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Ursula Voss

10 papers in the library · 579 citations · publishing 2009-2023

Papers

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Dreaming during a pandemic: Low incorporation of COVID-19-specific themes and lucidity in dreams of psychiatric patients and healthy controls.

International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHP 2023 Judith Koppehele-Gossel, Lena-Marie Weinmann, Ansgar Klimke et al. 5 citations

The present study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the emotional quality of dreams, the incorporation of pandemic-related themes, and the occurrence of lucid dreaming. Dream reports and lucidity ratings of psychiatric outpatients (n = 30) and healthy controls (n = 81) during two lockdowns in Germany were compared to those of healthy controls (n = 33) before the pandemic. Results...

Insight and Dissociation in Lucid Dreaming and Psychosis

Frontiers in Psychology November 12, 2018 Ursula Voss, Armando D’Agostino, Luca Kolibius et al. 28 citations

Dreams and psychosis share several important features regarding symptoms and underlying neurobiology, which is helpful in constructing a testable model of, for example, schizophrenia and delirium. The purpose of the present communication is to discuss two major concepts in dreaming and psychosis that have received much attention in the recent literature: insight and dissociation. Both phenomena...

Dreaming during REM sleep: autobiographically meaningful or a simple reflection of a Hebbian-based memory consolidation process?

Archives italiennes de biologie September 1, 2018 Ursula Voss, Ansgar Klimke

REM sleep is a state of desynchronized electrophysiological activity of the brain. It is usually accompanied by mental activity characterized by a succession of complex visual experiences commonly referred to as dreaming. Although REM sleep and dreaming are not implicitly conjoined, when they co-occur, they have a very distinct phenomenology, as, typically, the dream plot is bizarre and...

Spontaneous Thought, Insight, and Control in Lucid Dreams

Oxford Handbooks Online April 5, 2018 Jennifer Windt, Ursula Voss

Dreams are sometimes described as an intensified form of spontaneous waking thought. Lucid dreams may seem to be a counterexample, because metacognitive insight into the fact that one is now dreaming is often associated with the ability to deliberately control the ongoing dream. This chapter uses conceptual considerations and empirical research findings to argue that lucid dreaming is in fact a...

What is the State-of-the-Art on Lucid Dreaming?

2015 Ursula Voss, Allan Hobson 27 citations

Lucid dreaming may be defined as the conscious awareness that one is dreaming while dreaming. Instead of incorrectly assuming that one is awake, the dreamer gains insight about her or his real state of consciousness. Lucid dreaming is rare and evanescent, which probably accounts for lingering doubts about its veracity and for its marginalization in science. The purpose of this paper is to...

A differentiating empirical linguistic analysis of dreamer activity in reports of EEG-controlled REM-dreams and hypnagogic hallucinations.

Consciousness and Cognition September 1, 2013 Jana Speth, Clemens Frenzel, Ursula Voss

We present Activity Analysis as a new method for the quantification of subjective reports of altered states of consciousness with regard to the indicated level of simulated motor activity. Empirical linguistic activity analysis was conducted with dream reports conceived immediately after EEG-controlled periods of hypnagogic hallucinations and REM-sleep in the sleep laboratory. Reports of...

Measuring consciousness in dreams: the lucidity and consciousness in dreams scale.

Consciousness and Cognition March 1, 2013 Ursula Voss, Karin Schermelleh-Engel, Jennifer Windt et al.

In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary research project aimed at assessing consciousness in dreams. For this purpose, we compared lucid dreams with normal non-lucid dreams from REM sleep. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams are an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness, giving valuable insights into the structure of conscious experience and its...

Lucid dreaming: an age‐dependent brain dissociation

Journal of Sleep Research May 29, 2012 Ursula Voss, Clemens Frenzel, Judith Koppehele-Gossel et al. 76 citations

The current study focused on the distribution of lucid dreams in school children and young adults. The survey was conducted on a large sample of students aged 6-19 years. Questions distinguished between past and current experience with lucid dreams. Results suggest that lucid dreaming is quite pronounced in young children, its incidence rate drops at about age 16 years. Increased lucidity was...

Lucid dreaming and the bimodality of consciousness

Advances in Consciousness Research October 28, 2010 Allan Hobson, Ursula Voss

In this essay, we develop our working hypothesis that consciousness in primates and humans is a state-dependent commodity that has at least two expressions. Waking and dreaming are two such states that differ in conscious awareness. In both states, we are perceptive and emotional. Whereas in dreaming, our thoughts are delusional, however, waking consciousness potentiates volition and...

Lucid Dreaming: a State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming

Sleep September 1, 2009 Ursula Voss, R. Holzmann, Inka Tuin et al. 443 citations

STUDY OBJECTIVES: The goal of the study was to seek physiological correlates of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a dissociated state with aspects of waking and dreaming combined in a way so as to suggest a specific alteration in brain physiology for which we now present preliminary but intriguing evidence. We show that the unusual combination of hallucinatory dream activity and wake-like...