Dream lucidity, or being aware that one is dreaming while dreaming, is not an all-or-none phenomenon. Often, subjects report being some variant of “a little lucid” as opposed to completely or not at all. As recent neuroimaging work begins to elucidate the neural underpinnings of lucid experience, understanding subtle phenomenological variation within lucid dreams is essential. Here, we focus on...
Frontiers in Neuroscience
March 18, 2021
Louis-Philippe Marquis, Sarah-Hélène Julien, Véronique Daneault et al.
6 citations
Nightmares are highly dysphoric dreams that are well-remembered upon awakening. Frequent nightmares have been associated with psychopathology and emotional dysregulation, yet their neural mechanisms remain largely unknown. Our neurocognitive model posits that nightmares reflect dysfunction in a limbic-prefrontal circuit comprising medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, hippocampus,...
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2020
Abigail Stocks, Michelle Carr, Remington Mallett et al.
33 citations
Lucid dreaming is a unique phenomenon with potential applications for therapeutic interventions. Few studies have investigated the effects of lucidity on an individual's waking mood, which could have valuable implications for improving psychological wellbeing. The current experiment aims to investigate whether the experience of lucidity enhances positive waking mood, and whether lucidity is...
May 27, 2020
Michelle Carr, A. Stocks, Remington Mallett et al.
Lucid dreaming (being aware that one is dreaming) is typically a positive experience that may enhance positive mood even after waking. There is concern, however, that lucid dreaming may interfere with sleep quality. In the current experiment, participants practiced common lucid dream induction techniques over the course of a week, and kept a daily sleep and dream diary. The study objective was...
Front Psychol
January 23, 2020
Elizaveta Solomonova, Simon Dubé, Cloé Blanchette-Carrière et al.
9 citations
Different Patterns of Sleep-Dependent Procedural Memory Consolidation in Vipassana Meditation Practitioners and Non-meditating Controls.
Sleep Medicine
April 1, 2019
Tore Nielsen, Michelle Carr, Claudia Picard-Deland et al.
OBJECTIVE Childhood adversity figures prominently in the clinical histories of children and adolescents suffering from a panoply of physical, mental or sleep disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder. But the nature and prevalence of early adversity in the case of idiopathic nightmare-prone individuals have received little study. We characterize the types and frequencies of...
Journal of Sleep Research
January 29, 2019
Annika Gieselmann, Malik Ait Aoudia, Michelle Carr et al.
192 citations
This consensus paper provides an overview of the state of the art in research on the aetiology and treatment of nightmare disorder and outlines further perspectives on these issues. It presents a definition of nightmares and nightmare disorder followed by epidemiological findings, and then explains existing models of nightmare aetiology in traumatized and non-traumatized individuals. Chronic...
Sleep Medicine
October 1, 2018
Claudia Picard-Deland, Michelle Carr, Tyna Paquette et al.
Idiopathic nightmares are a common disturbance of rapid eye movement sleep (REM) sleep, but studies of comorbid pathologies and sleep architecture suggest that non-REM (NREM) sleep is also affected. Sleep spindles are a NREM sleep characteristic associated with both pathophysiology and sleep-dependent memory consolidation, yet they have not been evaluated in frequent nightmare recallers. The...
March 1, 2017
Tore Nielsen, Michelle Carr, Cloé Blanchette-Carrière et al.
Both rapid eye movement (REM) sleep dreaming and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep spindles have been linked to processes of memory consolidation. However, relationships between the two phenomena have yet to be explored. In a heterogeneous sample of 53 healthy subjects who had participated in a memory consolidation protocol and who varied in their self-reported recall of dreams and...
Open MIND
April 1, 2016
Michelle Carr
2 citations
La littérature suggère que le sommeil paradoxal joue un rôle dans l'intégration associative de la mémoire émotionnelle. De plus, les rêves en sommeil paradoxal, en particulier leur nature bizarre et émotionnelle, semblent refléter cette fonction associative et émotionnelle du sommeil paradoxal. La conséquence des cauchemars fréquents sur ce processus est inconnue, bien que le réveil provoqué...
Journal of Sleep Research
August 1, 2015
Gaëlle Dumel, Michelle Carr, Louis-Philippe Marquis et al.
Although sleep facilitates learning and memory, the roles of dreaming and habitual levels of recalling dreams remain unknown. This study examined if performance and overnight improvement on a rapid eye movement sleep-sensitive visuomotor task is associated differentially with habitually high or low dream recall frequency. As a relation between dream production and visuospatial skills has been...
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
July 1, 2015
Tore Nielsen, C O'Reilly, Michelle Carr et al.
Memory consolidation is associated with sleep physiology but the contribution of specific sleep stages remains controversial. To clarify the contribution of REM sleep, participants were administered two REM sleep-sensitive tasks to determine if associated changes occurred only in REM sleep. Twenty-two participants (7 men) were administered the Corsi Block Tapping and Tower of Hanoi tasks prior...
Remington Mallett, Laura Sowin, Michelle Carr
preprint
Nightmares disrupt sleep health and predict future psychiatric diagnoses, yet reliable population estimates and their fluctuations over time are difficult to obtain. Here, we set out to test if a digital surveillance approach could be used to observe reliable estimates of nightmare frequency and dysphoric dreaming in the general population from social media posts. English-language posts from...