Journal of Clinical Medicine
May 12, 2023
Severin Ableidinger, Brigitte Holzinger
13 citations
Sleep paralysis and lucid dreams are both connected to REM sleep but differ in emotional tone and perceived controllability. A review of 10 studies, mostly surveys plus a case study, a randomized trial, and an EEG study, found positive and significant correlations between sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming in most of the studies, indicating a connection between the two states. Research remains limited and methodologically diverse, and future work should develop standardized methods for examining both phenomena.
Somnologie - Schlafforschung und Schlafmedizin
August 15, 2023
Severin Ableidinger, Gerhard Klösch, Brigitte Holzinger
Dream research faces challenges due to limited, unstandardized, or labor-intensive questionnaires, leading to divergent results and poor comparability. The Dreamland Questionnaire, developed in 1997 and subsequently revised and partially validated, offers a short, easy-to-use tool covering dream quantities, qualities, and lucidity, and encourages dreamers to write down their dreams. It has been used to show that dreams collected in the laboratory differ from those at home, and that emotionality ratings differ between dreamers and external raters. The questionnaire is available in German.
Journal of Sleep Research
April 1, 2026
Severin Ableidinger, Luigi De Gennaro, Sérgio Mota-Rolim et al.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, about 30% of people frequently knew they were dreaming (lucid dreaming), and roughly half of those (17%) could influence their dreams (lucid dreaming with agency). Female gender and anxiety symptoms were linked to less ability to influence dreams, while dream recall, nightmares, insomnia, dream enactment behavior, sleep vocalization, short and long COVID, and PTSD were linked to more ability. Older age, dream recall, nightmares, and anxiety were linked to lucid dreaming without agency, while short sleep, being an evening type, and short COVID were linked to less of it. The different patterns suggest lucid dreaming with and without agency may be distinct sleep states, and this is the first study showing COVID-19 and long COVID are associated with lucid dreaming.
Somnologie : Schlafforschung und Schlafmedizin = Somnology : sleep research and sleep medicine
January 1, 2022
Severin Ableidinger, Franziska Nierwetberg, Brigitte Holzinger
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people began remembering more dreams, and dream content shifted toward themes such as sickness, confinement, and bugs, especially in the English-speaking world. Nightmare frequency also increased. Factors contributing to this change include more time spent in REM sleep due to increased sleep duration, which can produce bizarre and vivid dreams, and stress or poor mental health that reduced sleep quality, which can also boost dream recall. Dreams help regulate mood, so the rise in dreams and altered content may reflect a reaction to rising stress and declining mental health. As the pandemic progressed, further changes in mental health, dream recall, and dream content emerged, though data remain scarce.